Ad fraud might be as much your fault as it is the fraudsters’

Digital media spending is on the rise. In 2018, it’ll represent 44% of all ad spend globally. By 2020 it’ll be 50%, about US$291 billion, according to media agency Magna. But what worries me is that there are too many people out there who don’t understand what they’re buying, which means a whole chunk of wasted budget.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, too many CMOs don’t understand ad tech. That’s the word from CEO of MDC Media Partners Martin Cass, formerly of Carat, who said: “If you sat down with a CMO and really asked him what most of the ad tech does, they wouldn’t have a clue.” He went on to mention “an enormous lack of trust” in the industry and cited Group M’s Irwin Gotlieb: “Where there’s confusion, there’s opportunities to make money.”