The more tech savvy India is becoming, the more it is costing for digital advertisers. According to a report by market research firm techARC, the total size of digital ad-fraud in India stood at staggering USD 1.63 billion, which is 8.7 pc of the global size. The report titled “India digital ad-fraud market” said, digital commerce contributed to more than half (51 pc) of the total ad-fraud in India, followed by leisure and travel at 26 pc; entertainment and gaming at 13 pc; banking and finance at 8 pc; healthcare and pharma at 1 pc. Pegged at USD 8.76 billion in 2018, the Indian advertising market is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 10.62 pc till 2021, to reach a market size of USD 12.06 billion.
Digital advertising is set to grow at 31.96 pc CAGR, with the market set to expand to USD 3.52 billion, according to the Dentsu Aegis Network Digital Report 2019. As of 2018, the size of the digital advertising market was around USD 1.3 billion and is expected to contribute 29 pc of the ad market size by 2021. If one takes a look at the global business, digital advertising in 2018 topped out at around USD 111.14 billion and by 2019 it will account for 55 pc of all media ad spend. Out of this, 13 pc of all money spent on digital ads was vacuumed up by fraudulent websites and bots in 2018. With the growing popularity of videos, they are becoming increasingly the preferred medium of content, while attracting fraudsters to explore sophisticated fraud techniques to earn more on the premium advertising channel.
This is increasingly putting the brands at harm for brand safety as well as relevance, noted the report. It estimates the ad frauds to grow at 23 pc in 2019 due to the “sophisticated techniques being employed by fraudsters attracting higher payouts”. As per a recent report by EY, advertisers in India have already shifted spends to digital, which contributed to 17 pc to the total advertising budget in 2017. This is expected to grow to 22 pc by 2020. Nearly 734,000 publishers and app developers were terminated from the Google ad network and ads were completely removed from nearly 1.5 million apps and nearly 28 million pages that violated the publisher policies, the company said in a statement.
IndiGo airlines in mid-2018 ran counter-campaigns on social media when fake ads promoted job vacancies and free tickets. Google has said that they have introduced 31 new ads policies to address areas such as third-party tech support, ticket resellers, cryptocurrency, as well as local services such as garage door repairmen, bail bonds and rehab facilities. The tech giant said it will also soon roll out a new Policy Manager in Google Ads that will provide tips to advertisers on common policy mistakes and make it easier to create and launch compliant ads.
