THE PROGRAMMATIC WASTE PARADOX: WHY SUPPRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL FRAUD VECTORS FAILS TO REDUCE AGGREGATE LOSSES
Abstract
The programmatic advertising supply chain exhibits a counterintuitive empirical regularity. Individual fraud vectors are being suppressed at historically unprecedented rates, yet the aggregate economic loss attributable to invalid and adversarial traffic continues to grow
References
- Juniper Research. Quantifying the cost of ad fraud: 2023–2028: white paper. London: Juniper Research, 2023. URL: https://fraudblocker.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Ad-Fraud-Whitepaper_Juniper-Research.pdf (date of access: 05.04.2026).
- Association of National Advertisers. Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study: Complete Report. New York: ANA, 2023. URL: https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-12-ana-programmatic-media-supply-chain-transparency-study (date of access: 05.04.2026).
- ANA, TAG TrustNet. Programmatic Transparency Benchmark Q1 2025. New York: ANA, 2025. URL: https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/media-programmatic-transparency (date of access: 05.04.2026).
- Ivitskiy I., Savchenko D., Sydorenko D. Data Integrity as the Terminal Constraint in AI-Driven Advertising: An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Conversion Fraud and Agentic Threat Evolution. Zenodo. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18675362.
- Cover T. M., Thomas J. A. Elements of Information Theory. 2nd ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2006. 748 p. DOI: 10.1002/047174882X.
- Ivitskiy I. The M.A.T.H. Framework: A First-Principles Approach to Quant Marketing in High-Uncertainty Environments. Zenodo. 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18552246.
- Ivitskiy I. Incrementality at scale: a blueprint for corporate holdouts, geo-experiments, and platform leakage control: conference abstract. 2025. URL: https://molodyivchenyi.ua/omp/index.php/conference/catalog/view/149/2415/5025-1 (date of access: 05.04.2026).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.