Singapore – Digital advertising in travel in the Asia-Pacific region is seen to incur a loss of US$56b in ad fraud amidst the ongoing rollouts by national governments to resume travel, new research from digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform Trafficguard alongside Juniper Research.
The research reveals that bots make up to 80% of all invalid traffic for travel advertisers, a stark contrast to the 15% to 30% affecting other industries. A host of factors could be attributed to this phenomenon, including the loophole in the travel industry, where it has a proliferation of third party online travel agencies (OTA’s), some of which are authorised and some are not.
As airline websites and travel apps (OTA’s) are home to a host of data such as flight, pricing, booking, and discounts, bad bots can result in higher fees for OTA’s, as they make it appear as though far more people are viewing than booking flights.
Mat Ratty, CEO at Trafficguard, said, “Where there is money to be made, there will be fraudsters. This is prevalent across all digital channels. What we do know is that the online travel market and airline categories are hugely competitive. As such, a lot of budget is spent on searches which have expensive PPC keywords.”
He added, “There’s also a lot of programmatic campaigns with tailored messaging to consumers who have shown an interest in a particular airline or destination. These channels are rife with ad fraud.”
Many travel companies will spend huge sums of money to drive consumers to download their travel applications. They will often use pay per install performance networks that are paid for each installation they drive. According to the analysis, performance networks that are being paid to drive these installations are delivering upwards of 50% invalid traffic on average, resulting in many fraudulent installations and misattribution of post install events such as flight and hotel bookings.
Matt Sutton, chief revenue officer at Trafficguard, commented, “Bearing the brunt of this will be the advertisers who are paying for traffic that will never generate any value. As time passes, ad fraud tactics will also be elevated, and it is imperative for advertisers, airlines, and OTA’s to be aware of the prevalence of ad fraud in this sector.”
He added, “Large sums of money is lost to digital ad fraud yearly, with the amount increasing each passing year. Having a proper system in place will allow you to save your ad spend, and make sure that your advertisements reach the right audiences.”
