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The true cost of digital ad fraud can be tough to pin down. Research suggests that display ad fraud continues to be at historically high levels on desktops and historically low levels on mobile. Marketers at enterprise-level companies (defined as more than 500 employees) don’t seem to be too concerned with levels of ad fraud, though, per research [download page] from Ascend2 in partnership with OMI.

When asked to rate their level of concern about digital ad fraud/bots wasting ad spending and/or impacting their ROI, a majority (61%) said they were “somewhat concerned,” compared with 23% share who are “very concerned.” Only 1 in 7 (14% share) are not concerned with ad fraud.

Yet ad fraud concerns pale in comparison to other digital display advertising challenges, per the report. When asked to cite the most significant challenges regarding digital display advertising, fewer than 1 in 5 (18% of) respondents pointed to ad fraud and invalid traffic, placing this issue at the bottom of the list.

Instead, the leading challenges cited by respondents were measuring accurate ROI and performance metrics (42%) and finding the right target audience for the ads (41%).

The results bring to mind past research in which increasing levels of ad fraud were low on the list of marketers’ top digital media challenges. Notably, the figures on concern with ad fraud are almost exactly the same as in a separate survey into CTV/OTT advertising, in which 24% of marketers reported being very concerned with ad fraud, and 61% somewhat concerned.

As for the digital display ad formats commonly being used by enterprise marketers, this latest research indicates that banner ads (70%) and video ads (69%) lead the way, with pop-up ads (45%), native ads (32%) and interstitial ads (20%) trailing.

Other Survey Highlights:

• One-third (33%) of respondents find digital display ads to be extremely effective in driving conversions and sales, and an additional 61% find them to be somewhat effective.
• Some 36% are extensively integrating their digital display advertising with other marketing channels for better campaign performance, while 52% are integrating them to some extent.
• About one-quarter (24%) are extensively leveraging programmatic advertising for their digital display campaigns, and an additional half (52%) are doing so to some extent.
• Three metrics stand out as the most oft-used for measuring the success of digital display performance ad campaigns: click-through rate (55%); engagement metrics (54%); and conversion rate (54%).
• Fewer than 1 in 5 (18% share of) respondents say that their agency partners and/or marketing vendors are fully transparent when it comes to critical campaign elements such as audience building, attribution models, KPIs, pricing, budget allocation, ad fraud, and bot impact. About half (49%) report that their partners and vendors are satisfactory in this regard, while close to 3 in 10 (28%) feel that they could use improvement.

For more, download the study here.

About the Data: The results are based on an August survey of 170 marketers at companies with more than 500 employees, targeting B2C (55% share), B2B (16%), and, B2B and B2C equally (29%).