The U.S. Presidential Election has, in many ways, been digital. Spend on digital ads in the race reached $2.9 billion in 2020. This was up sharply from $0.4 billion four years ago, marking the continuing prominence of digital political campaigning since President Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe heralded the channel as a deciding factor in the election 12 years ago.
However, an increasing challenge for this online ad spend has been ad fraud. In a new study, in association with the University of Baltimore, we see that marketers will $35 billion to digital ad fraud in 2020.