It has been revealed by BI that Google is refunding advertisers, whose campaigns were placed via DoubleClick Bid Manager on websites with fake traffic,

This ad fraud incident highlights two of the pressing issues in digital and programmatic advertising:

Invalid Traffic, Or Ad Fraud
An estimated $6.5 billion in ad spending will be lost this year to fraud, down 10% from 2016, according to a report by the Association of National Advertisers and WhiteOps.
This can happen in several ways, including pages that use bots (non-humans) to inflate impressions, or exchanges that "spoof" inventory low-quality websites with minimal traffic as premium ad space.

Transparency and The "Ad Tech" Tax
The complexity and opacity of the programmatic ad supply chain make it difficult for ad-buyers to track where their dollars are spent.
In a hypothetical situation in which an advertiser places an $100 ad through DoubleClick, Google would keep 7-10% and relay the purchase through to its ad tech partners for them to place the ad on the right website, and whichever ad exchange or ad network is used would also take a cut from the remaining budget – this is known as the “ad tech tax.”
BI has however pointed out that Google is working on a solution that should prevent this from happening again, and that should increase transparency and accountability in digital advertising.
The company is investigating which of its partners are responsible for placing ads on websites with invalid traffic and is developing technology to automatically give advertisers full refunds in the event of ad fraud.

Here are digital Media Trends I believe you should watch out for.
Consumer habits are changing and disruptive technologies are evolving. Join me at the Nigeria Innovation Summit 2017 to learn more on how it affects the media industry. Register here: http://innovationsummit.ng/

Meanwhile, here are the 9 most powerful trends for this year.

- To begin with, Google has already been rewarding sites optimized for mobile performance with higher rankings. This has prompted the shift to accelerated mobile pages.

And while AMPs aren’t exactly a search engine factor, sites that adopt AMP offer better user experiences and register more clicks and impressions. And all these do affect SEO.

- Video content remains the next big thing after big data and analytics. According to a Brain Rules study, Video is projected to rise 79% by 2018. Research shows that video content is in the lead this year.

- The 24 hour content currently been driven by Facebook Messenger, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, and WhatsApp who have all released versions of content that disappears within 24 hours after posting.

Whether this trend lasts or a new more popular release arrives, right now companies need to take a holistic social media approach to attract a larger share of their target audience.

- The use of infographics appears to be on the rise, more so on Twitter than on other platforms. Some are easy to read, and others contain a great amount of data.

But, every style content has an audience, and for now, users are enjoying Infographic creativity and how they are evolving. If their view changes and they become more dimensional, or voice features are integrated, they may become more popular.

- The amount of content that influencers are producing is increasing. Although I am a firm believer in quality versus quantity, the need to share and curate other user content makes the most sense.

However, a growing number of influencers are now buying followers. The rise of paid over organic influence is becoming worrisome.

- Social media consumption is at an all-time high. Platforms are making it nearly impossible for companies to manage social media on their own with new feature releases coming out regularly. The competition amongst the platforms is fierce, but one thing that we do know is that Instagram is well on its way to becoming King, dragging content right along with it.

According to Business Insider, Instagram Stories has emerged as a clear favorite for marketers over Snapchat.

- On November 1, 2016, it was announced by StatCounter that in the first time, mobile usage had surpassed desktop with 51.3% of Internet users preferring their smartphones or tablets over their desktops when using the Internet. What does this mean for SEO?

*Celestine Achi is the chief digital marketing strategist at Cihan Group, owners of Kairoswebtv and Digitalprwire