The average individual ad fraudster makes $5-20 million dollars a year. The average ad fraud corporation pulls “many multiples of that,” says TrafficGuard chief operating officer Luke Taylor.
In other words: more than most drug dealers.
Estimates on how much ad fraud costs are all over the map. Juniper Research says that digital ad spend will hit $520 billion by 2023. But Juniper also says the fraudulent component of that spent hit $42 billion last year. With these kinds of numbers, you know it’s not just script kiddies in a basement somewhere. In fact, Google just kicked Cheetah Mobile, a half-billion-dollar company with stock traded on the NYSE, off Google Play, citing “mobile ad fraud” in an accompanying statement.