The pandemic shock and unprotected budgets
With the global lockdowns of 2020, the economy suffered forced digitalization. Millions of SMEs were forced to open e-commerce stores in weeks, pouring massive budgets onto platforms they couldn't manage, becoming the perfect prey for click farms and scrapers.
Global Damage 2020
Source: Market estimates (2020)
A Perfect Storm
Lacking the technical skills of large corporations, SMEs massively bought ad space on open networks, driven by the urgency to survive physical closures.
The sudden spike in traffic demand activated all dormant botnets. Local SMEs burned budgets paying for empty views.
Lockdown consequences for advertisers
- Budgets burned rapidly: Campaigns ran out of funds in hours due to massive bot attacks.
- Analytics Distortion: SMEs optimized campaigns based on bot clicks, unintentionally cutting out real humans.
- Scraping Explosion: Automated bots copied catalogs and prices from new e-commerce sites.
The inadequacy of standard controls
IP filters and third-party cookie checks proved entirely incapable of handling this fraudulent tsunami.
It became evident that delegating traffic validation to the same tech giants selling the ad space created an unsolvable conflict of interest.