Programmatic Buying: You Get What You Pay For

A lot of advertisers associate programmatic buying to high scale, low CPM inventory and pressure their programmatic partners to reach their campaign’s goal at the lowest CPM as possible. If you are part of the group of advertisers that think this way, please continue reading this blog post; I promise to be eye opening.

According to a new research from the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and a study conducted with White Ops (ad fraud detection firm) global advertisers could lose $6.3 billion to bots in 2015. They unveiled that bots accounted for 17% of all programmatic ad traffic and 19% of retargeted ads.

Fraudulent impressions and clicks are hard to detect as bots can mimic browsing behavior of real people. If your programmatic campaigns are winning traffic at a low bid, you are most likely buying non-human traffic.

Premium inventory will cost more; however you will find that your campaigns will reach a more qualified audience and as a result, conversion rate will be higher. Via our programmatic campaigns, we have unveiled that an effective CPM will be around $5 – $6.

A couple of simple ways to minimize the action of bots are to target inventory that are above the fold and are more likely to be viewed by real humans. Also, avoid using CTR as a key metric of success and utilize DR goals such as orders, bookings, sign up completion, etc. Campaigns that are fully optimized to drive clicks are an easy target to fraudulent activities.

Therefore, if you are running programmatic display, reach out to your programmatic partner and find out the tools they are utilizing in order to avoid fraudulent behavior. Also, consider utilizing a fraud detection partner.