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Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

June 5, 2025

That seems to be the “phrase that pays” so far in 2025. On that topic, did you see the article in Inside Radio last week about programmatic advertising? As is often the case, it highlighted the power and pitfalls of digital advertising.

The focus was on a Programmatic Transparency Benchmark study from the Association of National Advertisers.

One of the highlights was that more than a third of open web ad spending still goes toward impressions that don’t meet quality metrics. Let me put that in plain terms. More than a third of web ads are wasted. According to the study, that adds up to over $21 billion worldwide!

This is not breaking news. The digital ad space has been wrought with waste, fraud, and abuse almost from the beginning.

Here’s another nugget: the median amount of ad spending classified as non-viewable decreased to 35.1% in Q1. Quick, do a victory lap programmatic world. Advertisers are spending more than a third of their budgets on ads that, get this, NO ONE CAN SEE. Imagine if over a third of all radio ads were never heard yet were billed to the client. Think anyone would object to that?

I’m a programming guy who is talking about sales, so you may take lightly what I am pointing out. However, I’m also a data guy and by any standard wasting this much advertising budget is absurd.

I also realize that radio is walking a fine line in this space. Every group has a digital strategy and is selling much of this aforementioned programmatic…. stuff. This means we have to be careful not to be negative about this space.

We know radio advertising works. We know radio ads are, ahem, classified as “hearable.” We can also demonstrate exactly when ads are aired and how much audience they reach. Are our metrics as sexy and immediate as a digital dashboard? No. Are our clients wasting over a third of their budgets when they utilize our platform? Hell no.

One last point from the study. Ad spending classified as non-measurable declined to 13.1%. Sounds like cause for a celebration.

You can read the Inside Radio piece here.

-Steve Allan, Programming Research Consultant

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