Bot clicks and fake traffic set to cost advertisers over $71bn in 2024

With ad spend growth slowing to 5.3%, new research reveals an emerging threat to dwindling budgets - invalid traffic (IVT).

In 2024, advertisers are set to waste over $71bn (£59bn)* on traffic generated by invalid activity, including bots and automated scripts -  an increase of 33% from 2022.

Conducted by leading marketing efficiency platform Lunio, the research analysed 2.6bn paid ad clicks and 104bn impressions from 60,000 ad accounts across the platform’s...

29 January 2024 | Advertising

Brands spent $930bn on social media advertising since 2017

Social media apps on a smartphone.

As the second-largest market in the digital advertising space, the social media ad industry has grown tremendously over the years.

With an estimated 4.9 billion social media users across the world and over 90% of marketers using social media to promote brands and reach customers, it`s no wonder this type of advertising has become one of the biggest revenue streams in the digital advertising industry. Last year alone, brands and companies spent $207bn on social media ads. However,...

23 January 2024 | Advertising

More than half of content produced is never activated

Advertisers’ lack of visibility into their creative production lifecycle sets the industry up to waste billions in 2024 on content that never gets used.

This is according to a study by creative agency CreativeX, which estimated that the average F500 company could be wasting at least $25 million a year on unused creative assets. Across the entire industry, that translates to $100 billion on assets that are never activated.

Advertisers are looking to genAI to create...

16 January 2024 | Advertising

Ad spend on short-form videos to grow by CAGR of $145bn+ by 2028

A close up of a dollar bill.

The rise of short-form videos, first popularised by TikTok and then copied in the form of YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, has been a game-changer in the social media landscape.

These no more than 60-second long videos are not only entertaining and highly addictive content but also a fantastic way to reach younger audiences. That is why marketers continue pouring money into this type of advertising.

According to data presented by OnlyAccounts.io, global ad spending...

15 January 2024 | Advertising

Brands are wasting $600m+ in ad spend during the holiday season

A dog wearing an elf hat.

Brands are wasting hundreds of millions in digital ad spend during the holiday season, according to a new analysis by CreativeX, a technology company powering creative decision-making for the world’s largest brands.

The analysis, which assessed over 3.9 million ads from 2021-2022, from 400+ brands across 10 different industries including retail, food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods, found that brands spent over $600m worldwide on ads that are not digitally suitable...

27 November 2023 | Advertising

Darabase launches ‘world-first’ property inventory platform for outdoor AR advertising

Darabase has launched its global property inventory platform for augmented reality (AR) advertising campaigns, darabase.io.

The platform enables property owners to register their Property's Digital Rights (PDRs), set rules about what digital content can be displayed in their locations, and receive an additional income stream from AR advertising in the real world. It also sees the introduction of a marketplace for PDRs.

With an estimated 1.4 billion AR-enabled devices...

13 November 2023 | Advertising

Amazon Ads unveils AdTech capabilities to improve advertiser outcomes

Amazon Ads has announced a host of new capabilities across campaign planning, activation and measurement that give advertisers more control over the audiences they reach and faster, more actionable insights into ad performance.

Kelly MacLean, VP of Amazon DSP, said: “Advertisers tell us demonstrating the impact of their marketing is their biggest challenge, and that they are still having difficulty measuring performance across the customer journey. They need more actionable...

8 November 2023 | Advertising

Customer adoption of Amperity for paid media soars to over 50%

Amperity, an AI-powered enterprise customer data platform (CDP) for consumer brands, has announced more than 50% of its customer base has adopted Amperity for Paid Media.

The rapid adoption of this new application of Amperity demonstrates the important role first-party data will play in informing paid media strategies.

Since its launch in May 2023, Amperity for Paid Media has used industry-leading ad connectors and first-party data to deliver more than 11 billion...

1 November 2023 | Advertising

91% of shoppers won’t purchase from brands who serve ‘intrusive’ ads

Adverts and bright signs in Times Square, New York.

Intrusive ads that disrupt consumers’ browsing experiences or shopping journeys risk lower engagement and, crucially, lost conversion and sales opportunities, according to research from Wunderkind, a performance marketing channel that scales one-to-one messages for retailers and brands.

Research of 1,000 digitally-active shoppers in Wunderkind’s latest ‘Kindness in Advertising’ report showed that 70% believe advertisers don’t respect their digital...

30 October 2023 | Advertising

Digital marketing skills show positive growth but sector demands outpace professional development 

Core digital skills marketers rely on have improved but that the growing demands of new and evolving technologies are contributing to a skills gap across the majority of industries. 

This is according to research published by the training body Target Internet, in association with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

This year’s report analyses data from more than 10,000 marketing professionals, gathered between 2018 to 2023 and highlights key short and...

24 October 2023 | Advertising