Ad fraud is no joke. Per Juniper Research, $84 billion in digital ad spend was lost to fraud last year alone, specifically on artificial clicks. That translates to roughly 12% of all digital ad spend in 2024.
While these huge numbers can be intimidating, their impact on your ad budget can be even worse. When you’re running ad campaigns, you need to be able to squeeze value from every dollar you spend. You can’t afford to throw $1.20 out of every $10 you spend at clickbots.
So what’s the solution? How do you dodge an industry-wide problem that measures its impact in billions of dollars?
There’s a simple answer: choose the right technology partners.
How GroundTruth Ads Manager Prevents Ad Fraud
When you invest ad dollars, you should expect that your media partners are doing everything in their power to guarantee that they’re reaching real people. That’s why we built a robust, multi-layered fraud prevention strategy directly into GroundTruth Ads Manager. By ensuring the integrity of our advertising ecosystem, we protect your ad spend from fraudulent activity.
Our fraud prevention strategy is built by combining 3 core pillars: industry-leading technology, continuous monitoring, and a collaborative approach with our partners.
1. Industry-Leading Technology: Our Proactive, Multi-Partner Defense
- Pre- and Post-Bid Blocking: We use DoubleVerify, a leading media quality solution, as our primary fraud prevention partner. Before any bidding occurs on an ad request then again after bidding occurs, DoubleVerify’s technology analyzes it for fraudulent activity based on a constantly updated blocklist. By identifying fraudulent impressions preemptively then verifying again after the bid, we can ensure potential ad fraud is eliminated before it even hits our system and be certain nothing slips through the cracks after. DoubleVerify’s blocklist is updated every 15 minutes, allowing us to respond quickly to new and evolving threats.
- Reputable Partner Network: Our commitment to quality extends to our partners. We work exclusively with reputable supply-side platforms (SSPs), each with their own established fraud prevention tools that provide additional layers of proactive fraud defense. Our partners utilize industry-leading vendors, such as HUMAN, Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify, and others, to filter out fraudulent traffic before it even reaches us.
2. Rigorous Monitoring and Quality Control
- Daily Monitoring: Our Media Supply team continuously monitors fraud metrics across all our SSP partners on a daily basis. We track both General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) to identify any unusual trends or activity.
- General Invalid Traffic (GIVT): GIVT includes standardized, industry-wide lists of known bots, spiders, and non-human browsers, as defined by organizations like the IAB.
- Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT): SIVT refers to more advanced forms of fraud, such as site fraud, botnets, non-human data center traffic, and injected ads.
- Threshold Benchmarks: We hold our ad placement inventory to strict quality standards that align with industry benchmarks. Our internal thresholds are set to maintain SIVT below 5% and GIVT below 3% to ensure media quality and campaign integrity.
- Partner Feedback Loop: If any of our partner’s SIVT or GIVT rates exceed our benchmarks, we take immediate action. We initiate outreach to highlight the issue and recommend blocking specific app bundles, domains, or sub-sources that are driving the elevated fraud. This collaborative approach ensures minimal invalid traffic levels while also maintaining long-term inventory quality for our advertisers.
3. Advanced Post-Impression and Click Analysis
- Post-Bid Monitoring: After an impression is served, our Media Supply team closely monitors activity to identify any patterns or trends that indicate fraudulent activity.
- Click Attribution Model (CAM): Immediately following post-bid monitoring, our Data Sciences team uses a proprietary Click Attribution Model (CAM) to evaluate the quality of every click. This model helps us identify and filter out any fraudulent clicks.
- Viewability Filters: All GroundTruth customers have the option to apply viewability filters, also powered by DoubleVerify, to their campaigns. This ensures that you only pay for ads that are deemed viewable according to industry standards.
- CTV Inventory Validation: GroundTruth is partnered with 42 Matters, a top CTV intelligence platform, to validate all our Connected TV (CTV) inventory, ensuring we only provide high-quality, legitimate CTV ad placements.
At the end of the day, you need performance from your ad spend. You need to be able to trust that your campaign budget is delivering your ads to real people. With GroundTruth, you can trust that your ad dollars are actually at work with your target audience. That’s how you can start driving real business results.
Ready to get started? Create your GroundTruth Ads Manager account today, and start exploring our platform (no minimum spend required). And, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
