Advertising Fraud + Trade Practices + Corporate Counsel Lessons + Consumer Changes

The scale of wrongdoing detailed in the [Association of National Advertisers] report is massive. Businesses spend well over $630 billion on advertising and media purchases annually, and by 2021 that number is expected to approach $750 billion. The hotel industry’s media spend is a substantial portion of that overall number, with advertising spending for 2019 projected at $769 million. Notably, an ever-larger share of this spend is going to digital advertising. ("The Smart Hotelier’s Guide to 2017 Digital Marketing Budget Planning" suggests that 75 percent of a hotel’s marketing budget should be set aside for digital marketing.)

While some strides have been made in addressing issues of fraud (such as bot traffic) in digital advertising, hotel industry ad buyers still lack fully reliable data on what, exactly, they’re getting for their money and who profits from these arrangements.