Tuesday’s news that the FBI busted cybercriminals for using 1.7 million infected PC’s, 5,000 counterfeit websites and 60,000 digital advertising accounts to get paid for face digital ad placements highlights the prevalence of digital ad fraud.  Craig Silverman, Buzzfeed’s Media Editor did a Digiday podcast interview on ad fraud this week and his quotes are shocking:

On the digital online ecosystem

Let me say as just a top level thing, since spending about a year and a half investigating ad fraud, I’ve never been lied to by more people in my career than since I’ve been talking to people involved with digital advertising.

On digital ad fraud versus out of home advertising.

This isn’t waste.  This is theft.  This is criminals stealing money.  This is not like you bought a billboard and nobody saw it or you bought a billboard and the message was really ineffective…You actually got something for it.  This is, you paid, and the people you think you show’d it to were bots or you paid and it was shown in an environment which was completely not what you thought it was.

Insider’s take:  Sounds like the OAAA’s Feel The Real and Get Out of Home messaging is getting across.  Digital ad fraud is as much a problem today as ever.  Make sure your clients know this.

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