Instant Insights

If your brand is running programmatic advertising campaigns, you’re right to worry that your media dollars are being wasted due to fraudulent activity like bots and made-for-advertising websites.  

In a 2023 study, the Association of National Advertisers found that out of $88 billion spent in open web advertising, a staggering $22 billion is wasteful or unproductive. Put another way, only 36 cents of every dollar spent through a programmatic platform effectively reaches the consumer, the ANA study found (Read a summary; download the full report). 

For advertisers, it’s the stuff of ad spend nightmares. 

At Brunner, we’re working aggressively to combat waste and fraud in programmatic advertising, including testing and implementing innovative new anti-fraud tools such as FouAnalytics. 

We’re seeing success. For one client, we used this platform to deliver a huge drop in bot traffic, a turn-around in verified human visits, a spike in view-through conversions and traffic — and a whopping $60,000 savings in media spend.  

As a result, our Programmatic Ads team has adopted FouAnalytics as a best practice for every programmatic ad campaign we manage. It’s now part of our strict programmatic practices and processes to combat waste and fraud, to ensure each client is getting the best possible return.   

Using FouAnalytics to Combat Programmatic Waste and Fraud 

After the ANA released its stunning report last year, the Brunner Programmatic team revisited every aspect of how we manage programmatic ad buying. During 2023, we tested half a dozen vendors who offer tools to combat advertising fraud. FouAnalytics stood out as the only tool able to stop unwanted bot traffic. 

The combination of FouAnalytics in-ad and on-site tags gives us an in-depth view of ad fraud on paid media campaigns — and provides insights on how to optimize the client’s campaign to avoid continued waste. 

Now that we have a proven blueprint for combatting ad fraud, our clients saved an average of 23% in their media spend, dollars that otherwise would be wasted on fraud activities. Clients with a media mix that includes heavy programmatic ad spend have seen bot traffic decrease by an average of 68%. 

Success story: Drastic improvements for CPG client’s programmatic campaigns

The team’s most recent success story involves one of our consumer packaged goods (CPG) clients and demonstrates the effectiveness of our partnership with FouAnalytics.  

Before implementing Brunner’s best practices, our client’s campaigns were being hit by fraudulent bot traffic and low conversion rates. Their ads were displaying on sketchy websites, and in some instances, these sites had more than 20 banner ads serving at a time, a jaw-dropping number. 

The Brunner team implemented FouAnalytics in the following ways: 

• Optimized the client’s programmatic campaign against JavaScript tags so we could quickly identify and then mitigate the fraudulent traffic. 
   
• Strategically targeted top-performing ad exchanges, browsers, and operating systems that drove genuine human traffic and impressions via a variety of factors provided by the JavaScript tag. 
   
• Implemented ongoing optimizations to combat displays of our client’s ads on MFA websites by leveraging the JavaScript tags to track page ad count, ads above the fold, and page frame count.  

As a result, we saw a drastic drop in the number of served sites — from tens of thousands per week to just over a thousand.  

Next, our team then took those top-performing supply vendors and established relationships with those partners. That gave us a better understanding of the inventory integrity of the media being provided — and lowered costs for our client.  

Within a week, the Brunner programmatic team had optimized and drastically improved campaign performance: 

• 87% decrease in bot impressions  
• Increase from 40% human traffic from programmatic ads to 100% verified human visits  
• More than a 78% decrease in customer cost per acquisition as view-through conversions and traffic soared 
• $60,000+ savings in media spend 

Our CPG client is thrilled with the results. Our Programmatic Ads team is elated to be combatting waste and fraud — and helping our client hit their goals. 

Ready to Start Combatting Programmatic Waste and Fraud?

As ad fraud continues to grow, it’s crucial to test, verify, and implement advanced ad fraud tools like FouAnalytics. The Brunner team is committed to fighting ad fraud and reducing bot risk, to ensure we deliver the best possible return on each client’s ad spend. If you’re running programmatic advertising — or want to start — please reach out to learn more about ways to minimize waste and fraud. We’d love to chat with you! 

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