5 Actionable Ways To Reduce Ad Budget Wastage

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that 80% of YouTube ads were shown on third-party sites (read: low-quality inventory) and were muted when shown.

Budget wastage in advertising is real and can lead to millions of dollars in ad spending going down the drain over time. Here's how to save every dollar of ad spend (and reinvest it in ROI-positive inventory):

1. Content Exclusions: Exclude the common offenders like 'Content not yet labeled', Sensitive content, Parked domains, Live streaming YouTube video and Below-the-fold as content exclusion at the account level
2. Review the Placement Report for all your campaigns (including PerformanceMax) to add spammy placements to the negative placement list e.g. .ru domain, placements with very high/low CTR and placements with many/no conversions, and placements with content that is not brand-safe
3. Block these Negative Placements/websites from sending you events through your pixel in Meta, and filter them out in GA4.
4. Add the usual suspect websites, apps, and channels to the Negative Placement List at the account level.
Tip: Lunio has an excellent list of over 60,000+ website, apps and channels that you can start with: https://lnkd.in/gePciNBP
5. Look at deploying click-fraud software to find further efficiencies.

Click-fraud technology can help with reducing:
a) Bot and malware clicks e.g. non-human clicks from bot farms
b) Non-genuine engagement clicks e.g. clicks from competitors' and their employees
c) Non-incremental engagement clicks e.g. clicks from loyal customers who end up clicking on paid ads instead of organic results
all of which the ad platforms e.g. Google Ads have limited ability to deal with.

The higher the ad spend, the higher the chances of budget wastage due to poor-quality placements and click-fraud. Programmatic campaigns are particularly susceptible to click-fraud due to their inherent complexity.

While budget wastage happens across accounts of all sizes, there is a lot more to gain for low-margin and high-spending businesses by improving budget efficiency.