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That milestone we all had been watching for, when digital media ad spend would finally surpass TV in Canada, arrived early this fall when IAB revealed that their number was $3.5 billion vs. TV’s $3.4 billion. Never mind that online video ad spend, estimated at a mere $140 million, would be a more appropriate comparison. But I digress.

The point is that advertisers are diverting lots of bucks to digital these days and that stream will only get larger. Already the IAB estimates that their $3.5 billion will grow by a whopping 14% next year. I’ll do the math for you: that means that next year advertisers will spend over $4 billion on digital media. That’s a ton of pixels we’re investing in.

Well, that’s what we do, right? We follow consumer eyeballs, and those potential customers are spending a lot more time on the internet. And besides, isn’t it supposed to be the most measurable ad medium? The best one-on-one targeting? The very future of advertising?

Well, I’ve got to say, if so – then the future looks very murky. A recently released U.S. study showed that 23 percent of video ads and 11 percent of display ads were in fact non-human ‘bots.’ Also interesting to note, the authors of the study caution that bot activity is most likely under-reported due to the study’s existence being publically announced prior to start, putting bot traffickers on high alert. To be sure, fraud is more prevalent in RTB and programmatic buys. However, not to put too fine a point on it, but if there is similar non-human bot traffic in Canada, which would mean that roughly $165 million of your digital ad dollars are going to entities that are not entitled to receive it. And we’re just talking about non-human bot traffic now – not counting the numerous other ways that online fraudsters have devised to steal your money. Whitelists and blacklists have proven to be very temporary actions, and domain ‘spoofing’ – where dubious sites can be rigged to look like trusted sights – has grown substantially. In Q3 2014 the number of new fraud domains identified was up to 3,160. Google’s own recent study indicated that a full 50% of online ads were not seen by consumers.

It’s all very murky and it can’t go on. ACA has brought together representatives from the IAB and CMDC in a cross-industry task force to explore solutions. The path to success may be in moving beyond domains into focusing on payee/seller transparency and leading to seller certification. That work will continue throughout 2015 but for now awareness of best practices will be our focus.

For more information on the new task force, please contact Bob Reaume, ACA’s Vice-President, Research & Policy.