How Attorneys Can Avoid the Dangers of Digital Ad Fraud

As an attorney always looking for new ways to advertise your legal services, digital advertising can seem like an effective way to get in front of potential clients. Yet what might surprise you is that digital ads often hide a world of fraudulent activities.

To understand why, let’s first look at how digital ads work.

In most instances, you pay each time someone sees or clicks your ad. You also pay for ad tech vendors and traffic brokers who help facilitate ad networks, exchanges and other processes. This seems fair enough.

However, with digital ads, malware can be used to create fake clicks, which drives up your costs. In some cases, people also repeatedly click ads to generate revenue for an advertiser or hurt a competitor.

In either situation, these are not rare occurrences. An Interactive Advertising Bureau study found that as much as $1 of every $3 spent on digital advertising is lost to fraud. Around 14% of paid search and social spend is also invalid, primarily driven by click fraud.

Unfortunately, the problem keeps growing, with many ad companies considering ad fraud a cost of doing business. In 2018, according to Jupiter Research, $44 million in ad money was lost per day to fraudulent traffic in North America. By 2023, this number is expected to exceed $100 million.

Here are the ways digital ad fraud happens:

• Fake clicks: By far, this is the most common form of ad fraud. It involves creating fake traffic through a link, either from an automated click platform or via click farms. This can leave you with a drained ad budget and few (if any) leads to show for it.
• Pixel stuffing: This is where an ad is hidden in pixels on a webpage, rendering it invisible to visitors. The problem is, you still end up paying for impressions.
• Ad stacking: This happens when ads are stacked on top of one another. So your ad gets impressions, but potential clients never see it.
• Domain spoofing: With this phishing scam, a low-quality publisher pretends to be a premium publisher. They then increase the value of ad impressions, while never connecting you with your target market.

Preventing these issues is tough, especially because scammers are increasingly drawn to ad fraud as an easy revenue source. For them, a legitimate click is worth the same as a fraudulent one.

Of course, you can sift through your ad data, reviewing metrics such as viewability and invalid traffic levels, to find fraud. You can also stick to certain platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, or remarketing campaigns where your ads only show to people who visited your website. There are also plenty of anti-fraud tools you can purchase.

Yet even if you take these steps, ad fraud is still a possibility. This is why TV advertising is a more reliable investment. Plus, with our pay-per-lead model, you only pay when potential clients call your law office.

You don’t have to worry about the costs of producing a commercial or buying airtime either. You simply pay for the number of leads you need. We take care of everything else.

So why worry about fake clicks and impressions when you can know exactly where you’re investing your advertising dollar. Contact us today and we’ll let you know what TV advertising opportunities are available in your market.