Will 2025 Be the Year Marketers Wake Up?
In 2024, bot traffic officially took over paid ad traffic. Literally. The majority of traffic generated through paid ads—whether on social media platforms, DSPs, or Google’s PPC (and other SERPs)—is now dominated by click fraud, bot traffic, or some form of fake signal traffic.
Instead of demanding solutions from Big Tech—the very companies fully capable of addressing these issues—marketers have largely shrugged it off, placing blind faith in AI to solve the problem.
That’s right: AI will fix everything. Except the logic behind this assumption is insane. Before diving into why this is, let’s take a moment to recap what’s been unfolding in our industry.
A Timeline of Events
- iOS 14.5 launches (September 2020): This update empowers users to opt out of app tracking across their devices.
- Mass opt-outs: Almost 9 out of 10 users choose to prevent apps from tracking their activity.
- Audience accuracy plummets: As tracking data dries up, the ability to target audiences effectively takes a nosedive.
- Bot traffic explodes: Without reliable data, platforms increasingly rely on bot traffic to keep up ad impressions.
- AI algorithms go live (Dec. 2023–Jan. 2024): Lead form fills are inundated with fake submissions.
- Chaos begins (Jan. 2024): Massive volatility in CPM costs and soaring bot traffic levels define the start of the year.
This summary simplifies the situation, but it highlights the key developments marketers running paid ads need to understand.
Now, let’s address why AI will not solve the industry’s biggest problems—namely, bot traffic and inaccurate data.
The Flaw in AI as a Savior
For AI to deliver meaningful improvements, it must have reliable data to learn from and base decisions on. The old adage, “garbage in, garbage out,” still applies—even in the age of AI.
The only way AI could significantly improve ad performance would be if Big Tech programmed their algorithms to reliably distinguish between organic and mechanical (bot) traffic. However, doing so would trigger a cascade of consequences:
- Acknowledging the truth: Big Tech would have to admit they’ve always been able to distinguish between bot and organic traffic.
- Overloading organic users: AI would sideline bot traffic, bombarding real users with ads and making platforms untenable for end users.
- Regulatory scrutiny: It would become clear that serving bot traffic has been intentional, opening the door for fraud investigations.
- Massive disruption: These revelations would shake the digital advertising industry to its core.
Here’s the reality: Big Tech will never do this. Admitting they can detect bot traffic undermines their entire monetization model. So, AI will never fully address the problem—it might deliver marginal, temporary performance gains, but that’s it.
Blindly trusting AI, especially when it’s built and controlled by the very companies profiting from bot traffic, is the definition of insanity.
Welcome to 1984: AdTech Edition
Someone has to call out the truth: the emperor has no clothes. Big Tech isn’t interested in solving the fraud problem because they’re making billions off it. And by silently accepting this, marketers and agencies are complicit in the fraud being perpetuated against brands worldwide.
We will not be complicit. We will stand up. And you should too.