[fendmark]

Publishers are buying traffic that is too good to be true from dubious networks and then it is being laundered through the programmatic ad tech machine at scale.

Brands looking to build awareness are buying access to this fraudulent traffic.

Advertising agencies, ad tech companies, and publishers more times than not are incentivized to look the other way and not investigate what is going on too closely as long as it is profitable.

Digital display advertising has long been considered a channel of questionable effectiveness. But the current state of programmatic advertising has made things much worse and will ultimately lead to Advertisers pulling billions of dollars out of this space unless there are significant improvements in getting more transparency into their advertising investments.