The U.S. Presidential Election has, in many ways, been digital. Spend on digital ads in the race reached $2.9 billion in 2020. This was up sharply from $0.4 billion four years ago, marking the continuing prominence of digital political campaigning since President Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe heralded the channel as a deciding factor in the election 12 years ago.
However, an increasing challenge for this online ad spend has been ad fraud. In a new study, in association with the University of Baltimore, we see that marketers will $35 billion to digital ad fraud in 2020.
Ad fraud is the practice of fraudulently representing online advertising impressions, clicks, conversion or data events in order to generate revenue. In the case of the political campaigns, often money is spent reaching bots rather than voters.
