Digital ad fraud is more than an issue – it’s an epidemic. And an expensive one.
Dealer Marketing cites a recent report that estimates the various types of digital fraud cost advertisers a jaw-dropping $7.2 billion globally in 2016 alone.
As more ad spending moves from traditional media to digital, and as fraud perpetrators become more adept, it’s a safe assumption that without digital strategies smart enough to catch traffic abnormalities in place, those losses will only increase.
Naturally, digital advertisers are looking for ways to protect themselves. And dealers are certainly among those who are sharpening their focus on invalid traffic – commonly referred to as “bots.”
Most savvy automotive marketers are looking make the most of their ad budgets by communicating only with in-market shoppers. It’s a task made much more challenging by the influx of non-human traffic.
One key to separating the bots from the buyers lies in actual online behavior.
Analyzing what a visitor is actually doing online can reveal who’s human, and who’s automated.
Robust reporting capabilities are an additional tool that can help limit the impacts of ad fraud. For example, the ability to clearly distinguish which VINs have sold as a result of VDP views from specific targeting efforts can enable dealers to attribute actual sales to specific sources.
As fraud perpetrators continue to evolve, marketers will need to work increasingly hard to keep ahead of them. The right technology can be an important element of a protective toolkit.
As the automotive marketing industry’s leader in machine learning and artificial intelligence, LotLinx technology enables marketers to distinguish real shoppers based on their actual behavior. When a shopper searches for a specific make, model, and even geographic location, our technology detects their viability as a real shopper (and can target them with advertising that matches their criteria, exactly).
Because fraudulent traffic doesn’t behave with that level of intricacy, LotLinx can ignore it. As a result, more ad dollars are spent communicating with humans, and not wasted on fraud.
To learn more about bots and what dealers can do about them, check out our free whitepaper.