Ep.130 - Bots Are Stealing Your Ad Budget - Rich Kahn

In this episode of Future Fuzz, host Vince Quinn sits down with Rich Kahn, CEO and Co‑Founder of Anura.io — a leading ad‑fraud detection platform. Rich walks us through how ad fraud works (bots, malware, human fraud farms), the sheer scale of the problem (up to ~22% of digital ad spend is fraud), how marketing teams should recognise when they’re under attack, and practical steps to protect campaigns and restore clean data. A crucial listen for any marketer buying digital media who needs to get ahead of invisible waste.

Guest Bio

Rich Kahn is the CEO and Co‑Founder of Anura.io, a specialist ad‑fraud detection solution that emerged from his earlier experience running an ad‑network. After observing the damage fraud was doing in‑house, he built an anti‑fraud platform and spun it out in 2017. eMarketing Association+2ForthRight People+2

Rich boasts nearly three decades in digital advertising and tech, and his mission is to ensure marketers aren’t paying for traffic that isn’t real.

Takeaways

• Ad fraud isn’t niche, across digital marketing, the average loss is ~20‑25% of ad spend (i.e., more than 1 in every 5 dollars) reclaimed by fraudsters. (Rich cites ~$140B stolen from ~$700B spent).
• Fraud takes many forms: bot‑clicking ads, malware on devices chewing data & battery, human fraud farms clicking/ad farming, competitor attacks (clicking your ads to exhaust budget)
• Blocking IP addresses alone no longer works: fraud networks exploit residential proxy networks, large pools of IPs refreshed constantly.
• Channel matters for exposure: search ads ~10‑15% fraud, social ~8‑10%, native/affiliate ~20‑30%, programmatic can hit ~50%.
• If you’re doing paid digital marketing, you have fraud (it’s not optional) , what matters is how much and what you do about it.
• The upside: reducing fraud cleans up your data, improves ROI, clears wasted spend, and gives you more confidence in campaign performance.
• For marketers working on tighter budgets (esp. bootstrapped companies), content marketing and appearing on podcasts (like this one!) are effective channels because you’re reaching new audiences rather than just retargeting the same crowd.

Chapters

00:00 – Welcome & Intro to Rich Kahn

00:21 – What is ad fraud and what does Anura do

01:21 – Who are the fraudsters and how do they operate

02:33 – Case example: malware on phones drawing data & battery

03:35 – Competitor fraud: clicking rivals’ ads to drive them off budget

06:44 – Why IP‑blocking is outdated — discussion of proxy networks

11:00 – How to figure out how much fraud you have (free scans, analytics)

13:06 – From ad‑network to anti‑fraud spin‑out (Rich’s origin story)

18:08 – Safest traffic: organic/earned, but still has some fraud

19:42 – The ROI of cleaning your ad‑traffic: how big the gains can be

21:54 – Fraud rates by channel (search, social, affiliate, programmatic)

24:08 – Why Rich uses podcasting & content marketing for growth

26:06 – How to follow Rich and Anura for more resources

26:35 – Closing remarks

LinkedIn

– Follow Rich Kahn on LinkedIn

– Connect with Anura.io → https://www.anura.io/

Follow Vince Quinn