<story><title>Publishers Bought Millions of Website Visits They Found Out Were Fraudulent</title><url>https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/these-publishers-bought-millions-of-website-visits-they</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reustle</author><text>&amp;gt; An estimated $16 billion will be lost to ad fraud this year, and a significant portion of that will go to criminals who use bots and other nefarious means to siphon money out of the digital ad ecosystem.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a mind bogglingly big number, if true. I don&amp;#x27;t really find myself feeling sorry for advertisers, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ghostbrainalpha</author><text>You shouldn&amp;#x27;t feel bad for the advertisers, but you should be worried about the content producers you love who provide you free content based on advertisements.&lt;p&gt;If true fraud levels were exposed it could shift the digital economy in a massive way.&lt;p&gt;Say you have an unpopular dishwasher and it breaks.  It&amp;#x27;s great to go to Youtube and find someone showing you how to fix the problem even for a relatively niche dishwasher.  But if the ad money dries up for that content producer, that video won&amp;#x27;t be there the next time you look for it.&lt;p&gt;Or you will be forced to pay $1.00 to watch it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Publishers Bought Millions of Website Visits They Found Out Were Fraudulent</title><url>https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/these-publishers-bought-millions-of-website-visits-they</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>reustle</author><text>&amp;gt; An estimated $16 billion will be lost to ad fraud this year, and a significant portion of that will go to criminals who use bots and other nefarious means to siphon money out of the digital ad ecosystem.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a mind bogglingly big number, if true. I don&amp;#x27;t really find myself feeling sorry for advertisers, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LeifCarrotson</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not that large a number.  All of advertising is a $500-$800 billion business depending on where you get the numbers, so that represents 2.5% lost to fraud.&lt;p&gt;That is believable to me.  Larger than fraud in a lot of markets, but not particularly large, and everyone knows the market is full of bots, bad stats, and scams.</text></comment>