Ad fraud takes the stage at Daily Maverick's Marketing Masterclass

Ad verification dashboards give a false sense of security, costing media budgets millions. Is your media money safe because invalid traffic (IVT) is under control and viewability is high?

CAPE TOWN, 13 August 2026 - Media and marketing are invited to book for Daily Maverick's Marketing Masterclass to be held on Thursday 20 August 2026, which will focus on “The Invisible Heist: Where Does Your Media Money Actually Go?”

Digital ad fraud under the spotlight

From 12:00 to 13:00 SAST, a forensic media expert, a highly respected digital media director and a marketing effectiveness professional will take marketers deep inside the world of digital ad fraud. The session will answer the question: “Where is my money going, and why is my advertising not as effective as it could be?”

With more online ads being bought and paid for every day than there are humans on earth who could ever look at them, marketers are invited to find out where media money really goes and to seriously question their likely belief that their ads are safely delivered and viewable by humans.

Daily Maverick’s Marketing Master brings together Marc Dhalluin, co-founder of TruthsetsOnline.com, and Inge Hansen, digital head at media agency PHD, in front of an audience of marketing, media and procurement leaders. The session will be facilitated by David Blyth, founder of Delta Victor Bravo, which represents challenger-brand consultancy eatbigfish in Africa.

Research and analysis

Research from the ANA and the World Federation of Advertisers found that for every $1,000 invested in programmatic advertising, roughly $439 reaches a consumer as a quality impression. Separately, Fraudlogix's 2026 analysis of 105.7 billion impressions recorded a global invalid traffic rate of 20.64%, meaning about one in five impressions carried the signatures of something other than a human.

“Nobody in this chain has to be a criminal for the outcome to look like a crime,” says Dhalluin, adding: “Every hop gets paid whether the impression was human or not; the invoice for a faked impression looks exactly like the invoice for a real one, and the dashboard reports ‘success’ either way. What I want marketers to leave with is a way of telling the difference, because you cannot recover money you cannot see.”

This whole issue stems from the general belief that either ad fraud is low in volume and/or that current in-market verification tools accurately and transparently report on the extent to which ads are delivered and viewable by human audiences, when this is very often not the case.

TruthsetsOnline.com and participant details

TruthsetsOnline.com, which Dhalluin co-founded, works on the measurement and forensics side of ad fraud. The company uses log-level, deterministic analytics, powered by FouAnalytics, to show advertisers which of their impressions had a genuine opportunity to be seen by a human and which did not.

Dhalluin is a long-time collaborator of fraud researcher Dr Augustine Fou and has spent more than 25 years in marketing across agency, client and consultancy roles in Africa, Europe and the United States.

Places are free, and attendance carries professional credit: registrants earn six CPD points per session at CMSA level in the marketing category, and AMSA and MPSA members are eligible. Bookings are open now.

Marketers who attend the session will be eligible to get a benchmarking audit of where their spend is currently landing at no cost.

ENDS