#Ad Validation

MFA, or “Made For Advertising”, is the boogeyman of digital advertising, scooping up some $20 billion of wasted ad spend on bot sites, unviewable ads, or ad farms. The Association of National Advertisers reports that buyers have been spending less on MFA overall in the last few years, but it’s been on the rise in recent months. We all know MFA sites when we see them; so why are they so hard to circumvent?

If you live in the U.S. and have been on the internet this month, there’s a good chance you’ve been on YouTube. The video platform hosts more than 2.7 billion active users, and no platform can get that popular without seeing its fair share of controversies. Lately, YouTube has been making some not-so-great headlines that demonstrate the importance of knowing the entire customer journey in your programmatic campaigns. Let’s take a closer look at impression tracking and what we can learn about it from YouTube.

Wherever services can be exchanged for money, you’ll find not-so-great artists trying to make as much money with as little effort as possible. Made-for-advertising sites are a barely-legal scam that everyone recognizes when they see it, but it’s still going to eat up around $20 billion dollars in ad spend this year. How does this happen, and – more importantly – how can you minimize its impact on your business?

Getting clicks on your ad can be exciting, but a savvy marketer knows that a click isn’t too impressive on its own – it’s conversions that really count. That said, it is a necessary stepping stone: the moment a customer enters or moves along the sales funnel. A click is a good thing because it represents a consumer willing to take action… or at least it can. Some are better than others, and if you want to get conversions, you need to make sure you’re getting the right kind of clicks.

Today’s modern landscape opens up tons of possibilities for business owners and marketers, especially those running things completely online. A myriad of tools are available to help even a solo-operated e-commerce business keep up with the big players, and many of the newest toys are powered by AI. Let’s take a closer look at how artificial intelligence is affecting the e-commerce industry and how you can take advantage of it moving forward!

What is the Metaverse? According to Facebook, the Metaverse is a virtual arena, where “3D spaces in the metaverse will let you socialise, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine.” They go on to explain that this space will be created by everyone and built for everyone to enjoy. Put simply, it’s a virtual world of interconnected communities. In the Metaverse, people can chat, work, play games, and interact through virtual reality.

On November 10 in 2021, Russian cybercriminal Aleksandr Zhukov was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his digital ad scam, stealing more than $7 million from U.S. advertisers and publishers for more than 2 years. How did he do it? Russian “King of Ad Fraud” Gets Caught In 2014, Zhukov started an advertising network and received payments from other ad networks to place advertisements on websites. But instead of putting ads on real web pages, he rented 2,000 computer servers and put them in data centers, programming them to act like humans viewing ads.

It’s a new year with a whole new–and bright–outlook on fraud prevention in the programmatic landscape. The pandemic of 2020 dramatically accelerated digital business efforts, and while some have speculated this could potentially make the digital supply chain more vulnerable to fraud, new research has shown that a good portion of fraud is already being effectively prevented. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is a global program composed of several digital supply chain contributors and ad tech companies–including Genius Monkey–that have banded together in a combined effort to fight fraudulent activity and promote brand safety within digital advertising.

Over the top TV (OTT) or Connected TV (CTV) have pretty much made their mark on the advertising landscape — enough to stake their claim as a mainstay in the advertiser’s official bag of tricks! Currently, there are more than 130 CTV applications1 available to viewers, and that number is growing rapidly; like a new city popping up in the middle of the desert. But, with any new city comes new bad guys.

This year has brought countless changes to markets everywhere, including the political arenas. But unlike the downturn of other markets, 2020 political ad spend is expected to increase and break all previous records. In a recent report from Politico, the initial 2020 ad spend estimates of $6 billion were modified by 12% to predict at least $6.7 billion in this year’s political ad spend! With so much being invested during such a pivotal time for the globe, all eyes will be on politicians and their answers to the many challenges we’ve seen this year.