Brands
Ad fraud: The aftermath of digital advertising
NEW DELHI: In the past four months due to the Covid2019 crisis, customers have been compelled to embrace technology in their daily lives whether it's ordering grocery, food, rapid adoption of OTT, VoD, or games. Hence, leading to an influx in the digital economy. As the adoption of digitisation happens at a large scale, the chances of ad frauds increase and programmatic advertising is no exception. Ad fraud is probably one of the most poignant points of fraud in any industry. Programmatic digital advertising fraud is a deliberate, malicious activity that manipulates with the delivery of ad content and prevents its serving to the targeted audience.
Xaxis India country lead Bharat Khatri, in a web meet, discussed how ad fraud is denting programmatic advertising in the digital landscape.
The general conception about digital advertising is that display ads on digital have a benchmark of viewability around 60-65 per cent in India which means if you’re serving 100 impressions on display ads, only 60 per cent of the ads are being seen.
Digital has stronger power because digital brands can actually measure which half of the advertising is viewable and which half is not working. Every impression served on digital can be measured on all three aspects – viewability, engagement or the impression served with the audience.
In today’s context, BAV serves as a key benchmark for buying quality inventory because it gives, ‘human viewable impression’, ‘decreased invalid traffic’, and contextually relevant ad placements.
Brand safety
Brand safety refers to considerations, practices, and tools to ensure that advertising does not appear in a context that is inappropriate for a brand. Digital brings power in terms of brand suitability and brand safety.
YouTube is one of the channels that come under scrutiny because YouTube as a publisher has a lot of user-generated content. YouTube has a brand safety channel YouTube has partnered with 3rd party tech & data companies to help with brand suitability aspect on YT Videos, Channel factory is one of the partners called the channel factory, it is focused on measuring the role of content, its quality level, safety level, and relevance. Contextual targeting is available on ad-supported by YouTube channels using proprietary guard and graph technology.
Custom targeting slates can be applied to YouTube ad buys.
Ad fraud
Ad frauds mean invalid traffic, which either comes from non-human activity or there are devices that are accessed by humans but controlled by machines.
Impressions generating from a deliberate activity to stop the proper delivery of ads to the relevant audience at the right time. There are different ways ad frauds are taking place be it human or non- human. Hackers use code to create bots able to take orders from botnet centers. Users unknowingly download and install bot engines on their computers. Bots are instructed to visit premium sites, picking up desirable cookies, and then visit fraudulent sites.
The highly trafficked fraudulent sites use exchanges and networks to attract advertisers, ads are continuously served to bots, and botnet operators get paid.
People have also started doing domain spoofing on digital for quite a long time
Viewability
MRC or Media Rating Council is a body that tells about the viewability aspects of the digital. As per MRC if you are running a digital ad, display viewable impressions are counted if at least 50 percent of pixels on screen for one continuous second. Video viewable impressions are counted if at least 50 percent of pixels are on screen for a continuous second.
However, as per Group M viewability standards, Display viewable impressions are counted if at least 100% of pixels are on screen for 1 continuous second. Video viewable impressions are counted if at least 100% of pixels are on screen for 50% of the video duration (capped at 15 secs) with sound on.
An ad that is not viewable has no value. Viewable ad impressions are a measurement of true reach. Optimising towards viewable inventory allows us to sieve out low-quality sellers and buy more efficiently.
Viewability is all about the type of place you buy, and the pricing you pay to the publisher.
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Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
