New Delhi, Nov 16 (IANS): Global digital brand safety and prevention platform mFilterIt on Tuesday unveiled a set of myths surrounding advertising fraud and brand safety to raise awareness and accelerate efforts to reduce the impact of fraud.

The International Fraud Awareness Week is observed every year between November 14 and 21, to promote anti-fraud awareness and education.

In India, the overall share of digital advertising stands around 30 per cent but it's expected to grow 25 per cent annually against a global average of 9 per cent. This also means that ad fraud is anticipated to climb from the current average of 25-35 per cent to 45-55 per cent as firms shift their advertising budgets from traditional to digital.

As per the mFilterIt Brand Safety Report 2021, the biggest challenges for ad fraud included issues like awareness (42 per cent), brand infringement (23 per cent), fraud (12 per cent), investment (12 per cent) and placement (11 per cent). It is estimated that digital ad fraud will cost advertisers and brands $44 billion in fraudulent activities by 2022.

"One of the best tools to fight Ad Fraud is 'awareness' on this subject. It's quintessential for the brands and decision-makers to be aware of the gravity of this issue and be responsible for their financial resources," said Dhiraj Gupta, Co-Founder and CTO, mFilterIt in a statement.

"In this digital age, it is a fact that most of the frauds are committed in the complex digital labyrinth, to mark International Fraud Awareness Week, we are releasing a set of myths that needs to be dismantled to fight this menace so that we can lead towards a safer and secure digital economy," Gupta added.

The company also highlights certain myths associated with running digital campaigns, which include that ad fraud doesn't exist. It is because in digital ad campaigns, either the decision-makers don't know that ad fraud is draining their money or fraudulent traffic is dismissed as normal as they can't see any foreseeable answer to the problem.

A lot of people also believe that ad fraud averages out to approximately 2 per cent of their overall advertising spend. Contrary to this popular misconception, on walled gardens, the actual fraud is anywhere between 15-18 per cent and on affiliates this can rise anywhere between 22-35 per cent.

Another common misconception among brands and advertising agencies is that performance campaigns are free from fraud as they are targeted campaigns. They believe that although media campaigns may face issues of ad fraud, performance campaigns are free from the clout of malicious publishers supplying invalid traffic. But in reality, performance campaigns attract invalid traffic to the tune of 30-35 per cent across the industry.