Facebook just purged 2.8 billion fraudulent accounts and acknowledged that about 90 million fake accounts are live on the platform at any time. And no one bats an eye!

That’s bad news for advertisers, who waste millions targeting these “people” every day and have no ability to audit these numbers.

It’s a good reminder that we need to continue to work on transparent solutions to reduce fraud, both inside the walled gardens and in the exchange-based programmatic universe.

The term “data transparency” may be the most overused ad industry phrase of 2018, yet I’m not sure it’s clear to many of us what that even means. Media has quickly shifted to a data-led buying approach, bringing massive improvement in reach and efficiency, but it has also perpetuated fraud across the digital ecosystem.

While sellers have tried to respond via initiatives such as ads.txt, MOAT and IAS, the data used in programmatic advertising has yet to receive the same attention, even though it also accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and waste.