We had one of those “ah ha” moments while listening to a great piece on a recent Marketplace Tech Report called Digital advertisers losing the ‘bot arms race’.
It reveals that a lot of digital advertisers who base their success on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) may not be getting their money’s worth.
Why is that?
Several criminal rings have changed their focus from credit card fraud to something less risky and more lucrative: Digital Ad Fraud. In fact, some researchers believe that more than 1/3 of all internet traffic is from bots – software programs, and not actual humans. “And all those fake eyeballs are wreaking havoc on the $50 billion digital ad market.”
Internet criminals have unleashed armies of bots to commit digital ad fraud. These bots are a significant threat to the livelihoods of digital advertisers – and the authenticity of campaign tracking. Imagine, those $6 CPM ads are actually costing you $8 per thousand human impressions.
According to this piece, several companies have tried to recoup ad spending when they discovered their ads weren’t seen by humans. They are also turning to companies like White Ops – whose technology “detects the most sophisticated nonhuman or remotely controlled traffic.”
Another Way to “Beat the Bots”
In order to beat the bots, digital advertisers must refocus their efforts on the end result: Who bought the product or service as a result of seeing the ad?
There’s a lot of data showing the lack of correlation between people who click on display ads and those who actually purchase. And in the world of big-ticket, B2C products and services, there’s a surprising disconnect between those who “convert” online and those who truly buy.
You may recall that with Household-Specific Display advertising, you can use the treasure trove of data connected with a prospect’s household address to target ads more effectively. Taking this a step further to performance measurement, Household-Specific Display lets you to skip the clicks and onsite conversions entirely – and focus only on the buyers.
“Buy-Through” Rate, not CTR
Because of the connection we have between a buyer’s IP address and their physical home address, this advanced technology enables an exact match between ad viewers and purchasers.
Regardless of whether their transaction was via e-commerce, in a store, at an event, or via catalog – we can use household address data to directly connect anybody residing in a client’s customer file or CRM database with the people who were served a particular ad.
So while Marketplace’s report on the reduction in ad viewership by real humans is alarming, you can reduce its impact when you can track actual purchasers.
Bots or no bots – it’s your buyers who really drive your return-on-ad-spend (ROAS).