Ad Bots not Ad Blockers
Background
A lot of focus in the gaming industry media has been spent on worrying about Ad Blockers and the impact on performance. Our view is that it is not the Ad Blockers but the Ad Bots used for fraud that you should be worried about instead.
What is Ad Fraud
- Impression Fraud is where impressions are sold on fake websites or shown on hidden browsers that run in the background or served into invisible 1×1 pixels.
- Ad Injection / Adware is where software is downloaded to a users computer or browser without there knowledge and then injects ads onto other sites or windows in the browser
- Retargeting Fraud are bots that are created to mimic specific users and are then served ads.
- Finally is audience extension fraud where publishers buy traffic from third party vendors who them direct bot traffic to the publishers
What is the Financial Impact?
It is estimated that around $7.2 billion or 29% of all display budgets will be wasted globally on Ad Bots.
What Type of Ads?
All types of display buying is hit with ad fraud however; the more expensive the inventory the more likely fraud will take places. According to studies by ANA and WhiteOps, price was not an indication of quality with display ads that cost over $10 CPM are 1.4x more likely to be seen by bots than ads with CPM below $10. While video campaigns with CPM rates above $15 are almost 2.75x likely to be seen by bots than CPM rates less than $15.
Impact on Gambling Industry
As the gambling industry is restricted on the types of inventory and network it has access too, we see the likelihood of display ad fraud to be even higher.
Our View
We’d advise to work closely with your media agencies and ad networks, get forensic on your ad serving logs and publisher logs. This will allow you to optimise and mitigate the impact on your display budgets.
News Round-Up
Bwin currently does not offer any horse racing, hopefully that isn’t a problem for the team at Betfred. We like the bwin approach, horse racing is old hat, the guys need to pile into offering odds on Drone Racing instead.
We are big fans of the BetVictor million pound goal, however, they have some stiff competition from the Vote Leave campaign with their 50 million pound contest.
For a different take on eSports betting, take a look at I Want ISK which is a gambling site that just uses the ISK currency for the EVE Online virtual world. It’s reportedly made the owner one of the richests people in EVE.