More computer bots saw the latest Mercedes-Benz online advertising campaign than humans, new research states.

Mercedes-Benz

According to the Financial Times, who has seen documents on the campaign, the ads were inadvertently placed on to fraudulent websites by Rocket Fuel, the ad tech company which went public last year.

Mercedes has said that it and its US advertising agency, Merkley & Partners, which is part of Omnicom Group, have continued to work with Rocket Fuel, and that it received a refund from Rocket Fuel following the incident.

According to Telemetry, a UK company which specialises in detecting ad fraud, in a sample of 365,000 ad impressions brokered by Rocket Fuel over three weeks, 57 per cent were “viewed” by automated computer programs rather than real people.

The US arm of Rocket Fuel has so far not been available for comment when contacted by The Drum, but told the FT that the figures were not fully correct and that the findings only looked at a small sample.