Advertising is a big part of growing your business, especially with more businesses competing to stand out online. Plenty of legitimate advertising tools and partners help you get the most out of your online advertising budget and efforts. Unfortunately, many scammers are just waiting to take advantage of businesses with empty promises, fake stats and shady tactics.
Falling for one of these schemes doesn’t just hurt your wallet. It can also damage your reputation and shake the trust of your customers. The good news? Protecting yourself from advertising scams isn’t as hard as it might seem!
• What Is Advertising Fraud?
• The Devastating Impact of Advertising Fraud on Your Business
• Recognize These Common Advertising Scams
• 8 Red Flags To Identify Scam Advertisers
• Fraud Prevention: How To Protect Your Business From Advertising Scams
What Is Advertising Fraud?
Advertising fraud, also known as ad fraud or advertising scam, happens when malicious actors deceive businesses or manipulate advertising platforms for personal gain.
Many business owners seek the assistance of digital marketing service providers to run online ads effectively. Unfortunately, many of these providers are scammers. Instead of delivering genuine results — such as clicks, impressions or conversions — they can fabricate activity, misrepresent their services or exploit loopholes in ad systems.
Ad fraud can appear in various forms, from digital ads on social media to pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Understanding the tactics used by scammers is the first step toward protecting your business through ad fraud detection.
The Devastating Impact of Advertising Fraud on Your Business
Ad fraud can potentially drain your budget and disrupt your entire marketing strategy. This can lead to wasted resources, missed opportunities and frustration as your team chases results that aren’t actually there. Here are some of the biggest ways ad fraud can impact your business:
Financial Losses
Businesses in the U.S. lost an estimated $65 billion in 2021 due to digital ad fraud, and it’s expected to rise to $100 billion in 2024. When fraudsters steal your ad spend, you’re essentially paying for activity that doesn’t translate into actual business growth. These losses can pile up quickly, especially if you’re running large-scale campaigns.
Distorted Performance Metrics
Fake engagement, inflated impressions and bot-generated traffic make it nearly impossible to determine which strategies are working and how much traffic or engagement can produce results that matter to your bottom line. This false data can lead you to invest in ineffective campaigns while neglecting areas with real potential.
Damaged ROI
Your return on investment (ROI) suffers when fraudulent activity consumes your ad spend. This can make it look like your marketing isn’t delivering results, even if your strategy is sound, which may drive you to increase your budget in what is actually a scam. Over time, this can lead to a lack of confidence in your efforts and possibly budget cuts that stifle your growth.
Missed Target Audiences
Every fake click or bot-driven impression represents a missed opportunity to connect with a real person. Ad fraud prevents your campaigns from reaching your intended audience, robbing you of the chance to engage potential customers and build relationships that lead to sales.
Erosion of Trust
If customers or stakeholders discover fraudulent activity associated with your campaigns, it can damage your reputation. They can assume that you intentionally pay for bots to boost your engagement, which can feel deceptive. Repairing your online reputation after a credibility hit can take significant time and effort.
Wasted Time and Resources
Fighting ad fraud after it occurs often means time-consuming audits, investigations and recovery efforts. Meanwhile, your marketing team is left frustrated and distracted from focusing on creative, strategic work that drives real results.
Recognize These Common Advertising Scams
Understanding how advertising scams operate can help with ad fraud detection. Here are some of the most common advertising scams and how they can impact your campaigns:
Click Fraud
Click fraud happens when scammers generate fake clicks on your ads. The goal is to exhaust your ad budget without delivering any real customer engagement. Strong click fraud prevention strategies ensure you aren’t spending on clicks that don’t result in lead generation or conversions.
For example, if you are running a Google Ads campaign targeting specific product keywords, your competitors may repeatedly click on the store’s ads to deplete their daily budget. This ensures their own ads appear higher in search results.
Fake Traffic
Fake traffic involves directing bots or automated systems to your website to simulate user visits. This artificially inflates site analytics and misleads advertisers about the effectiveness of their campaigns.
One example is when a company purchases traffic from a third-party service promising to increase website visits. While their analytics show a sudden spike in visitors, closer analysis reveals the majority of the traffic comes from countries outside their target market. Aside from inflated metrics, low engagement and high bounce rates can impact search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.
Conversion Fraud
Conversions are what turn website traffic closer to becoming paying customers. By using bots or fake accounts, conversion fraud fakes desirable outcomes like form submissions, downloads or purchases. These lead advertisers to believe their campaigns are effective.
For example, a business paying for lead generation may notice a spike in form submissions but struggle to contact any leads. They later discovered that the submissions were generated by bots, not real potential customers.
Bot Traffic
Bot traffic involves automated systems to mimic human actions, such as clicking on ads or visiting websites. This creates the illusion of activity but doesn’t result in genuine engagement or sales.
If a retailer notices unusually high traffic during a promotional campaign, but no visitors add items to their cart or spend more than a few seconds on the site, it could be bot traffic. They can later trace back traffic to bot activity rather than real users.
Misleading PPC Services
Fraudulent PPC agencies or services promise exceptional results but use unethical methods, such as inflating metrics with fake traffic or charging for non-existent clicks. The numbers may look impressive, but they don’t give businesses the conversion results they need.
For example, if a local business hires a PPC agency that guarantees top placement on search engines. While the agency provides impressive reports, the business receives no tangible leads or sales. Upon closer inspection, the scam ad receives clicks from irrelevant audiences and automated systems.
8 Red Flags To Identify Scam Advertisers
Not all advertisers or agencies have your best interests in mind. Scam ad tactics often lure businesses into spending money on ineffective or fraudulent campaigns. Here are some key red flags to watch out for when dealing with potential advertisers or agencies:
1. Unrealistic Guarantees
Scammers often make promises that sound too good to be true, such as guaranteed top rankings, overnight success or exponential ROI with minimal investment. In legitimate advertising, results depend on variables that cannot be fully guaranteed. While PPC ads might boost visibility quickly, organic rankings and meaningful ROI take time and effort.
2. High-Pressure Tactics
Scam advertisers frequently use high-pressure sales tactics to force quick decisions. Legitimate advertisers allow time for consideration and provide clear, detailed proposals. If a representative pressures you into signing anything without giving it proper consideration, it’s likely a red flag designed to push you into making hasty decisions without proper research.
3. Lack of Transparency
A lack of openness about pricing, methods or results is a major warning sign. Scam advertisers may provide vague details about how they’ll achieve results, refuse to share campaign reports or avoid disclosing where their ads will be placed. Your advertiser should be transparent about their platforms and tools and walk you through their process.
4. No Verifiable Track Record
Scam advertisers often lack evidence of successful campaigns, client testimonials or case studies. They might avoid sharing references or display reviews that appear generic, overly positive or fabricated. Check their website and platforms like Google Business Reviews to see whether their reviews are from legitimate sources.
5. Overly Low Pricing
While cost efficiency is important, extremely low pricing is a red flag. Scam advertisers may offer cut-rate services that seem like a bargain but deliver little to no results. High-quality advertising requires a reasonable investment in tools, talent and ad spend. When looking for advertising services, shop around to gauge average prices from various sources.
6. Vague Reporting and Metrics
Legitimate advertisers provide clear, detailed reports showing campaign performance. Scammers often avoid sharing data or use vague, inflated metrics to mask poor performance. When asked for campaign results, scammers may promise thousands of clicks but can’t explain whether those clicks led to meaningful engagement or sales.
7. Promoting Black-Hat Tactics
Scammers may suggest unethical or “black-hat” strategies that violate advertising platform policies, such as click spamming, fake reviews or keyword stuffing. While these methods might produce short-term results, they can lead to penalties, account suspensions and long-term damage to your brand.
8. Poor Communication
Scam advertisers often fail to provide consistent or professional communication. If they avoid answering your questions, provide incomplete information or are difficult to reach, it’s a sign they may not have your business’s best interests at heart. After signing a contract, you may struggle to get updates from the advertiser and emails may go unanswered for weeks at a time.
Fraud Prevention: How To Protect Your Business From Advertising Scams
Ad scams can wreak havoc on your marketing budget, but with proactive steps and a strategic approach, you can significantly reduce your risk.
Step 1. Verify Ad Vendors and Platforms
Fraudulent companies often create professional-looking websites and portfolios to appear legitimate. When browsing for advertisers, it’s important to look beyond their website’s content. To verify their authenticity, you should also look at:
• Online Reviews: Check Google Business Reviews, Yelp and other platforms where clients can review and rate their experience. Keep in mind that some scammers create fake reviews, so check if reviews are balanced or if reviews tend to have a similar voice or use repetitive terms.
• Business Registration: Check their business registration, physical address and contact details.
• Case Studies and References: Ask for case studies or references from previous clients to confirm their track record. You can reach out to their previous clients to ask about their experience.
• Platform Verification: Established and reputable ad platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Ads can help you verify advertisers.
Step 2. Utilize Protective Technologies
Technology can be a powerful ally in click fraud prevention and other tactics and ensuring transparency. By integrating tools that monitor campaign activity, you can detect and block suspicious behavior before it drains your budget. We recommend investing in the following tools:
• Ad Verification Software: Tools like DoubleVerify and MOAT help validate ad placements and ensure ads are being delivered to real audiences.
• Fraud Detection Platforms: Solutions like Fraudlogix or Integral Ad Science identify fake clicks, bot traffic and impression fraud.
• Analytics Tools: Regularly track your campaigns with tools like Google Analytics to spot unusual patterns in traffic or performance.
Step 3. Establish Internal Security Policies
Internal safeguards can help prevent ad scams by ensuring your team follows best practices and minimizes risks. Following these practices can help you avoid falling for advertising scams:
• Verify Trusted Vendors: Work only with trusted vendors and verify their credentials before signing any contracts. Do your research or ask your trusted network for recommendations.
• Create an Approval Process: Implement a clear approval process for ad budgets, ensuring every campaign is tracked and monitored.
• Spread Awareness: Educate your team about common advertising scams so they know what to look for.
Step 4. Conduct Regular Campaign Audits
Frequent audits help ensure your ad spend aligns with your business goals and is not being wasted on fraudulent activity. When auditing your campaigns, you should:
• Audit your conversions, clicks and impressions against your expected metrics.
• Investigate unusual spikes in traffic or engagement that don’t align with campaign performance.
• Monitor the geographic origin of your traffic — suspicious sources could indicate bot activity.
Step 5. Limit Ad Placement on Low-Quality Sites
Low-quality or irrelevant websites are a common breeding ground for ad fraud. Avoid broad ad placements and focus on targeting reputable sites or platforms where your audience is most active.
• Use ad platforms that provide transparency into where your ads will appear.
• Instead of blacklisting bad websites, opt for whitelisting specific trusted sites instead.
• Regularly review the list of sites where your ads are displayed to weed out low-performing or suspicious domains.
Step 6. Insist on Detailed Reporting
Scam advertisers often provide vague or inflated reports to mask fraudulent activity. Insist on detailed, transparent reporting for every campaign you run. Avoid working with advertisers who make it difficult to access these:
• Breakdown of impressions, clicks and conversions by platform, audience and geography.
• Details on ad placement, including the domains where your ads appeared.
• Evidence of ROI, including actual leads or sales generated by the campaign.
Partner With Thrive Internet Marketing Agency for Ads That Drive Results
Ad fraud is a frustrating reality in today’s marketing world. However, with the right knowledge in mind when searching for partners to optimize your ad budget, you can stay one step ahead of the scammers. Recognize the warning signs, implement fraud prevention strategies and partner with trustworthy experts to ensure your advertising dollars work hard to grow your business.
When in doubt, choose an experienced and established digital marketing agency like Thrive Internet Marketing Agency. Since 2005, we have helped many businesses while prioritizing transparency and accountability for our clients’ peace of mind. Need help navigating the world of digital advertising? Our team can guide you to maximize your marketing budget for results that drive your growth.
Contact us today for a free consultation, and let’s build an ad campaign that works for you!
