Advertisers hate robots, and a new report by the Association of National Advertisers shows why.

ANA estimates that online advertisers will lose $7.2 billion to "bots" in 2016, according to a study released Tuesday. "Bot" is short for robot, and while the term may conjure up mental images of metal men, in this case it means programs that simulate human behavior online.

Bots are a costly nuisance for online advertising, where rates are often determined by the number of views or clicks an ad gets. Bots can be programmed to repeatedly click an ad, but since no actual humans are seeing the ad in question, the money spent on it is wasted.

To measure the problem, ANA partnered with the digital security company White Ops to monitor ads put by 49 advertisers. The association found bots generated 3 to 37 percent of ad traffic, with the amount varying from ad to ad. The more a website or other digital media provider charged for cost per views, the more likely an ad was to be targeted by bots.

"The level of criminal, non-human traffic literally robbing marketers' brand-building investments is a travesty," ANA CEO Bob Liodice said.

ANA recently partnered with two other advertising industry associations in 2014 to form the Trustworthy Accountability Group to tackle the problem of online ad fraud. The association is asking companies to support TAG.

The new report "underscores the need for the entire marketing ecosystem to manage their media investments with far greater discipline and control against a backdrop of increasingly sophisticated fraudsters," Liodice said. http://bit.ly/1P5SCxu

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