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How Much of Your Audience Is Fake?
Article

How Much of Your Audience Is Fake?

Marketers Thought the Web Would Allow Perfectly Targeted Ads. Hasn't Worked Out that Way.

Ben Elgin, Michael Riley, David Kocieniewski and Joshua Brustein
Bloomberg Business, 2015
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Editorial Rating

8

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  • Innovative

Recommendation

When digital advertising first took off, businesses believed it would enable them to reach their target markets at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising methods. This wasn’t the case. Business reporters Ben Elgin, Michael Riley, David Kocieniewski and Joshua Brustein reveal why online advertising isn’t always as lucrative as companies hope it would be. They explain how advertisers may unknowingly pay for ads that are mostly viewed by software on fake websites and describe the tactics some advertisers have begun using to protect their investments. getAbstract recommends this analysis to anyone with an interest in the evolution of online advertising.

Summary

Traditionally, if you wanted to advertise your product or service, TV was the best avenue to reach your customers, but it wasn’t perfect: Costs are high and half of your marketing effort is wasted. In the mid-2000s, digital search and display advertising came along and promised to reach more viewers for less money. Since 2010, programmatic auctions have enabled advertisers to identify the pages their target market visits and allowed them to bid to place their ads on those pages. In 2013, beer retailer Heineken’s ad executives found that human beings made up only 20% of its online ad ...

About the Authors

Ben Elgin and Michael A. Riley are reporters for Bloomberg Business. David Kocieniewski is a business reporter. Joshua Brustein is a writer for Businessweek.com.

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