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Roadmap to Drive Efficiency in VAS Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / mFilterIt Experts

Creating a cleaner ecosystem necessitates addressing complex challenges like VAS subscription validation and lack of transparency. The evolving digital ecosystem is driving innovation, technology, and enhanced efficiency across the digital ecosystem. But the challenges that plague the digital ecosystem are evolving as well, invalid traffic, bots driving clicks and impressions, replicating human behavior, and opening doors for sophisticated fraud across app, web, and digital transactions. Safeguarding your ad campaigns, placements, and digital subscriptions has become a priority for enterprises and advertisers. Why Validation and monitoring of Value-Added Service (VAS) subscriptions are essential? Protect Your Consumers Ensuring that VAS subscriptions are validated helps protect consumers from unauthorized or fraudulent subscriptions. It prevents users from being charged for services they did not knowingly or unwillingly subscribe to, reducing the risk of financial loss and enhancing consumer trust. Follow the Regulatory Compliance Every country’s regulatory body has defined guidelines and procedures to protect consumers from unfair practices related to telecommunications services, including VAS. Subscription validation and monitoring help service providers comply with these regulations and avoid legal issues or penalties. Enhance Customer Experience Monitoring VAS subscriptions contributes to a positive customer experience. It helps prevent the occurrence of unexpected charges, reduces the likelihood of customer complaints, prevents fraud from affecting the subscription flow, enhances overall customer satisfaction, and makes it easy for the user to activate the services. Stringent Fraud Detection and Prevention. Subscription validation is crucial in preventing fraudulent activities related to VAS. Unauthorized subscriptions can be identified and addressed promptly, protecting both consumers and service providers. Build Subscriber Trust and Ensure Retention A transparent and well-monitored VAS subscription process builds trust with subscribers. When users feel confident that they are in control of their subscriptions and are not being subjected to unfair practices, they are more likely to remain loyal customers and it will lead to more activation of services. Fraud prevention in VAS ecosystem VAS services in the digital ecosystem require protection from fraudulent activities to boost revenue with clean traffic and validated subscriptions. Prevention from duplicate IPs or Proxies Reduce the risk of fraudulent activities by preventing multiple activations or transactions from the same IP address or proxy. Also, safeguard from iFraming/Overlay on the subscription button or page and use of server or device farms for fraudulent activations. Use of BOT devices or fake activations. Bots are automated programs that can simulate human behavior. Fraudsters may use Sophisticated bots to generate fake activations or interactions with VAS services. Implementing measures to detect and prevent Bot activities is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the system. Automated clicks by bots for activation Bots may generate automated clicks to activate VAS services, leading to false transactions. Implementing anti-bot measures, such as Enforcement Challenges, Behavioral analytics, and Heuristic checks working in tandem can help in distinguishing between genuine user interactions and automated bot clicks. Transactions from non-targeted regions Fraudsters may attempt to make transactions from regions that are not part of the targeted audience for the VAS services. Implementing geolocation checks as one of the parameters would help in differentiating between genuine and fake requests. It can also help in identifying and preventing transactions from unauthorized or unexpected regions. Device Signature Mismatch Each device has a unique signature based on its characteristics and configurations. Fraudulent activities may involve manipulating or mimicking device signatures. Monitoring and validating device signatures can help in detecting and preventing transactions with mismatched or suspicious device information. Fig. 1: Frauds plaguing the digital ecosystem Creating a cleaner ecosystem necessitates addressing the complex challenges associated with monitoring both Media Spends and VAS Subscriptions comprehensively. Validating the VAS Subscriptionsin real-time is one of the major challenges in the digital landscape. Another key issue is the Lack of transparency. Thus, ad traffic validation across the VAS ecosystem is crucial along with monitoring spending. The Blueprint for a Cleaner VAS Ecosystem Embark on a journey into a comprehensive solution that not only bridges the existing gaps but transforms the monitoring VAS Subscriptions into boost efficiency: The adoption of integrated analytics platforms that seamlessly amalgamate data from Media Spends and VAS Subscriptions paves the way for a unified, comprehensive analysis, dissolving the barriers between siloed data. Transparency and security stand as a formidable deterrent against fraud and discrepancies. Decentralizing transactions ensures accountability and traceability. Infusing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) Identify patterns that might otherwise remain obscured. Predictive analytics, and AI/ML tech will empower and enhance automated validation processes and checks. Final Thought Validating, Optimizing, and Protecting subscriptions of Value-Added Services (VAS) over the Carrier Billing platform reflects a commitment to building an Effective, Secure, Seamless, and Transparent ecosystem. Building a clean DCB VAS ecosystem suggests a focus on ethical and transparent practices that contribute to Positive Adoption, Reduce Churn, Enhance User Experience, and a Cleaner and more reliable channel for enabling services to esteemed users. Taking a transformative path, envisioning a forward-looking perspective, and adopting innovative technologies and strategies will not only enhance revenue but also contribute to sustainability and growth in the long term. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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Share of Search: Tap the Power of Keywords and Reach Your Ideal Audience

Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / mFilterIt Experts

In today’s world where every piece of information is just a fingertip away, shoppers have become smart and aware. Accordingly, the brands have to be on their toes to understand what’s on the consumer’s mind. Along with it, it’s also essential for brands to keep track of their competitor’s moves. While the traditional approaches have their own space, the universal metric of Share of Search is set to open a door of effective business insights and therefore more opportunities. 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. Learn how Share of Search can change your digital commerce game and help you compete with utmost transparency and efficiency in the ever-evolving digital landscape. What is Share of Search? The simplest way to explain Share of Search is, that it is the percentage of search results on a particular keyword for which a brand appears. An SOS can be measured for general search queries on search engines and eCommerce marketplaces. Share of search is a powerful metric for eCommerce marketers to understand and predict their market share and growth. In terms of digital shelf analytics, the share of search enables brand owners to get transparency of how their brands are performing online in comparison to their competition, get an insight into their brand performance and also revamp their search strategies. Is Share of Search a substitute for Share of Voice? There is an existing misconception that Share of Voice (SOV) can be substituted by Share of Search as both are derived from the same concept. Share of Voice determines the market share success by comparing the brand’s advertising spend with total media expenditure within the industry. Whereas the share of search is determined based on how many times a brand’s keyword is organically typed rather than how much is spent to capture the market share. Share of search gives a fair idea of a brand’s organic reach in digital platforms. By leveraging advanced intelligence solutions, one can better understand the search behaviour of a shopper – like if people are comparing products or trying to learn how to use the products based on keyword searches. Therefore, it will not be a substitute but a collaboratively used metric to understand the pulse of the market, make crucial business decisions based on market position, and create effective strategies to stay relevant. How Search Drives a Shopper’s Behaviour? Today’s shoppers are smart and fast unlike earlier. And to tap the interest of these fast consumers, search plays a crucial role. Your product is just a quick search away. From discovering new and trending products, researching via reviews and ratings or even exploring other options, comparing prices and checking quality, they leverage the internet for everything before buying. Therefore, it has become essential for brands to stay on top of their search game to ensure they don’t get overshadowed by competitors. How does Share of Search Help to Stay Ahead of the Game? According to a study conducted by James Hankins, the share of search entails 83% of a brand’s market share. When used ideally, this metric not only provides the brand’s market position but also enables marketers to accumulate search insights based on geography and product category, thereby understanding consumer preferences. Share of search can help brands to: – Appear In The Front Shelf Stats say there are up to 60% higher chances of adding to a cart if a brand’s product appears within the first four search results. Imagine, your loyal customer is at the shampoo aisle looking for their favourite brand. But when searching your competitor’s product overshadows your product by taking the prime position in the aisle. This similar happens in online shopping when your competitors appear above you in the search results when looking for “shampoo”. If your share of search is weak, there will be a higher chance of discovery for your competitor’s product until it goes out of stock. By understanding the competing brand’s share of search, you can identify the hidden tactics in the product detail pages (PDPs) and optimize them to appear on top of the digital shelf. – Be Known for What You Do Best Improve your brand’s positioning by covering not just branded but also non-branded keywords. According to an experiment done by HP in 2022, they found that there was a rapid rise in generic search terms like “best laptops”. This experiment increased to 8.2% of customers shifting from consideration to purchase decision. The metric provides a wide coverage to the brand across both branded and non-branded keywords leaving a deeper impact on the customer’s mind. – Stay ahead of competitor’s move The product display pages [PDPs] require frequent updates to stay relevant in the dynamic environment of eCommerce businesses. 76% of the shoppers prioritise detailed product descriptions as a significant attribute when shopping. By keeping track of the share of search, marketers can effectively improve the product descriptions, outdated images and missing sections along with incorporating the best-performing keywords. This means that if you own a homemade product brand, the metric must be able to help showcase your product even when a person searches “homemade”. Stay Ahead of Competitors with Insight-driven Analytics The behaviour of a consumer’s search behaviour is dynamic and monitoring it is an ongoing process. It differs according to the stage in which a customer stands. Whether they are looking for a solution, or comparing the products with competitor’s products. All these lead to making the final decision. To keep track of these dynamic changes, the brands require a holistic and advanced eCommerce analytics solution. mScanIt is a ecommerce competitive analysis that helps to fulfil these requirements and more with a comprehensive dashboard that enables one to keep track of search rankings and provides a transparent overview of the brand’s visibility. Get in touch with our experts to solve your eCommerce woes!

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Safeguard Your ads in the Digital Landscape: Protect Impression Integrity

Blog, Brand Safety & Protection / mFilterIt Experts

Heavy payouts and unrealistic numbers are the real face of ad campaign impressions. The inflated numbers from invalid sources do not lead to conversions. In the app ecosystem, invalid clicks and impressions are a major concern as they question the ad’s effectiveness and result in a waste of ad spend. Every step of the ad campaign that led to app installs and events gets plagued by malicious activities that dampen your return on investment. Let’s dig up the dirt on the issue and shed some light on how invalid impressions can ruin your return on investments. Myth Behind Impressions Is a genuine audience viewing your ad? Heavy payout on invalid impressions costs brands massive wastage of ad spending. The validation of impressions can help a brand not just reduce ad spend. Most advertisers presume that fraud does not happen at the impression level but it’s a grey zone where fraudulent activities take place unnoticed. It’s a deceptive practice in the digital advertising ecosystem where advertisers are charged for ad impressions that are not viewed by real human users or are otherwise misrepresented. Apart from wastage of ad spend they can negatively impact the effectiveness of ad campaigns and return on investment (ROI). Here are some keys sources that generate invalid impressions: Impressions from MFA (Made-for-Adverising site). MFA sites are tailored for advertising purposes, ensuring a more intentional and engaged audience that does not result in conversions. Impressions from Low-quality content sites. The low-quality content site poses challenges in terms of the relevance and effectiveness of ad impressions. Multiple impressions served on the same device with Frequency capping (F-cap) violations. It can lead to overexposure and decreased impact, as the audience may become desensitized to the ads. Impressions from Ad Stacking. Multiple ads are layered on top of each other within a single ad placement. While only the top ad is visible, impressions for all stacked ads are counted, leading to inflated metrics. Domain Spoofing. Fraudsters misrepresent the website or app where the ad is displayed, making it seem like it is being shown on a premium site when it’s on a lower-quality or fraudulent one. Pixel Stuffing. Ads are hidden within small, transparent pixels on a webpage. These ads are technically “viewed” even though they are not visible to the user, resulting in fraudulent impressions. Cookie Stuffing. Cookies are forcibly placed on a user’s device without their knowledge or consent, allowing fraudsters to claim credit for ad impressions or actions across multiple sites. Proxy Traffic. Fraudsters use proxies to make it appear as though ad impressions are coming from different locations or devices, creating a false sense of diversity in the audience. What do the advertisers need to do? Impression validation Let’s start with where advertisers need to be vigilant before it’s too late. It’s the post-delivery of impression to Minimize wastage when payouts are on CPM. Impression Data collected from MMP must be validated and invalid impressions blocked. Not as simple but effective if you have the right solution in place to safeguard your ad spending. The process ensures Clean Traffic with Safe Placements Optimized Campaign Performance Restrict payouts for Invalid Impressions Improve ROAS The validation processes ensure that you payout on only verified impressions and maintain your impression integrity. To make it clear let’s clarify what’s the problem with click credibility. Fraud Clicks have a direct Impact on Revenue. The ad network ends up paying for fraud clicks to its sub-publishers, especially when the advertiser is equipped with fraud detection. Reconciliation Issues on both sides. The ad networks or agencies face major reconciliation issues with their suppliers as well as clients since fraud clicks always create discrepancies. Build up an untrustworthy Market Environment. Due to fraud and traffic inconsistencies, the trust level of each player in the market remains low, thus impacting the overall market environment. Higher Dependency on Advertisers Reports. In the absence of a fraud detection mechanism, the Networks are dependent upon advertiser reports to ascertain the validity of a click. Need for transparency and clarity for Advertisers Advertisers need both pre-MMP checks, post-MMP checks, and basic time-sensitive checks. These checks should be advanced time-insensitive checks to ensure transparency and clarity that ensure click and impression integrity. Basic checks are needed to prevent invalid clicks and getting blocked before entering MMP. This validation process should be done with minimum latency to ensure that it does not hinder the user experience and integrations. For post-MMP Checks, Advertisers need advanced time Insensitive Checks which include pattern mapping. The advanced pattern checks require grouping of data to look for patterns. Also, pre-MMP checks should work in tandem with the pre-attribution checks to ensure overall traffic validation. Advanced ad fraud detection tool provides multilayer defense with pre and post-MMP checks along with the capability to block and blacklist specific sub-publishers and traffic sources. Final Thought The advertisers often ensure that impressions are the cleanest matric for making payout for ad campaigns but when it comes to conversions there are stark differences. For an effective and successful ad campaign and to build a clean ecosystem advertisers need a comprehensive solution that provides multi-level defense across the funnel. Valid8 provides full-funnel protection of your campaigns from Invalid Traffic on the web and app to gain ROAS throughout the customer acquisition journey. It includes Branding Campaigns i.e. Programmatic Campaigns covering Frequency Cap Violations and exclusion lists for Made Ads (MFA) Sites with integrated Brand Safety. Optimize performance campaigns by identifying frauds in CPC, CPV, and CPL web campaigns and search keyword fraud. It also provides Visit-Lead Validation with visit analysis based on Visit Intent with Invalid Traffic Validation to ensure validated leads are integrated into CRM. Connect with our experts to explore the possibilities and prevent drainage of your ad budget to optimize your marketing efforts.

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Made for advertising Websites are Burning 15% of Your Ad Budget

Blog, Brand Safety & Protection / mFilterIt Experts

“Know how these Harry Potter characters are doing now? The 3rd one is a shocking revelation!” These headlines are very difficult to resist and where it leads to is another surprise. Often these websites are like a carnival of ads covering every possible space. From flashy ads to pop-up ads, there is an ad at every step of your click. And what about the Harry Potter characters? Well, you will find out only after you make dozens of clicks and pass through multiple pop-up ads. And these digital carnival spaces also have a name. These are called “Made for advertising” websites. According to a recent study by ANA, 21% of the impressions come from the MFA websites. This means that an average of 15% of the ad spends are wasted due to these clickbait websites. Know in detail the impact of MFA websites on the advertiser’s campaign and how advertisers can take the right action to reduce the wastage of ad spend and ensure brand suitability. What are Made for Advertising Websites? Made-for advertising websites are smartly concealed modes for ad arbitrage. These websites as the name suggests are created to show ads. Not one or two but many. The purpose of these websites is to generate traffic to their websites, leveraging search engines and social media platforms at a low cost. These websites are often overloaded with filler and irrelevant content, clickbait headlines, multiple interlinked websites and multi-page articles. This increases the chances of showing display and video ads that can attract more eyes. What do Advertisers think? They are getting a high volume of traffic. The Reality is, The sole purpose of the MFA websites is to bring maximum numbers of ad impressions. However, the truth is not as shiny as it looks. The content and user experience on these websites are way lower than what an advertiser can expect for an ad placement. Users are navigated to non-relatable ads, providing a confusing user experience and in the majority of cases they are also directed to false navigation buttons, to increase page views per session. Some MFA sites also deploy fraudulent techniques like pixel stuffing or ad stacking which enables to loading of ads multiple times delivering maximum views. The thin line of reality of this is it is not seen by the human eye. The Attractive Bait Made-for-advertising websites are an attractive deal for advertisers. Reason? They deliver greater than-average results. According to Ebiquity, the MFA websites deliver a viewability rate of 77% which is way above the media benchmark of 63% as stated by the World Federation of Advertisers. Another selling point for the MFA websites is they have 30-40% lower CPM than other websites. However, the irony is these benefits are a matter of loss for the advertisers. Even though the viewability will be above average, the low-intent clicks will not bring returns. Instead, it is simply a waste of money. Why should Advertisers need to take action against MFA websites? Technically, MFA websites are real websites indexed on search engines. So why should advertisers care if their ads are placed on these websites? Well, every shiny thing is not a diamond. Similarly, these MFA websites might bring a high volume of impressions and show ads to real people but it will not create any brand awareness or bring performance that an advertiser is expecting from an ad placement. What are the risks associated with advertising on MFA websites? Made for advertising is technically not ad fraud, but its impact on a brand is no less than that. If your advertisement is showing up on a made-for-advertising website, then it can have the following impact: Low-quality ad placements: MFA websites are overloaded with ads than content on any of its given pages, which reduces the impact of an ad placement. As a result, an advertiser is paying for a placement that has no engagement. Spike in invalid traffic: Advertisers need to keep a check on the quality of traffic diverting to their website from digital ads. If there is an unusual spike in the traffic but it has a high bounce rate or no end action, then this share of traffic might be attributed to these MFA websites. Damaged brand reputation: MFA websites often use clickbait headlines, emotion-driven stories, fake news, objectionable photos, and other illicit content that advertisers object to being associated with. Appearing beside this content hampers the brand image and leads to a loss of customer trust. Low conversion rate, Poor ROI: Advertising on MFA websites means that your advertising budgets are getting spent on bot clicks. A focused analysis of the funnel performance will help to get transparency of the real quality of ad traffic. How can Advertisers dodge MFA websites during media planning? Stopping MFA websites can be inevitable, but taking the right prevention method will enable advertisers to curb its impact. There are a lot of blame games and finger-pointing happening in the industry about who is accountable for this problem. The SSPs (supply-side platforms) have set policies to forbid publishers from employing MFA site tactics. However, these regulations are not enough to vet the efficacy of the placements in a programmatic setup. Apart from looking at the SSPs and DSPs, advertisers can take the responsibility into their own hands by doing simple maths. If you think that with low CPM, generating a huge number of impressions with little to no action as a result. Or you can spend the same amount and get few impressions but better performance and action from quality traffic. How Advertisers can Maximize their Safety Net? The goal of an MFA website is to make money. Whether it is by showing numerous ads on a single screen, ad inventory that auto-refreshes adding at an abnormal frequency, or numerous links redirecting to further web pages, in some cases unsafe web pages. To avoid being placed on these websites, advertisers need to work with trusted tech partners like mFilterIt. With the transparency of where the ads appear, brands can adhere to the brand safety protocols

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E-commerce 2024 – Vision for the Future

Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / mFilterIt Experts

To expect the unexpected thoroughly shows the modern intellect”. These words of Oscar Wilde feel so apt for the post-pandemic world of e-commerce. The ecosystem picked up pace in most unexpected times and pushed the boundaries and expectations beyond what anyone could prepare for. But as the dust settled the brands and platforms are now in an intense race to go beyond just providing convenience and quality. It is about optimizing customer experience and taking efficiency to the next level. 23%–25% year on year growth is expected in India’s e-retail market. By 2028, it will reach over $160 billion USD. (Source: Bain & Co. Report) 2024 is going to be the year where brands and platforms need to efficiently predict what customers need and match the pace of evolving digital commerce ecosystem. E-Commerce vision for the future – Next level customer experience The AI/ML is changing the world as we know it with rapid pace. Brands need swift actions and platforms need wider expansions as customer behavior and needs for enriched experience are evolving. Even the world biggest e-commerce marketplace is pushing it to extend its reach with launch of new features that engage customers like recently launched AI-Generated Review Highlights. It’s a short paragraph featuring most frequently mentioned product feature across written review highlighted on product detail page. Such value to customer sentiments build trust among the new shoppers and leave positive impression. It helps shoppers purchase decision and confidently navigate. It also eases the review submission process and help combat fake reviews. In last decade, Digital native brands selling online-first make up two-thirds of sales among top 10 global e-retailers. (Source: Bain & Co. Report) In past years platforms introduced several innovations some of them specific to the Indian market. This includes features like voice search, product video, and shopping interface in regional language, which helped double the users and its usage year-on-year (YoY). To elevate the shopping experience more platforms are moving towards emerging tools such as augmented reality (AR) and AI-driven solutions in 2024 allowing customers to virtually place products in real-world settings. Pushing for initiatives such as integrated live streaming, live promotions, product highlighting, and utilizing chat features for ease in shopping and handling grievances is making the shopping experience more interactive and engaging. Influencers bring in new shoppers and new revenue streams. Live streams by influencers covering domains like fashion, lifestyle, tech, gaming, home decor, beauty, and sports are new ways to advertise products and platforms. Various marketplace and D2C brands running an Influencer Program to monetize their content and open new shopping avenues. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are turning into new e-commerce shops bringing extensive reach to shopping platforms. Challenges for Brands and platforms in 2024 The major challenge for brands in 2024 is staying ahead of the competition and exploring new markets. The competition across e-commerce and quick commerce landscape has always been intense but now it’s fiercer than ever. Shoppers now look to explore more options and strive for products that suit their lifestyle choices. Brands that have a wide presence in the physical retail space now moving online for not just sales but visibility in the digital landscape. D2C brands which have their own set of niche audiences are now pushing for online marketplaces to expand to new shoppers. The number of SKUs that need to be monitored has risen as multiple competitors are present across categories, sub-categories, geographies, platforms, and product variants. Real-time monitoring and ecommerce competitive analysis lead to better decision-making and more decisive strategies that help, understand competition, market trends, and customer behavior. Brands monitoring their products on multiple e-commerce quick commerce and e-commerce platforms and adhering to the platform guidelines to optimize performance is key to having as successful 2024. 1 out 3 shoppers are now Gen Z and Tier 2+ cities are dominating the market with 7 out of 10 online shoppers (Source: Bain & Co. Report) For platforms, the major challenge is optimizing efficiencies and enriching the customer experience. With multiple shopping options available across geographies, it is important for platforms to provide a customer experience that makes shoppers prefer their platforms. Quick commerce platforms are not just challenging the e-commerce platforms but also making their own space among shoppers. Quick commerce platforms are got wider acceptance in 2023 and looking to expand more inventory as they move into 2024 with rising presence and demand in tier-2 cities. Swift delivery and an expanding range of product categories have made them the talk of the town for the last-minute needs be it a party, festive celebration, or daily needs. The Final Thought Adapt, learn and keep moving forward. The world of digital shopping is evolving, customer choices and preferences are evolving with individuals looking for products that suits their lifestyle needs. Brands need to keep up with the trends and stay in tune with market dynamics with competitive analytics that provide real-time data and actionable insights that can help shape brands marketing efforts and data-driven decision making. 2024 is going to be a year of evolution where data and tech will drive efficiencies and take customer experience to the next level. What brand need is a digital commerce intelligence companion in 2024 to lead their ways. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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Major Indian Asset Management Company Enhances Digital Performance

Ad Fraud, Case Study / mFilterIt Experts

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of digital marketing, even major players sometimes find themselves grappling with challenges that seem insurmountable. This case study delves into the digital journey of a prominent asset management company in India, which was confronted with a trio of perplexing problems in its digital marketing campaigns. The client witnessed a dramatic reduction in wastage, resulting in significant cost savings. Wastage of ad spend was reduced by almost 60% and improved conversion rates DOWNLOAD FULL CASE STUDY (PDF) Submit REQUEST FREE AUDIT

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Decode the Fraud Series: Cracking Down on Click Spamming?

Leave a Comment / Ad Fraud, Blog / mFilterIt Experts

While online fraud perhaps started with email spamming, it has come a long way. Today, ad fraud takes many forms, and it costs digital advertisers several billion dollars. According to Statista Reports, within the 5 years between 2023 & 2028, the costs due to digital advertising fraud will increase from $88 billion to $172 billion. The lure of making quick money has motivated modern fraudsters to employ sophisticated techniques to commit fraud. Ad fraud techniques such as domain spoofing, cookie stuffing, ad stacking, ad injection, geo masking, and many others are just a few of the many techniques employed by modern fraudsters. Ad fraud is a serious problem that drains budgets and can cause long-term damage by skewing campaign performance data. Awareness is the first step for any advertiser looking to protect their ad campaigns and the budgets associated with them. This article will help you build this awareness. In the subsequent sections of this article, you will gain an in-depth understanding of one of the most prevalent click fraud techniques- click spamming. Let’s dive right in: What Is Click Spamming? Click spamming is a click fraud technique that involves the generation of fake clicks on ads or app download links. With click spamming, the clicks generated often come from genuine devices with authentic devices and user IDs. Click spamming can take many forms. Some of the most common ones are: Click Flooding- Fraudsters generate several fake clicks on ads within an app. Generating Fake Impressions- Fraudsters use a mobile app to generate fake views on videos in the background. The user is often unaware of this activity. In some cases, the app may place multiple ‘hidden’ ads within the ad interface and get credit for authentic impressions when a user views them. Organic Poaching- Fraudsters use malware-laced apps to claim credit for authentic app downloads. How Does Click Spamming Happen? Click spamming activity usually happens in one of the following two ways: Click Flooding and Generating Fake Impressions To execute this type of click fraud, the fraudster first places a utility app on the app download store. Examples of such apps may include a torch app or a calculator. However, this activity is not limited to utility apps and has been observed in games and other types of apps. Once a user has downloaded the app, it continues to run in the background. Without the knowledge of the user, the app’s in-built features generate automated clicks on ads. Similar techniques are used to generate impressions and views. Organic Poaching With organic poaching, the app downloaded by the user generates a number of clicks within the app. In some cases, it may be designed to enable an external device to click within the app. This goes on until the user downloads a promoted app or makes an in-app purchase. When they do, the credit is stolen by the fraudsters using organic poaching. While the obvious impact of such click fraud activities is the lost ad budget, there is a deeper, more serious problem. Click and impression fraud can distort advertisers’ analytics, compromising their ability to make informed decisions. Access to data, the ability to test different ads and audiences, and the ability to optimize campaigns are perhaps the most pressing reasons to use digital advertising. Click fraud prevents advertisers from enjoying the full benefits of this access to data and associated benefits. Difference Between Click Spamming and Botnet Activity Click spamming and botnet activity have a few similarities and are often confused with each other. Both involve generating a large number of clicks on mobile apps, mobile landing pages, and web pages. However, the key difference lies in the source of the clicks. How To Identify Click Spamming in Your Ad Campaigns? Click spamming can be difficult to detect. This is because the origin of the clicks is an authentic device with a genuine device ID. That said, detecting click spamming isn’t impossible. If your ads are receiving a lot of traffic from a source, but the conversion rate is unusually low, it may be a sign of click spamming. To be sure, you can: Look into the publisher app. If the app does not have a lot of downloads but is generating a disproportionate number of clicks, consider it a red flag. It is also worth watching out for apps that haven’t been validated by Google’s Play Store. However, do you remember that there may be some genuine apps that have chosen to forego the validation process to protect their code? If you suspect a conversion, check the time between a click and a conversion. In most cases of organic poaching, fraudsters claim a conversion sometime after the click has been generated. How To Stop Click Spamming? Once you have identified sources of fake clicks, you can simply block them. However, doing this at scale every day is often not practical or effective. Manually tracking click spamming activity can be time-consuming. Moreover, the process is prone to human errors that may lead you to overlook important sources of clicks. Similarly, in some cases, wrong judgment may lead advertisers to block genuine sources of authentic conversions. The most reliable way to fight click spamming is to use an ad fraud solution like mFilterIt. mFilterIt uses its AI and ML capabilities to pinpoint verified instances of click spamming and also identify human-like traffic sources. This paints a transparent picture of your campaign performance and allows you to block sources of fraudulent traffic. Conclusion Click spamming is a serious fraud issue, but the unfortunate reality is that it is not the only one. Click fraud and other forms of online ad fraud are plaguing ad budgets and campaign reports. While this means that some advertisers will continue to struggle, for smart advertisers, this presents an opportunity to get ahead. Think about it, simply by using an ad fraud tool, you can improve campaign performance and the accuracy of your attribution sources. Get in Touch to learn more about click spamming.

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Why Marketing Without Security Is A Serious Threat?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Advertising / mFilterIt Experts

Ad Fraud is not a term anymore that needs an introduction for marketers. There is frequent news about how fraudsters are evolving and stealing billions of dollars from marketers every year. As marketers are getting creative with their digital marketing efforts, fraudsters are also upgrading their fraud techniques. And as the fraudsters attempt to enter the new paid media realms like connected TV (CTV), the marketers have to become more vigilant. Meanwhile, the fraud security professionals have focused majorly on identity and payment fraud, the fraudsters have spread their horizons to trick the security professionals. They have evolved over time and came up with other forms of fraud methods like: Ecommerce Fraud Credential Stuffing Web Recon Malvertising Seeing the current threats from cybercriminals, it has become essential for marketers to collaborate with a holistic ad fraud detection and prevention solution. If you’re still not convinced, below we have covered the impact of ad fraud on vulnerable marketing and what is the solution. Impact of Ad Fraud on Vulnerable Marketing Lost Revenue: When the bots attack the marketing campaigns, an advertiser’s ad budget takes a toll. The advertisers are under the impression that their ad campaigns are attracting a load of traffic. However, the reality is that the traffic generated by bots is a waste. Even after investing a huge ad budget, the marketers neither get genuine traffic nor they are able to improve their ROI. Skewed Analytics: The success of an ad campaign is analyzed based on various metrics like site visits, clicks, and installs. However, when attacked by bots, these campaign data become skewed and give irrelevant data generated by bots from the campaign performance. This may further mislead the marketing teams into thinking their campaigns are performing well when in reality they are not. Poor Customer Experience: The brands attacked by the fraudsters do not just end up losing revenue, they have to deal with other problems related to the consumers. When the user clicks on a fraudulent ad, they have to incur problems like forced redirects or unauthorized malware installation. And, as a result, the consumer blames the brand for the inconvenience instead of considering it a fraudulent attack. Damage to Customer Trust: When a fraudster attacks a website or app, the consumer’s data is at risk. For instance, due to credential stuffing, the safety of the consumer’s account is compromised. The fraudsters hack their account to steal gift certificates and credit cards saved with the account. Furthermore, the brands lose time and money to invalid traffic while the genuine customers drift away upon feeling cheated. Holistic Way to Combat Ad Fraud Full-Funnel Model: For a marketing team, fraud detection must mean more than just eliminating fraud from ad campaigns. They must focus on other aspects like improved ROI and conversion rate along with cleaner traffic. To ensure this, the marketing team must focus on a full-funnel fraud detection model. This will help to eliminate the impact of sophisticated bots across the funnel. Real-Time Data Update: The marketing team must ensure to get real-time updates to take immediate action against ad fraud. With real-time ad fraud detection, marketers can optimize their ad campaigns before any serious loss. Due to real-time fraud detection, marketers can take an informed decision against fraudulent sources and protect their ad campaigns from the impact of fraud. Log-Level Data Analysis: To reduce false positives and take accurate measures against the sources of ad fraud, the marketers must have log-level data. By analyzing the log-level fraud data, the marketers can get an insight into the fraud sources, techniques, and how it is impacting their ad campaign. With the help of this detailed summary of fraud, marketers can take an informed decision for taking preventative actions. How mFilterIt can protect your marketing spends? To prevent wastage of ad spends on invalid traffic, our Ad Traffic Validation suite does deep checks to detect fraud at every stage of the sales funnel. Furthermore, our solution is equipped with features like real-time reporting and log-level fraud data. This helps the marketers to get a better understanding of how ad fraud has impacted their ad campaigns. Alongside this, we also ensure to do a transaction-level fraud analysis to detect fraudulent sources and blacklist them in real-time. Conclusion Ad fraud prevention is not a choice anymore for the marketing teams. No matter how much effort is given to optimize the ad campaigns, if the fraudsters manage to seep through the process, they can rip off all the ad spends. Thus, the marketing efforts must combine with a holistic ad fraud detection & prevention solution to ensure that the traffic coming on campaigns is – Clean Traffic AKA Real Humans. To ensure that your ad campaigns stay protected from ad fraud, get in touch with our ad fraud experts today!

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Click Integrity: A Solution to Combat Click Fraud in Acquisition Campaigns

Blog, Digital Advertising / mFilterIt Experts

A ‘Click’ is all that matters to begin a user’s journey on an app or a website. Click integrity is a component that essentially defines whether the click is legit or not. Click is a vital ‘attribution’ responsible for measuring the click-through rate (CTR) and an essential factor for ‘click-based’ campaigns. Click integrity is a pre-attribution check that helps block invalid clicks before they reach the MMPs, leading to bad installs. It also helps to reduce unnecessary click load on the Attribution Platform, thereby reducing the costs of Attribution Platform spending by Advertisers. So, it is a contributing factor towards saving on the marketing budget. However, fraudsters cannibalize a brand’s traffic, and the process is revocable through a few actionable measures. Furthermore, the invalid clicks pose the following implications: Implications of the Invalid Clicks Reliance on MMP Data The advertisers mostly rely on sources attributed through the MMPs. However, in the absence of a pre-MMP fraud detection mechanism, advertisers primarily depend upon MMP’s elementary fraud checks to ascertain the validity of a click. Having a single source for defining click integrity makes the advertiser more worried about campaign performance. Moreover, the assurance of the MMP doesn’t prove helpful because the sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) penetration is never caught. Untrustworthy Ecosystem Advertisers often mistake high-volume clicks to signify ‘amazing’ campaign performance/high CTR. However, upon reviewing the sources of ‘clicks,’ i.e., measuring click integrity, they often encounter ad fraud and inconsistencies. What happens next? The advertiser no longer trusts ad networks or affiliates and seeks alternative marketing strategies or advertising methods for acquiring users. The large-scale distrust of multiple advertisers directly impacts the overall ecosystem. ‘Double’ Payouts from Advertising Budget for Invalid Traffic Clicks are sourced to the MMP through multiple sources and activities. The advertisers make payouts to these sources. By the end of the day, the advertiser pays the ‘attribution’ cost on MMP and the ‘acquisition’ cost (CPC/CPI) to the source. Illegitimate sources steal the organic traffic and get paid for organically arrived users by firing fraudulent clicks. Does this make’ click integrity’ essential for you as an advertiser? So, what is happening behind damaged click integrity? To answer this, let’s go back to a more important question “What is the objective of the ad?” You’d get lower ad performance as an advertiser if you could not weed out the invalid clicks. Critical Indicators of Invalid Click Traffic Repeated/Multiple Clicks “Due to last-click attribution, fraudsters can easily capture the organic traffic by firing millions of repeated clicks in the background on a single device-id.” This means that a fraudulent source converts your organic traffic to inorganic traffic. The incrementality of these users in these cases will be ‘0’ as these would be coming from the source who has captured the last click Attribution, which essentially means that you are paying for your traffic. Click spamming skews the campaign performance and the advertising budgets as the fraudulent source gets paid for your organic traffic. The simplest way to identify click spamming would be to look at the CTIT and the Click to Install conversion ratio. Click-to-Install Time (CTIT): If you analyze the click-to-install pattern over a period, the CTIT curve would be a declining trend with 70-80% of the installs coming within the first few hours followed by a declining tail towards the end of the day. The time gap between click and install will not be very high for a standard traffic source. A typical user will click a source and then install an app. However, in an abnormal traffic source, you would see a large CTIT. It can’t be that a user clicked on an Ad, and installs are seen coming after a considerable gap or maybe after a day or even more. Click-to-Install Conversion Ratio (CVR): If the click-to-install conversion ratio is extremely low, i.e., less than <0.01% coming from a specific source/sub-source and sometimes more than that region’s population, this is a clear case of click spamming. Analyzing the Campaigns with anomalies like looking at long CTIT and an exceptionally high number of clicks with a scanty conversion rate of <0.01% CR is also not good enough!!! These clicks spamming should be blocked in real time to prevent organic traffic from converting to inorganic traffic. Invalid Devices Spurts of concentrated click traffic coming from invalid Make-Model, which don’t exist in the real world. The heavily correlated, linked clicks indicate that this behavior is identified and can be blocked in real time. This helps save the attribution cost as you weed out the bot devices. Invalid GEOs Proxies or VPNs are used to fake geographies. A high % of click penetration coming from a specific GEO location can be identified and blocked. IP Repetitions/Blacklisted IPs IP addresses are randomly allocated to users and are hobbled between users in a pool by Internet Service Providers. Extreme repetition or disproportionate IP addresses are generally not expected from clean traffic. However, Bots use servers, so spikes or clustering patterns are seen. The same IP addresses are repeatedly used across days for different SETS of device IDs. The IP addresses follow a pattern and sequence indicating fake clicks. These might come from VPNs, Proxies, Data Centres, or other sources. mFilterIt helps identify clicks coming from the blacklisted IPs and blocks the clicks coming from these blacklisted IPs in real time. Key Takeaways Based upon the integrity of the click, the click is sent either to the MMP for processing or gets rejected. It basically acts as a firewall for the install and post-install events and thus helps in weeding out the invalid clicks in real-time and thereby cleans the ecosystems. To conclude, click integrity filters invalid/malicious clicks from genuine clicks. mFilterIt (click fraud solution) helps the advertisers validate the click’s integrity and identify abnormal patterns such as repetitive behavior of Clicks, IPs and Device-IDs, Blacklisted IPs, Invalid Make-Models, and Invalid GEOs, which indicate BOTs and spamming behavior. Get in touch to learn more about the Click Integrity.

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Ad Fraud in Performance Vs. Brand Campaigns

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / mFilterIt Experts

Digital Marketing spending is growing at a 9% CAGR globally, and digital media today has become a non-negotiable medium to reach out to consumers/audiences. For a marketer, the 2 obvious choices are to run either performance or brand campaigns to reach, act, convert, and engage with their target audience. While Performance campaigns are directly associated with results achieved, Brand campaigns’ focus is to ensure visibility and recall. Brand campaigns rely largely on viewability (impressions), while performance campaigns focus on down-the-funnel metrics. Performance marketing focuses on CPI, CPV, cost per sale, conversion rate, etc. on the other hand, the share of voice through mentions, sentiments, tags, etc., measures brand campaigns. Marketers and advertisers spend a large portion (>50%) of their digital advertising budget on these two campaigns. Our research suggests that it takes 6 to 8 impressions for someone to build a recall value of your brand. The regular reappearance of the brand ensures higher recognition of the solutions it offers. Viewability, according to IAB is, 50% of the ad’s pixels are visible in the browser window for a continuous 1 second. For larger ads (those greater than 242,000 pixels), 30% of the ad’s pixels are visible in the browser window. The same applies to video ads but for a minimum of two seconds. Ad viewability is the topmost layer of an ad metric. Fraudsters use fake impressions, bot impressions, ad stacking, and pixel stuffing for impression fraud. Meanwhile, performance campaigns work down the funnel and measure clicks, visits, events, and conversions. Clicks are important because they define the website traffic from online advertising. Visits account for the number of people who viewed the URL associated with the ad. Similarly, events could include installs, add-to carts, registrations, signups, conversions, etc. A close look at click-to-visit ratios and a visit-to-conversion ratio will give you the efficacy of your performance campaign. Cybercriminals impact these through click fraud, lead generation fraud, CPA fraud, influencer marketing fraud, cookie stuffing, click farms, and domain spoofing. The impact of ad fraud also influences programmatic, affiliate, and retargeting campaigns. The result of ad fraud is higher ad budgets, lower ROIs, diminished brand safety, fraudulent analytics, and infiltration of cybercriminals in customer data systems and ad servers. Ad Fraud in Brand Campaigns Impressions are the measure of brand recognition through online ad campaigns. Most digital brand advertisements are based on cost-per-mille (CPM), a.k.a., cost per thousand impressions. Total impressions determine the campaign cost in a CPM advert. The impressions also determine the reach of the advertising channel and total ad viewers in a specific channel. Ad fraud in impression-based campaigns happens when a fraudster opens a fake website, joins an ad exchange, loads ads on a fake website uses bots for page loading & impressions, and sells the impression inventory to the ad exchange. The common methods of impression fraud include the following: Pixel Stuffing Loading a 1×1 pixel ad on a page counts as an ad served but is not visible to the human eye. Ad Stacking Piling one ad on top of the other and keeping the original ad at the top. The impression counts for all ads, even when the top ad blocks ads below it. Fake Websites Using bad bots to generate impressions on fake websites created solely to sell inventory that does not have human visitations. Bot Inventory on Genuine Websites Fraudsters use bots to fulfill the “most required inventory” needs of the advertisers for acquiring credit and financial gain. Auto Impressions Running in-app ads (even on inactive apps) on mobile devices to auto-generate impressions. Determining ad fraud in impression-based campaigns is challenging because the analytics reveal more data than performance-oriented ads. You only have the option of comparing CTR with impressions. High impressions mean an advertisement has significant exposure. Typically, campaigns with high impressions experience a high click-through rate (CTR). Under the unlikely circumstance that you have low CTR and high impressions, the ad is possibly incurring fraudulent activity in the background. Businesses thinking that programmatic or retargeting can resolve issues about brand campaigns should know that it’s not true. Fraudsters have spoofed domains, penetrated customer data systems, and used bots to act as a target for remarketing lists. So, ad fraud is prevalent in brand campaigns. Furthermore, brands should optimize programmatic campaigns by incorporating inclusion lists consisting of URLs where the ads should be placed. This fear of programmatic ads landing on sites built for ad fraud has become a common affair. Fake websites distort the analytics of brand campaigns. The unexplainable ad impressions can only account for invalid traffic as only 36% of the online traffic is human. Moreover, sometimes programmatic campaigns declare results higher than the population of a location. So, ensuring that ads are delivered to humans is a serious concern. Ad Fraud in Performance Campaigns All marketers and advertisers rely on analytics for creating brand strategies. Infiltration of ad fraud into the data falsifies the results, gives false hopes, increases the marketing budget, and doesn’t reach a large proportion of the human audience. Popular researchers quote that ad fraud would exceed $50 billion by 2023. Moreover, nearly 40% of advertisers think that ad fraud is a significant downside of programmatic ads. For example, fake clicks display that the campaign achieved higher performance than expected, but in reality, engagements with bots will not bring home any business. Ad fraud is still happening even after optimizing the campaign with geolocation, remarketing lists, and pre-bid programmatic placements. Fraudsters use the following methods to target performance campaigns of brands: Click Spamming Executing clicks on behalf of real users without their consent in the background and claiming credit for obtaining financial gain from advertisers. Click Injection Using malware in apps to stay alert about “install broadcasts” and obtaining the last-click attribution through click firing before the new app installation. SDK Spoofing Tricking advertisers to believe that their ad will appear on premium apps, whereas it appears on fraudulent apps through SDK spoofing. Lead Generation Fraud Filling lead forms using real or fake user information with

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