IAB chief Alice Manners says ad fraud is not as prevalent in Australia as is being made out
The CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has said the organisation will target ad fraud in 2015, but insists the problem is not as big as is being portrayed by the media.
Alice Manners revealed that IAB would be commissioning a study into ad fraud in the Australian market during a Mumbrella hangout to talk about the future of digital advertising sector.
When asked how big an issue ad fraud was in this market Manners was quick to downplay any suggestion that there was a serious issue: “It’s not as big a problem as you journalists make it out to be, that is from a global contextualisation perspective.
“We have an agency group which is in collaboration with the Media Federation (MFA) and as a subset of the agency group we have a brand safety council to look at that (ad fraud).”
Manners said ad fraud was running at less than five percent across major publishers online.
“There is bot fraud which we can manage, and areas such as programatic, which tend to suggest there is a higher fraud level, however we know through some of the technology companies that are new to Australia that that fraud across some of our key publishers is really low, it’s less than five per cent,” she claimed.
“I can comfortably say it’s around two per cent,” she added.
Manners said there needed to be a study of the local market to put the problem into context and said IAB would look at committing to a study through the Brand Safety Council. However she did not give a timeframe for when this would happen.
“What I would like to do is have an Australian study to contextualise that,” she said.
She did admit however that there were some players in the market who were engaging in “dodgy” practices and that in 2015 IAB would be looking at targeting those players.
“If you look at where online ad revenues are; it’s fantastic to see that marketers have that confidence in the medium to invest in it. The traffic fraud element takes away from that, but they are some dodgy global players that need to be put into place and we’ll do that in 2015.”
The IAB is one of the newest entrants to the Australian trade association space being incorporated in 2010, and represents major publishers, marketers and agencies in a bid to make online advertising better.
Manners has been the CEO of the IAB for over a year and a half, being appointed to the role in July 2013. Prior to the IAB Manners was the COO of interaction for GroupM AsiaPacific for eight years.
During the hangout Manners talked about a range of topics including the IAB’s goals for the year and the challenges facing the industry including the rise of programmatic marketing, monetising digital content for publishers and whether agencies should be asked to do more, and the latest changes in online measurement being driven by the association.
Related hangouts:
- Hangout with ADMA CEO Jodie Sangster
- Hangout with PRIA deputy president Allison Lee
- Hangout with Communications Council CEO Tony Hale
- Hangout with AMI CEO Lee Tonitto
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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When will mumbrella do a hangout with the MFA?
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Alice, what sort of spend lift has occurred in markets that have gone form a non (industry-wide) measurement system, to a measured system of the type we are looking at with Nielsen/iab in 2015? In rough % terms. Graham_Big
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Graham, while I don’t have comparative data regarding online spend there is a local example that may help.
In December 2004 the OMA (well OAAA back then) it announced it was going to build an audience measurement system. It was much more difficult than we thought it would be and eventually launched in February 2010.
Based on CEASA data, in 2004 OOH had $327m revenue with a 3.2% share.
During the years that MOVE was being built its share was between 3.1% and 3.3%, and by 2009 had grown 22% in five years to $400m.
In 2010 – the first year of MOVE – revenue was $477m +19% on the prior year and to a 3.5% share.
By 2013 revenue had grown +37% in four years to $548m and 4.1% share.
2014 revenue was $602m (+51% in five years), but CEASA share data is not yet available.
It seems like robust, credible audience measurement developed in a tripartite way pays dividends!
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Hi Mike,
We have approached the MFA for a hangout- we’re still trying to lock in a convenient time and date for them. We’ll keep you posted.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
Good to hear you will be proactively tackling offenders.
I could be wrong but didn’t Google release data saying their estimate was 10%?
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What is the IABs view on agency digital fraud – mark ups, inflated adsorbing costs etc?
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