Ad fraud continues to be one of the most pressing challenges in digital advertising as it steals marketing budgets by bots clicking ads and faking impressions. This fraud literally drains money and reduces trust between advertisers, agencies, and publishers.

The scale of ad fraud has grown dramatically in recent years. According to a study between Fraud Blocker and Juniper Research, the cost of digital advertising fraud globally was almost $100 billion in 2024 and is predicted to reach $172 billion by 2028. Digital ad fraud aims to take advantage of this high spending. Ad fraud is also attractive to fraudsters as it has a high pay out with low risk. Not to mention they can do it from the comfort of their home.

Advertisers and publishers are paying a lot of money for legitimate search traffic, while competing against others paying much less for bot traffic. Most marketing tools can’t tell the difference between real and fake traffic. Now bots can mimic human behavior very easily and can create millions of fake ad impressions. Ultimately, anyone buying ads at scale is being affected by ad fraud.

The Scale of Ad Fraud

Global losses from ad fraud has been increasing year on year. The lesson is clear: fraudsters are getting better. According to Pixalate, last year in the U.S., nearly 1 in 5 ad impressions were invalid. The breakdown was 24% in mobile apps, 21% in web, and 18% in Connected TV (CTV).

The continuous rise of digital ad fraud is driven by evolving fraud techniques. AI can now help create extremely realistic fake ad content, like endorsements that mislead consumers and damage brand credibility. AI-powered bots can mimic human behavior, making them harder to identify while skewing campaign analytics. For example, bots can fill out form submissions on websites which gives companies a lot of invalid leads that waste valuable employee time and company money — with no conversions in sight.

The Industry Fights Back

Initiatives like the U.S. body, TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) certification, and Ireland and the U.K.’s Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) contribute to protecting the industry greatly. Last year, TAG created an Ad Fraud Savings Report. for the first time. It highlights how the advertising industry’s anti-fraud efforts saved the U.S. ad industry $10.8 billion in 2023. This significant incentive reduced losses to IVT by a remarkable 92%.

Although these cross-industry efforts are trying to combat fraud, fraudsters evolve quickly and the challenge is staying one step ahead. That’s why device intelligence is becoming a crucial part of reducing advertising fraud.

How is DeviceAtlas Used by the Advertising Industry?

Fraudsters constantly evolve tactics. Basic checks that once caught simple bots now fall short against advanced schemes such as mobile app spoofing or CTV fraud. This is where accurately detecting devices makes a difference.

DeviceAtlas’s device intelligence solution can also help identify known bot traffic, enabling these clicks and visits to be treated differently to that of a real, human user. This contributes to a tighter buyer/seller relationship, and less waste of budget — essential for both sides.

Assuring your partners and customers that you can identify bots reliably and avoid serving ads to them is an important trust message. Having an up-to-date, accurate database on bots, and the ability to identify them in real time, gives your platform a technical and competitive advantage.

DeviceAssure offers an extra layer of protection against fraud as it identifies both self-declared and non-declared bots. Instead of treating all traffic equally, advertisers can use this information to spot patterns that don’t match real human behavior, flag suspicious or impossible device/browser combinations, and adjust targeting or reporting to reflect only genuine audiences.

How Device Intelligence Reduces Ad Fraud

Both DeviceAtlas and DeviceAssure are powerful solutions to combat ad fraud. They help businesses gain a deeper understanding of bot traffic and:

1. Identify bots and emulators

Numerous bots masquerade as legitimate browsers or devices. Device intelligence can reveal inconsistencies, e.g. a mobile user with a desktop-only OS or an emulator sending impossible combinations of device capabilities.

2. Detect click farms

Click farms often use low-end devices in bulk. Device intelligence reveals clusters of identical devices generating repetitive traffic. This helps separate human engagement from fake clicks.

3. Defend against spoofed-traffic

Fraudsters spoof high-value devices (like premium smartphones or smart TVs) to command higher CPMs (Cost Per Mille). With accurate device data, advertisers can prevent spoofed traffic from entering their marketing campaigns.

4. Improve RTB integrity

In programmatic advertising, every millisecond counts. Device intelligence ensures bids are based on genuine device properties, reducing the chance of paying for fake impressions.

5. Enhance analytics & reporting

By filtering out invalid traffic, advertisers can get more precise data. That leads to more accurate conversion rates, ROI calculations, and target audience insights.

Device Intelligence in Action

The Trade Desk, an omnichannel Ad platform, gets bidding traffic from a wide range of supply vendors and publishers which means they get data in a variety of formats. This makes it difficult to reliably identify different devices and normalize device data across various sources.

By partnering with DeviceAtlas, The Trade Desk can verify mobile and OTT devices of incoming bid requests which reaches 15M queries per second. This allows them to accurately target and report on users’ device environments and help advertisers buy the right ID match. Overall, DeviceAtlas’ rich device data helps advertisers understand their advertising traffic better across many devices. You can read our case study here.

Bottom Line

Ad fraud techniques are only getting more sophisticated but with a device intelligence solution, advertisers stand a better chance. By filtering bots, flagging spoofed devices, and ensuring campaigns reach actual people, device intelligence can help protect billions of ad spend worldwide.