Poor-Quality Ads Cost Marketers $7.4 Billion Last Year, Forrester Says

Ad fraud and non-viewable ads are main problem areas for the digital ad industry, resulting in wasted time, effort, and money, according to new research released by Forrester.

The research quantifies advertising problems with data on the types of advertising that cause the most problems, and it predicts the ways Forrester sees them evolving over the next five years.

Forrester forecasts that advertisers are wasting billions by underestimating true costs, determining that as much as 56 percent of all display ad dollars were lost to fraudulent or unviewable inventory in 2016.

According to Forrester’s forecast, that means upwards of $7.4 billion was wasted on display ads alone. What’s more, the analysts estimate that this number will grow to $10.9 billion by 2021 if no steps are taken to address this problem.

Forrester data also reveals that video and programmatic are main causes of ad fraud spending wastage: While video accounts for 44.7 percent of spending, it’s responsible for 63.8 percent of ad fraud. Programmatic video is a particular problem area, as Forrester data estimates that it accounts for 66.5 percent more fraud than direct video.

(For more information visit https://www.forrester.com).