$84 billion of ad spend lost due to ad fraud in 2023

This figure is expected to rise to $172 billion by 2028, according to Juniper Research.

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Ad fraud will cost marketers $84 billion this year – 22% of all online ad spend.

This figure is expected to soar to $170 billion in five years’ time in 2028, according to a new in-depth study from Juniper Research.

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Why we care. Ad fraud could be costing your brand money, hurting campaign results, leaving you with fewer genuine leads and poor advertising ROI. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile exploring fraud-blocking technology or reallocating some of your ad budget to your SEO strategy.

Key findings. Juniper’s study analyzed digital advertising in 45 countries across 8 regions, using a dataset of over 78,700 data points from 2019 to 2028. The research found that:

  • 22% of all online ad spend is lost due to ad fraud in 2023.
  • 30% of mobile ad spend is lost to ad fraud in 2023.
  • $172 Billion of ad spend is projected to be lost due to ad fraud by 2028.
  • $23 Billion per year can be recovered by using fraud mitigation platforms.

Solution. Fraud detection technology, such as Fraud Blocker, can detect and identify fraudulent or invalid traffic, impressions, clicks, or conversions on ads, helping to protect your campaign performance and ad budget.

What has Juniper Research said? Senior Research Analyst from Juniper Research, Elisha Sudlow-Poole, said in a statement:

  • “Data provided by popular ad platforms, such as Facebook and Google, provide an incomplete picture of the success of advertising campaigns.”
  • “That is, these platforms give an optimistic view of campaign efficiency, failing to distinguish between how many clicks or views originated from legitimate users compared to click farms or fraudulent bots.”

Deep dive. Download the full report by Juniper Research for more information.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Nicola Agius
Contributor
Nicola Agius was Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land from 2023-2024. She covered paid media, retail media and more. Prior to this, she was SEO Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company's editorial strategy for multiple websites. She has over 15 years of experience in journalism and has previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). She also previously teamed up with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling book Mastering In-House SEO.

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