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Bot Fraud Plaguing Auto Branding Industry

Digital advertising company Solve Media reports that car companies will be spending at least $500 million on online advertisements in the United States this year which no one will ever see.

The report looked at fraudulent web traffic by which tracking thousands of web sites which are solely about cars and other vehicles. Solve Media found that during the first quarter of 2014 22 percent of views reported on those sites were not from human web traffic, but rather from robots pretending to be flesh and blood prospective car consumers.

Making the assumption that other sites on which car brands put ads are equally visited by fraudulent traffic as well Solve Media was able to calculate that car manufacturers would waste about $541 million on ads that human eyes do not see. According to eMarketer the auto industry will spend about $2.5 billion on digital branding in the US.

“Bot fraud, and ad fraud at large, follows the dollars,” said Ari Jacoby, Solve Media CEO and co-founder. “If you look at the different verticals of interest across the online and mobile advertising landscape, automotive looms large.”

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