What is ad stacking?
Ad stacking is a fraudulent practice in digital advertising where multiple ads are layering on top of each other in a single ad placement. Only the top ad is visible to users, but impressions are recorded for all stacked ads. This inflates metrics like impressions and click-through rates (CTR) without genuine user interaction.
How does ad stacking affect advertisers?
Ad stacking negatively impacts advertisers in several ways:
- Wasted ad spend: Advertisers pay for impressions that offer no real visibility or engagement.
- Skewed metrics: Inflated impression and CTR numbers give a false picture of campaign performance.
- Legal and regulatory risks: Advertisers could face penalties or legal action if being found involved in or benefiting from such practices.
How does ad stacking occur?
Ad stacking typically occurs in these scenarios:
- Hidden layers: Fraudsters use scripts to stack several ads in one ad unit, ensuring that only the top ad shows up while the others remain hidden beneath it.
- Mobile apps and websites: It often happens in poorly monitored platforms where ad placements are less regulated.
- Misleading ad networks: Some low-quality ad networks knowingly enable or fail to prevent ad layering.
How can you identify if your campaigns are facing ad layering?
You can identify if your campaigns are facing stacked ads by employing several strategies and tools to detect this fraudulent practice.
- Analyze conversion rates: A significant difference between high impression counts and low conversion rates can be an issue. If you have many impressions but few clicks or conversions, this may suggest that ads do not showing as you intended.
- Check for duplicate clicks: Regularly review campaign backends for instances where the same device clicks on multiple ads at the same timestamp.
- Use browser extensions: Tools like the PubGuru Ad Inspector allow you to inspect stacked ads. By enabling this extension, you can visualize different ad units and check for overlapping ads in your ad slots.
How to prevent this case to happen?
To prevent this from occurring, you should:
- Work with trusted ad networks: Partner with reputable platforms that enforce strict quality standards.
- Use ad tracking tools: Use ad tracking tools to help you track ad performance and identify inconsistencies constantly.
- Monitor metrics regularly: Keep an eye on metrics like viewability and engagement to ensure campaigns are reaching real users with stable performance.
