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Decoding complex digital challenges like ad fraud, brand safety, brand protection, and ecommerce intelligence for brands to help them advertise fearlessly.

osint technology

How a Real Estate Player Secured Its Digital Identity with OSINT-Powered Solution?

Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability /

Imagine this- a consumer goes online to find a real estate project where they can purchase a home. They start their search on a well-known search engine and come across results from some of the most reputed names in the real estate game in the country. They click on one of the sponsored results, look through the website, and shortlist a project that aligns with their needs. This prospect then fills out a contact form which subsequently leads to a call with the builder’s sales team. The salesperson informs the prospect that they will have to pay a small fee as an expression of interest in the project, to reserve their property. To incentivize the prospect, the sales rep even promises to offer them a competitive price that almost seems too good to be true. Considering the opportunity cost of not acting immediately, the prospect makes the expression of interest payment. However, they never receive any confirmation from the builder’s side and are never able to reach the sales rep again. This unsuspecting prospect has just fallen victim to a scam. While this scenario may seem far-fetched to some, it is an unfortunately frequent occurrence in the realm of digital ads and real estate. While the plight of the victim of the scam, the consumer is evident, the builders whose names are used to execute such scams stand to lose a lot more. For the builders, such instances translate into lost revenue, legal issues, and broken customer trust. To further cement the notion that this isn’t a made-up scenario, here’s a case study about one of our clients who was facing a similar predicament, and was able to get out of it with the help of Brand Protection Tool. Let’s find out more about this case: The Challenge: Why Real Estate Brands Are at High Risk Big real estate firms face an enormous yet hidden risk in the online realm. Scammers can employ a number of methods to dupe unwitting consumers while also tarnishing the name of the builder. Some of the most common ways scammers do this are: Fake Property Listings This is perhaps the most common and the easiest way for scammers to steal money from potential customers of real estate firms. Scammers create fake property listings on popular listing websites and use them to lure potential buyers. From this point, depending on how much they are able to influence individual buyers, scammers take money from them in the form of visitation charges to booking amounts for reserving a property for purchase at a later date. Impersonation & Brand Misuse This method is quite similar to the previous one, except with this, scammers are not limited to property listing websites. They may go one step further by creating fake social media profiles or even fake websites under the name of reputable real estate players. Using these, they can once again attract potential buyers and scam them. Intellectual Property Violations Real estate businesses have to publish a variety of documents when advertising a project. Since most such documents, such as floor plans and certificates are available in the public domain, they can be used by scammers to appear authentic in front of potential customers. Besides causing distress to buyers and potential customers, such practices cause a lot of damage to authentic and well-meaning real estate players. Consumers who fall victim to these scams often form the impression that the actual real estate business has tried to outsmart them. While clarification on the subject can change this notion, providing such clarifications to tens of customers every day can prove impractical. In fact, a similar reason is behind the widespread proliferation of such scams. Since it is impossible to manually track every instance of a brand’s name being used by a third party, especially in the case of big brand names, scammers take advantage of volume to outsmart vigilance. The Solution: AI-Powered Brand Protection for Real Estate While manual tracking cannot solve this problem, overcoming this issue is possible. With the Brand monitoring tool, such as the mFilterIt solution, real estate businesses can track and monitor instances of fraud and protect their prospects, customers, and most importantly, their brand image. At mFilterIt, we used the following brand protection features to help our client overcome the dangers of online scams: · Automated Digital Scanning: This feature is designed to detect fake listings, impersonations, and other forms of unauthorized brand usage. The AI-enabled feature does the tracking across platforms, including property listing websites, social media platforms, ad platforms, and even search engine result pages. · ML-Based Categorization: In severe cases, automated digital scanning can uncover hundreds, even thousands of instances of brand impersonation. Dealing with so many cases one by one can take a long time. With Machine Learning (ML) based categorization, mFilterIt helped by identifying and prioritizing high-risk cases for quick takedowns and bulletproof protection. · Confidence Scoring: Confidence Scoring is a feature that assigns a severity score to violations, based on the amount of risk they pose against the brand and its customers and prospects. · Data-Driven Enforcement: All of the data points collected using the previously mentioned features are presented in an easily digestible format on a central dashboard. This dashboard enables smart and quick decision-making, enabling brand managers to monitor their brand protection in real-time. The Results: Real Impact So what did we achieve by helping our client? How big was the problem? Did we manage to solve it? Here are the numbers: Our solution detected 1,177 cases of brand impersonation in the span of just six months. With this data, we took down 905 fake listings and fake social media accounts spread across five different platforms. New fake pages and listings that would pop up on our radar were being removed in an average of 1-2 days. As a result of this exercise, the brand experienced an improvement in its brand reputation and enjoyed enhanced customer trust. Evaluating a Brand Protection Solution for Real Estate Real estate

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brand safety guide to auditing ad placements

Is Your Brand Safe? A Step-by-Step Guide to Auditing Your Ad Placements

Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability /

Digital advertising has grown into a vast industry. Thousands of advertisers use advertising networks to publish their ads through millions of publishers. This scale in the ability to reach consumers is nothing short of a miracle, especially for smaller businesses trying to cut through the noise created by their larger competitors. However, thanks to the same scale, there are grave issues concerning all advertisers, regardless of the size of their business or advertising budget.   In this article, we are focusing on one of the most pressing issues faced by digital advertisers- tracking where their ads appear in the digital ecosystem. Why does it matter? Just as a good placement will drive more sales, a bad placement may result in a wasted ad budget or worse, it may end up harming your brand’s image.   This flaw in the way the digital ad industry operates has been exposed by a recent report published by Adalytics. According to the report, ads representing some of the biggest, most well-known brands across the globe were found to be hosted on websites that publish and host child sexual abuse material (CSAM).  The irreparable damage to brand reputation in such a case is not difficult to imagine. Thankfully, there’s a lot that advertisers can do to prevent their ads from being published with harmful or illegal content. This guide will walk you through all the steps you can take to protect your brand against such threats.  Let’s start at the beginning:  Step 1: Gain Visibility – Understanding Your Ad Placements  The first step to safeguarding your brand against problematic ad placements is to understand how ad placements are decided. One of the most common ways to publish ads at scale is to use programmatic ad platforms. These platforms, in theory, allow advertisers to precisely target specific audiences at scale, in real-time.   However, since programmatic platforms operate using a complex ecosystem of algorithms, supply-side platforms, and delivery-side platforms, advertisers have extremely limited visibility into their ad placements.   This was evident in the Adalytics report that highlighted big brand names like Amazon, Arizona State University, and even US Government Departments like the Office Of Texas Governor were found to be unaware of their ads appearing on a website that would also host CSAM content.   This lack of transparency on programmatic campaigns can be counteracted with the right tool.   One of the best ways to ensure that your ads are placed in a safe environment is by implementing a brand safety monitoring solution . mFilterIt’s brand safety tool makes use of real-time monitoring to help advertisers get transparency on their ad placements, where it is getting placed to ensure that their brand name is not associated with appraising advertisers about all the brand safety issues that they may be facing, presented through an actionable data points dashboard. The dashboard offers a categorized view of all unsafe content categories, along with risk levels and a detailed list of placements on which advertisers can take proactive action to safeguard their interests.  Step 2: Conduct Content Safety Analysis Once it is clear how ad placements are decided and you have set up the tracking for the same, it is time to ensure your ads are appearing next to contextually relevant content. While programmatic advertising promises the same, the CSAM case has made it clear that the content verification methods of ad networks are incredibly lacking.  Once again, a reliable brand safety tool can prove extremely handy in such a situation. The tool features a Content Safety Analysis feature that is designed to detect harmful content environments that may not be suited to hosting a specific advertiser’s ads. The tool should not just consider safe ad placements but monitor and flag content based on contextuality and relevancy.   Step 3: Check the Website’s Safety Parameters  Next, brands and advertisers must conduct individual website audits to determine whether a publisher is suited to host their ads. These checks are important because in many cases, a website may seem like a safe bet at a glance but may be holding questionable content within its deep pages. The website exposed in the Adalytics report is a good example of the same. At a glance, it seems like a safe image-hosting website. However, by monitoring the specific URLs one can identify harmful or illicit content websites like the CSAM content.  To make sure none of your ads appear on a questionable website, analyze the list of websites associated with an advertising platform on the following metrics: Website Basics: These include the URLs, titles, meta descriptions, and tags associated with the pages where the ads may appear. While these may seem like rudimentary aspects of website analysis, one may find themselves surprised at how much information these tidbits of a website contain.  Website History: This one may be familiar to many business owners. Checking the history of the website for instances of blacklisting from an advertising platform is a great way to ensure that the ads are appearing in a reputed publication. To be thorough, it is a good idea to also check for historical instances of policy violations.  Domain Safety: Advertisers must also give the domain of the publishers a second look to scan for terms that may not align with their brand safety standards.  Whois Information: The Whois Database is a superb resource for checking any website’s hosting details, credibility indicators, and the name(s) of the owner(s). This information can be used in conjunction with the website’s history and basics to make sure that the website in question truly fits within the brand’s safety guidelines.  These checks, when done thoroughly, can do wonders for ensuring your brand’s safety in the ad ecosystem. However, a typical ad network may have thousands of publishers suited to an advertiser’s targeting needs. Analyzing thousands of websites can prove to be cumbersome, to say the least. For such cases, a tool like PACE can be beneficial. It helps advertisers build an exclusion list and ensure that any of

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How Fraudsters Manipulate App Installs and What Marketers Can Do About It?

Blog, Mobile Ad Fraud /

Mobile apps are big business and the same is apparent through the significant advertising budgets dedicated to increasing app installs. In 2022 alone, advertisers spent more than $18 billion on advertising their apps to drive more installs. This makes the app install advertising business lucrative.   Unfortunately, this lure also attracts bad actors and frauds. That’s perhaps why, today, app install fraud is one of the most common forms of ad fraud in the online realm. According to our analysis, we have found that on IOS, the average fraud at the install level is 57% which rapidly increases to 70% on Android devices.   Fraudsters use fake app installs to steal from advertising budgets. The financial impact of this, while significant, is only a small part of all the trouble caused for the advertisers as a result of these activities. What’s more troublesome is that fraudsters are evolving their methods and employing sophisticated methods to carry out their fraudulent activities.    In times like these, advertisers need to start ahead of the curve to protect their ad budgets. To do this, one must first understand how app install fraud works and that’s exactly what the next section describes. Read on.  The Hidden Tactics Behind Install Fraud While it may seem like app install fraud is a single threat, the reality is much more complex. Fraudsters utilize several simple and complex methods to fake installs and steal from advertisers’ budgets. Here’s a quick overview of the most common methods employed by app install fraudsters:  – Click Injection: This is one of the most sophisticated forms of app install fraud. To execute this, fraudsters publish an app that “listens” for app download broadcasts. Using this information, they can “inject” a click right before an app install is completed. This allows fraudsters to claim the credit for the app install despite not contributing anything to make it happen.  – Click Spamming: Click spamming is usually employed to target campaigns where advertisers are paying for clicks on their ads. As the name suggests, fraudsters generate a large number of fake clicks, usually using bots, and claim the rewards. However, the advertiser unfortunately ends up paying for clicks that will not result in any genuine interest or installs of their application.  – Organic Hijacking: Another sophisticated form of app install fraud; organic hijacking works by stealing the credit of organic installs. Fraudsters employ malware or other methods to send a fake click right before an app download is completed, claiming the credit for the app installs, along with the associated reward.   – Incent traffic: This type of app install fraud is one of the most difficult to detect, as it uses real users to scam advertisers. In this type of fraud, fraudsters place ads on incent walls and incentivize real users to download an application and in some cases, complete an action that claims the reward. In many cases, fraudsters straight out share a part of their affiliate payout with the user. While there are real users involved and the app download is also authentic, since the user is only interested in the reward, the entire activity doesn’t drive any value for the advertiser.   – SDK Spoofing: With SDK Spoofing, fraudsters usually use a malware-laced app of their own to infect user devices. This app then manipulates the SDK communication of the advertisers’ apps to generate fake installs and register other actions that may be rewarded by the advertiser. Alarmingly, such an activity is extremely difficult to track and can be conducted indefinitely, effectively draining entire ad budgets without delivering any real value.   But Aren’t Fraud Checks by MMPs Enough?   Impression campaigns are often the first leg of a successful, larger ad campaign that may target app installs. As a first step, getting authentic impressions is important to make informed decisions to drive more app installs. To make sure their impression campaign data is authentic, many advertisers depend on Mobile Measurement Platforms or MMPs.  Unfortunately, MMPs are not as capable or dependable as many advertisers have been led to believe. One of the biggest problems with MMPs is that they are paid for impression attribution and not validation. To that end, if they start reporting all the fraudulent impressions, it may affect their revenue associated with attribution.   Moreover, in cases where MMPs can detect and report impression fraud, the standard timeline is simply too slow to make any real impact. Most MMPs follow a D+7 reporting schedule, creating a significant delay between the moment a fraudulent activity is detected and the time when an advertiser finds out about it. Finally, most MMPs employ basic checks to detect fraud which are largely ineffective against sophisticated ad fraud techniques.  The Cost of Fake Installs: Why It’s More Than Just Wasted Budget  No doubt, the wasted ad budget is perhaps the most obviously painful effect of ad fraud experienced by advertisers. However, impact of ad fraud goes much deeper than draining your budget and can have a long-term impact on the business.   Fraudulent activities, when undetected, can also skew the ad performance data that advertisers depend on to make optimization decisions. These distorted key performance indicators (KPIs) can further lead to advertisers making optimization decisions that waste even more of their marketing budget.  Not to forget, skewed metrics also impact other decisions related to user acquisition and experience. The wrong decisions, especially in the case of user experience, can lead businesses to decisions that worsen the experience of installing and using their apps, negatively impacting long-term user retention and organic App Store/Play Store rankings.   In other words, a wasted ad budget is just the tip of the iceberg. App install fraud can impact user data analytics which can, in turn, impact long-term marketing ROI. Red Flags Valid8 has Detected  Fighting fraud starts with detecting fraud. Advertisers must stay vigilant and look for the following signs to catch instances of fraud and deal with the fraudsters before they can cause significant harm:  Abnormally Low Conversion Rate– An

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how to detect and prevent ppc fraud in app campaigns

What Advertisers Need to Know When Addressing PPC Ad Fraud?

Blog, Ad Fraud /

If you’re running a PPC campaign, check your analytics data.   Do you see a rapid curve of increase in click traffic, while your installs or events remain low?   This is one of the classic signs that you need to get your ad traffic vetted, as it might be under the radar of ad fraud perpetrators.   Over time fraudulent parties in the digital ecosystem have evolved and indulged in sophisticated fraud techniques to gain maximum benefit. The techniques have become more human-like and difficult to detect.   As a result, these fraudulent techniques not only impact the bottom line of a digital brand but also weaken the efficiency of the campaigns. From driving bot traffic to breaching the walled gardens, they have perfected their practices over time. One of them has been PPC fraud techniques which are not just limited to web but also app campaigns.   As the spending on mobile app marketing increases, it has become a gold mine for fraudsters to dig for money Types of in-app PPC Advertising Fraud Unlike web campaigns, app-based PPC fraud operates in an opaque environment. Fraudsters manipulate in-app interactions at various levels, but the most alarming issue is that advertisers often rely on flawed measurement systems that don’t validate traffic effectively. This is where many advertisers fall into the trap of trusting impressions and clicks at face value.  The fraud manifests in multiple ways: -Click Spamming: Fraudsters flood attribution systems with click spamming which is to generate fake clicks to wrongfully claim credit for organic installs.  -Click Injection: Malware-infected apps hijack install events by sending a fraudulent click at the exact moment an app is installed.  -Bot Traffic: Automated scripts mimic human behavior, generating clicks and even fake in-app events.  -Organic Poaching: Fraudsters hijack organic user traffic by injecting random clicks and falsely claiming attribution.  -Acquisition Poaching: Fraudsters manipulate attribution models by faking user engagement to appear as legitimate traffic.  The Importance of Click-Level Validation The biggest flaw in many app advertising strategies is that they trust data provided by Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) without validating it beyond the impression level. MMPs typically attribute installs and in-app events based on the last-click attribution model, but they don’t analyze whether that click was genuine in the first place.  Without click-level validation, advertisers are left vulnerable to: -Wasted budgets: Paying for fraudulent clicks that never convert into real users.  -Distorted performance metrics: Misattributed installs and engagement rates create misleading reports.  -Poor down-the-funnel optimization: Advertisers end up optimizing for fraudulent traffic rather than genuine user acquisition.  How PPC Fraud Impacts Down-the-Funnel Metrics Fraudulent clicks don’t just impact the initial stages of a campaign; they create a ripple effect down the funnel. Consider this:  If your PPC campaign generates fake clicks, your CPI (Cost Per Install) skyrockets because installs may not be genuine.  Fraudulent installs inflate your DAU (Daily Active Users) numbers artificially, leading to poor LTV (Lifetime Value) calculations.  Since bots or hijacked installs don’t engage meaningfully, your retention and conversion rates drop, creating misleading insights for future optimizations.  Real Case Study: How a Quick Commerce Brand Tackled PPC Fraud A major quick commerce platform in India discovered severe PPC fraud issues within their app advertising campaigns. They were running retargeting campaigns to increase engagement, but conversions remained low despite their significant ad spend. Upon investigation, they found:  -High levels of fraudulent traffic: 58% of clicks and 46% of events were fraudulent.  -Organic Poaching: Fraudsters injected random clicks to claim credit for organic installs. The click-to-conversion time gap for Publisher A on January 11th was 35% longer than usual, indicating hijacked organic traffic.  -Acquisition Poaching: Engagement partners falsely re-attributed already acquired users by forcing fake re-engagement clicks instead of waiting for real user activity.  By implementing click-level validation and actively monitoring traffic sources, the brand:  Identified and eliminated fraudulent publishers.  Reduced misattribution of organic traffic.  Saved $1.9 million in a single month by stopping invalid ad spend.  This case highlights how unchecked PPC Ad fraud can drain budgets while inflating performance metrics, making it crucial for advertisers to validate traffic beyond surface-level analytics.  Combatting PPC Fraud: Steps Advertisers Must Take Tackling PPC fraud in-app campaigns requires a proactive approach. Here are the most effective strategies:  Validate Click Traffic in Real Time   Use solutions that verify click authenticity before attribution.   Look for abnormal patterns like excessive click-to-install times or multiple clicks from the same device. Go Beyond Last-Click Attribution Model Validation  A last-click model alone doesn’t provide the full picture.  Compare click timestamps and engagement across different sources to detect anomalies.  Monitor Post-Install Behavior  Genuine users interact with an app differently than bots or fraudulent installs.  Analyze session depth, retention rates, and in-app purchases to flag anomalies.  Use Third-Party Fraud Detection Tools  Many MMPs lack comprehensive fraud prevention mechanisms.  Implement third-party ad verification tools to cross-check data integrity.  Blacklist Fraudulent Sources  Identify ad networks or publishers that repeatedly send suspicious traffic.  Blacklist them proactively to reduce the impact on down-the-funnel metrics  Way Forward PPC fraud in apps is a silent budget killer that can cripple your campaign performance if left unchecked. The key to protecting your ad spend is to go beyond surface-level analytics and validate clicks at a granular level.  If advertisers treat click validation like a security checkpoint—ensuring every click is a legitimate entry rather than an impersonator—campaign efficiency will soar, and wasted ad spending will be reduced.   Want to safeguard your app campaigns from fraud? Start by validating your ad traffic data, leveraging the advanced ad fraud solution that go beyond surface level check, and make every click count. Want to get a demo of how we do it? Contact our team today  

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Click Tracker

How Click Trackers Are Protecting Millions in Ad Budgets from Fraud?

Blog, Ad Fraud /

In the rapidly growing digital world, the need for proactive measures against invalid clicks is required for advertisers to ensure that every click gets measured and validated. Having Google-approved click trackers is a must if advertisers want to track campaigns. Click tracker assists in the detection of any fraudulent clicks from bots, click farms, or any other invalid source, which can further help optimize the campaign before it burns the budget and distorts campaign insight.  Why Click Trackers Are Essential Click trackers help advertisers in monitoring the performance of the ads accurately by tracking user behavior. This data involves conversions, click-through rates, time spent on the website and overall user journey. This helps the advertiser to measure the success of their advertisement and optimize it accordingly.    Since Google’s ad platform smoothly can be integrated with certified click tracker, advertisers can use these tracking methods without encountering compatibility or performance difficulties. So, by accurately tracking ad clicks and following actions, advertisers gain valuable insights into which keywords, ad formats, and targeting options drive conversions, ultimately leading to higher ROI and significance through data-driven decisions.   A Google-certified clicks tracker can assist advertisers in tracking clicks on their ads while remaining compliant with Google’s advertising standards. This contributes to Google policy compliance by preventing harmful or misleading tracking activities that may have an impact on user experience. This helps to limit the possibility of ad abuse and misreporting, which can cost advertisers money and skew performance metrics.  Addressing Click Fraud Advertisers could utilize click fraud detection tools to improve the transparency and efficacy of their ad campaigns, ensuring that their advertising budget is spent on genuine user engagements.  – Invalid Traffic Detection: Detection of fraudulent traffic in real time in Google Ads and Meta Ads plays a critical role in protecting advertiser ad budget getting wasted on invalid traffic. -Genuine vs. Bot Clicks: Genuine clicks often show unique patterns, high levels of engagement, and come from a variety of geolocations. In contrast, bot clicks frequently indicate quick, repeated patterns, limited involvement, and come from suspicious IP addresses. -Fake Clicks: Real traffic leads to higher conversion rates. Detecting and stopping fraudulent clicks from click spamming in real-time boosts traffic quality and conversions. -Click Farms: A large-scale click fraud campaign frequently produces invalid clicks. These types of activities, such as click farms, are frequently used to artificially increase ad click volumes, resulting in distorted and inflated metrics. How Click Trackers Benefit Brands and Ad Networks Advertisers should understand the need for having accurate and transparent click measures and validation tools which can protect their investment and ensure their marketing efforts reach genuine and targeted audiences.   The internet click campaign market has expanded from 6% to 16% in recent years, and it is expected that digital advertising spending will rise from $88 billion to $172 billion over the next five years. According to Statista, that figure will expand at a 14% annual rate.  – Real-Time Data Accuracy: Having a real-time data on user interaction helps in providing marketers with the latest insight into the campaign performance by analyzing the CTR, user behavior, and engagement metrics which provides precise evaluation of campaign effectiveness.   – Fraud Prevention: Detecting and eliminating invalid clicks, including those who bot or repeat actions by the same user, to mitigate click fraud. Additionally, verifying the origin of clicks to confirm as they align with targeted geographies  – Enhanced Campaign Optimization: Trackers can be used to monitor certain metrics that are relevant to your campaign’s objectives. Monitoring and validation are necessary throughout the funnel. By tracking which clicks lead to conversions, marketers may optimize their ROI.  The Role of Click Trackers in Ad Networks Click trackers are key for smooth operation and effective ad optimization. They play an important role in ensuring the integrity of campaigns while enhancing their effectiveness across various platforms.  So, by detecting these fraudulent activities bot traffic, and click spamming, click tracker help advertisers safeguard their ads from fraud, reducing ad budget loss and ensuring that the campaigns get genuine traffic.   Click Tracker makes sure the ads that are getting published are legitimate, brand-safe domains, maintaining the campaign’s credibility and also gaining user trust. They also support cross-platform performance measurement enhancing collaboration between the advertiser and the publisher This helps to strengthen the network, by protecting the ad spent, optimizing the campaign with the help of real-time tracking and improving revenue attribution, resulting in better outcomes for both the brand as well as the publisher.  Why mFilterIt Click Tracker Stands Out Click Tracker by mFilterIt, a Google-verified tool, is designed to provide full-funnel protection for brands and ad networks, ensuring transparency throughout the user journey from getting impressions to conversions. It provides effective  fraud detection by using advanced AI, ML, and heuristic analysis, and helps in delivering trustworthy clicks, safeguarding brand’s digital campaigns from invalid clicks and fraudulent activities.  The tool offers domain verification, bot filtering, and real-time tracking, ensuring the integrity of your ad campaigns while maintaining data accuracy. Marketers can gain actionable insights using click tracker tool for optimizing their strategies effectively, leading to better resource allocation and enhanced campaign performance.  By detecting and filtering invalid clicks across multiple platforms, the click tracker helps brands minimize waste of ad spend, delivering genuine engagement and genuine leads. Conclusion  By integrating Google-verified click trackers, advertisers not only meet industry requirements but also gain meaningful insights into user behaviour, allowing them to make data-driven decisions to improve campaigns and increase ROI.   As digital advertising grows at an exponential rate, the value of real-time data accuracy, fraud detection, and campaign optimization cannot be compromised. Employing a click tracker can help brands stand out because it provides strong protection against invalid clicks, guaranteeing that advertising investments get genuine engagement and results.    Ready to safeguard your ad campaigns and boost performance?Get in touch with us today to learn how our click tracker can help you detect fraud, optimize ROI, and make every click count.

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social media

Why You Need to Protect Your Brand on Social Media?

Blog, Brand Protection /

Making a brand reputation for exceptional quality and high standards helps your firm stand out in today’s competitive industry. If your reputation or brand representation is harmed by social media, the brand will suffer more than just financial damages. You also risk missing out on significant possibilities to engage with new clients and build your business in the future. Online brand protection includes a range of practices that help the brand to stay aware of where and how their brand is used. In case of misuse of brand name or assets, with a proactive brand monitoring process brand can protect their brand integrity. In the digital space, brands are vulnerable on every platform, including social media platforms.   Let’s dive into this blog where we explain the types of brand threats on social media platforms and how to overcome them.   Why You Need to Protect Your Brand on Social Media   On social media, brand protection goes beyond just brand monitoring. It is essential for a brand to ensure that its assets are being used properly by affiliate partners and to identify any misuse of its brand name or logo. So, when your social media accounts and presence are abused, your brand becomes a tool for any risks with your customers via links claiming to be from the company, compromising your brand integrity. This happens because these social media profiles might imitate the brand, posing a direct danger to your business.   As a result, if your brand is abused on social media and used for phishing attacks, your products and services become less appealing to potential customers, and you lose their trust.   Risks Brands Face on Social Media   Brands available on social media face numerous risks, including fake accounts claiming to be brand assets or unauthorized use of trademarks. Negative publicity, phishing scams, and customer data breaches can harm reputation and trust. Additionally, regulatory non-compliance or inappropriate content can result in legal penalties.    -Detecting Brand Impersonation and Fake Account: Phishing attackers often create fake accounts using genuine brand names e which misleads the customers and damages brand trust. These accounts promote fake offers, scammy posts, counterfeit products, and phishing links leading to loss of money for the brand’s customers. Unaware of the phished assets, the customers are under the assumption that they have been duped by the brand. -Counterfeit Products: Scamsters tend to exploit social media platforms to market fake goods using a brand’s name which can destroy a brand’s reputation and result in loss or reduced revenue for the brand. -Data Leaks and Phishing: Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are often used in targeting phishing attacks under brands identity which directly compromise brand authenticity with other important data that can lead to a widespread effect on the brand and followers. -Monitoring Customer Feedback: Presenting wrong information or promoting misinformation campaigns or fake reviews impacts the brand’s face value and online authenticity. Having viral negative publicity can spread rapidly making real-time monitoring essential. Benefits of Brand Protection Suite for Social Media   Here’s how an effective Brand Protection Solution can protect your online presence, increase customer trust, and keep your brand’s reputation intact. Here are the main benefits:  -Real-Time Monitoring: Brand protection Tool help monitor social media platforms to detect unauthorized content, fake accounts as well as trademark violations. Having real-time alerts helps brands to act swiftly and mitigate potential threats or damage caused. -Automated Enforcement: Tools also tend to offer takedown services for counterfeit listings, impersonation accounts, and brand-infringing content. This helps in streamlining the process of maintaining brands’ online integrity. -Enhanced Customer Trust : By proactively protecting the brand, companies can foster a safer environment for their customers. Customers are more likely to trust brands that demonstrate a commitment to their online safety. -Safeguard brand image: Brand infringement tools will help identify and address negative sentiments and misinformation before they escalate. Sentinel+, a brand protection tool, provides comprehensive analytics into brand perception and suggests areas for improvement.    Key Features to Look for in Brand Protection Tools   When choosing a brand protection tool for your brand, prioritize features that provide extensive coverage, ease of use, and proactive threat detection. We have combined some key features that you must look out for when choosing a brand protection tool:   -Multi-Platform Coverage:  An ideal brand protection tool should be able to provide a holistic view of your brand’s presence covering multiple platforms including Websites, dark-web, marketplaces, listing platforms etc.   -User-Friendly Dashboard: Having a centralized dashboard helps significantly by tracking and managing incidents across different platforms.   -Ensures Compliance and Precise Reporting: Brand infringement tools offer detailed reports and ensure compliance with platform policies and legal regulations and add significant value. Tools like Sentinel+ by mFilterIt also have man-in-loop investigation which ensures the preciseness of the brand safety and infringement reports.    -Use of Open-source intelligence: OSINT or Open-source intelligence technology helps in tracking typo spotting, and detecting unauthorized usage of brand logos, slogans, and names. It also helps in analyzing marketplaces for news and social media posts or counterfeit products that are unauthentically available online with the brand name. This technology also helps in identifying fake social media profiles claiming to be your brand. Data from OSINT helps in making decisions such as taking down any social media profile or blacklisting it from all digital platforms.  Sentinel+ by mFilterIt provides a holistic protection across all platforms and enables brands to take proactive action against digital threats. Using open-source intelligence, the tool enables brands to keep a check on where their brand assets are used and takedown them in less than 48 hours. Real-time reporting helps the brand to make decisions against brand asset abuse and protects them to avoid any reputation or legal repercussions. Real Case: Learn how one of the leading real estate company in India protected their brand reputation with active brand monitoring  One of the biggest real-estate companies countered severe issues with trademark infringement on social networks and the web. The expansive digital

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ads

Click Validation: Ensuring Quality Engagement with Your Ads

Blog, Ad Fraud /

When running online ad campaigns, it’s not just about getting clicks—it’s about getting the right clicks. Many advertisers face the challenge of differentiating between genuine clicks and accidental or low-quality clicks. This is where mFilterIt’s click validation comes in. Click validation helps to ensure that the clicks on your ads are from real, engaged users who are genuinely interested in your product or service. How does click validation work, and why is it so important? Tracking   >>>  Analyzing  >>>  Improving -Tracking Click Behavior: The first step in click validating is tracking user interactions with your ads. Tools like pixels or tracking URLs allow you to monitor exactly what happens after someone clicks on your ad. Are they bouncing right away, or are they exploring your website further? If someone clicks on an ad and immediately leaves, it might suggest they were not genuinely interested. This kind of data is key to identifying poor-quality clicks. -Analyzing Engagement: Clicks don’t tell the whole story. By validating the quality of each click, you can assess how much time visitors spend on your site, what pages they visit, and if they complete any desired actions (like signing up or making a purchase). For example, if a user clicks on your ad but doesn’t interact with your site, it’s a sign they might not be a valuable lead. Click validation helps you focus on users who engage deeply with your platform and are more likely to convert. -Improving Ad Targeting: Click validation allows you to fine-tune your targeting strategy. By identifying which clicks are more likely to convert, basis geo, behaviour, scroll pattern, etc.., you can adjust your campaigns to reach users who show genuine intent. Over time, this leads to higher quality leads and a better return on investment (ROI). In conclusion, ad fraud solution isn’t just about tracking clicks—it’s about understanding the intent behind those clicks and optimizing your campaigns for better results. If a bot is just clicking your ads your campaign will never deliver conversions, since bots doesn’t buy or fulfil a successful lead. It’s the genuine user who counts, hence your campaign optimization should focus more on learning your user behaviour and adopting necessary findings to improvise campaign conversions. To start your click validation connect with mFilterIt.

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Programmatic Advertising

How Top Brands Are Winning with Programmatic Advertising

Blog, Programmatic /

In this competitive digital environment, brand messaging reaching the right audience at the right place has become imperative. To boost the brand’s success rate, programmatic advertising is the best way to ensure high accuracy and high turnover in depth. In 2023, programmatic advertisements accounted for 90% of the total ad spending. However, the big question is how brands and businesses are leveling it up to remain relevant in the market. Let’s discuss how programmatic advertising can be used the right way by implementing the right strategies.   Why Brands are Embracing Programmatic Advertising? Programmatic advertising has transformed the way brands interact with their target audiences by automating the buying and placement of ads with the help of powerful algorithms that provide precision, efficiency, and scalability.  to increase the success rate which is lacking in traditional advertising.   -Precise Targeting: Using precise targeting in programmatic ad marketers use data to identify target audiences. It allows brands to send modified messages based on demographics, activities, and even real-time intent.   -Real-Time Optimization: Programmatic campaigns help in delivering real-time analytics, allowing brands to monitor performance and adjust the campaign according to their need. This enables marketers to optimize ad creatives, placements, and budgets in real-time, resulting in better results.   -Scalability Across Platforms: Programmatic advertising connects people to a wide range of platforms, including social media and display networks, as well as connected TV and audio streaming services. This enables marketers to maintain the presence across several touchpoints without having any extra burden on managing individual channels separately.   -Cost Efficiency: Traditional processes of buying and placement of ads can be time-consuming as they require negotiations and manual adjustments. With programmatic systems marketers can process millions of transactions in milliseconds, enabling brands to swiftly launch and adjust campaigns to close potential opportunities. Challenges in Programmatic Advertising   Programmatic advertising is used in revolutionizing brand engagement with audiences, yet it brings its own set of challenges.   -Lack of Transparency: Programmatic advertising has enabled advertisers to reach large audiences, but it also poses significant gaps. Transparency of the ad campaigns is one of them. The advertisers are unaware of where their ads are showing. In some cases, this non-transparency can lead to ads appearing on low-quality, spammy websites that produce irrelevant traffic, hampering the brand reputation. The lack of transparency can impact on budget allocation because advertisers cannot judge campaign performance and ad placement.  -Viewability Issues: IAB has defined ad viewability as a standard metric to measure viewable impressions. According to it, an ad is considered viewable if the ad appears at least 50% on screen for more than one second. However, this parameter is not enough to ensure the ads are viewed by the right audience or in most cases even a human. Fraudsters deploy bot traffic to see the ads and even fraudulent publishers use tactics like ad stacking to generate impressions. The advertisers are under the impression that their ads are seen by the right audience, but in reality, they are not.   -Advertising Fraud & Bot Traffic: Ad fraud is one of the rising issues in programmatic advertising, with 37% of ad buyers concerned about abusive suppliers, bots, and invalid traffic. Over time, the fraudulent activities have become sophisticated and difficult to detect. KPIs like impressions and clicks can be easily met by fraudsters, resulting in skewed data and loss of budget  -Impact on Brand Safety: Apart from ad fraud, one of the other challenges that arise with non-transparency is placement of ads beside safe content. In many cases, the brand’s ads appear beside illicit or unsafe content which further impacts the brand’s reputation. Brands need to keep a check on their ad placements in addition to traffic validation.   Winning Strategies by Top Brands   Here are some strategies brands can implement to improve their programmatic campaign performance effectively.   -Ask for Transparency: Transparency should be the cornerstone for advertisers to ensure their optimization strategies are backed by clean data. By deploying an advanced ad fraud detection tool, advertisers can ensure they are getting genuine traffic on their ad campaigns. The right tool will help them with source-level transparency, helping them to understand where the traffic is coming from and take proactive action.   -Go beyond viewability metrics: While viewability is an important metric, it is important for advertisers to opt for a holistic approach. Advertisers should not just focus on “if the ad is visible or not” but also “who is seeing and interacting with the ad”. Using an ad fraud verification tool, advertisers can validate their ad traffic and also ensure quality traffic is engaging with the ads.   -Tackle Ad Fraud: Ad fraud remains a persisting challenge in the digital ecosystem and advertisers need the right guards to protect their ad spending. By deploying a real-time fraud detection solution, advertisers can identify evolving fraud techniques and implement preventative measures without major damage. By regularly auditing the data of their ad campaigns, advertisers can ensure where to invest more thereby improving the ROI and ensuring that their ads reach a genuine audience. -Prioritizing Brand Safety: For advertisers, protecting the brand image is the utmost priority. This includes ensuring that the ads are placed in an appropriate and brand-friendly environment. By continuously monitoring the ad placements using advanced brand monitoring tools, the advertisers can avoid associations with inappropriate and harmful content. A proactive approach to validate the ad placements can help the advertisers establish strict guidelines for partners and platforms where their ads are appearing. By prioritizing brand safety, brands maintain consumer trust, reinforce positive perceptions, and protect long-term relationships with their audiences.   A Real Case: How a global brand tackled low engagement on programmatic campaigns  A global brand in the energy sector faced low conversion rates and limited engagement despite significant investment in audio and display campaigns on platforms like DCM and DV360. The brand realized its ad delivery process was inefficient, leading to wasted resources and poor returns. They partnered with mFilterIt and deployed its

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Bot Detection

What Should Marketers Look for in a Bot Protection Tool?

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

In today’s digital marketing landscape, bots impacting your campaigns, website analytics, and overall performance is becoming an enormous issue with all the organizations running any kind of advertising campaign. To put a stop on the ad fraud that is caused by bots, having bot detection tools is vital.  After all, how can you put a stop to bots if you can’t detect.   Unfortunately, many firms struggle to detect bot traffic, and the methods they employ are not all created equal. Choosing the right bot detection tool is essential for safeguarding your marketing efforts. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you select the best tool for your needs. What Is Invalid Traffic and How Does It Relate to Bots?  Bot fraud in digital advertising generally falls in the category of invalid traffic by the marketers no matter good or bad since the bots are not the target audience and cannot be converted into a protentional lead.   Types of Invalid Traffic:    -General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) : It is one of the simplest bots that can be detected easily, and a lot of good bots traffic comes under GIVT as they are not meant to fool the bot detection tool. But some fraudsters may also deploy GIVT as they are easy to make and work against some of their targets.   -Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) :  SIVT detection is the bots that one should look out for as these are more capable and are often designed to target to bypass cybersecurity and ad fraud prevention tool. For Example – sophisticated bots might imitate how a human would use a website so it would be difficult to identify between a human and bot. SIVT is common in ad fraud schemes. How Bots Impact Your Marketing Campaigns  Bots can have a negative impact on your digital marketing campaigns in several ways:  -Wasted ad spend: Bots can boost your impressions and clicks, resulting in ad spend burn. For example, if you bid on a brand term that costs $1 per click and a click bots on your ad 1000 times, you would have wasted $1000.  -Inaccurate reporting: These bots can alter your reporting data, making it nearly impossible to track the actual performance of your campaigns. For Example, if a bot is boosting your impressions by 50%, your CTR will appear to be much higher than it is.   -Damage to your brand: So, if your brands are revealed to internet bots, it might damage your brand reputation. For example, if a bot clicks on your ad for a product the customer is not interested in, the user will consider your ad spam.  How to Detect Bots?  Bots often use IP addresses that are associated with known botnets. Here some of the most common methods include  -IP address analysis: Bots often use IP addresses that are associated with known botnets so by analyzing the traffic by these IP addresses you can easily identify the bot traffic. -Behavioral analysis: Bots frequently engage in unusual behavior, such as rapidly clicking on adverts or viewing several pages in a short amount of time. So, by examining the behavior of your traffic, you may detect bot traffic. -Traditional Bot detection tools: They can only detect basic bot patterns and don’t have the capability to identify sophisticated bot patterns like click spamming or lead punching.  Limitations in traditional bot detection tools However, there are some limitations of using traditional bot detection tools.  Over time, bot patterns have become increasingly sophisticated, enabling them to mimic human behavior and carry out complex tasks such as completing sign-up forms or generating leads. Traditional bot detection tools often fall short in identifying these advanced bot activities due to their limited capabilities. Some key limitations include:  -Only Impression-level detection: Many tools rely on impression-level analysis, which may not be sufficient to identify advanced bots. This approach often overlooks nuanced behaviors that occur across multiple impressions or sessions.  -Limited to Pre-bid monitoring: Many fraud detectors focus on pre-bid detection because it is easier to conduct checks because they only need to consider two factors: geolocation and browser, and the success rate is only 2%.   Key Features to Look for in a Bot Detection Tool  -Utilization of the Latest Technology: One of the key features to look out for in a bot detection tool is whether it is using the latest technology to detect ad fraud. When looking for a bot detection tool, evaluate their technology. Many traditional ad fraud solution depend on outdated methods like 1×1 pixel tracking, offering limited visibility. In contrast, to identify sophisticated bot patterns the bot detection must use the latest technology. We use cutting-edge technologies like VAST and JavaScript to assess over 70 parameters of bot traffic for effective identification.  -Deeper and Comprehensive Checks: The bot detection tool will be able to provide deeper insights with a post-bid analysis. With a comprehensive full-funnel check the success rates are boosted by 30%-40%. This approach is reliable and eliminates blind spots in detecting bot activity or ad fraud.  -Omnichannel Coverage: An advanced ad validation solution provides robust protection across multiple platforms, including programmatic advertising, Connected TV (CTV), Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms, and Made for Advertising (MFA) websites. This comprehensive coverage effectively addresses all potential avenues for fraudulent activities.  -Real-Time Insights: The platform detects and assesses fraudulent behavior in real-time, allowing advertisers to take proactive measures to minimize losses and protect their advertising budget.  -100% Transparency: A critical feature of an advanced fraud detection tool is source-level transparency, this provision of detailed, source-level data enables advertisers to trace fraudulent activities back to their origins, ensuring accountability and enabling more targeted counter measures.  How mFilterIt help to detect sophisticated bots?   mFilterIt is known for its effective bot detection and ad fraud prevention capabilities. Ad fraud detection (Valid8) by mFilterIt offers real-time detection, granular insights, and comprehensive protection across the entire campaign lifecycle. By utilizing machine learning, behavioral, and heuristic checks, it ensures the detection of advanced-level bots leading to fraud-free campaigns, making it ideal for advertisers seeking

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tracking

Pixel Tracking Guide: How to Track Conversions Easily

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

Tracking conversions is essential for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and one of the most reliable ways to do this is through a conversion pixel. A conversion pixel is a small piece of code embedded in your website or landing pages, which tracks specific actions users take, like making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. This helps you evaluate your ads’ performance and refine future campaigns. How to track conversions using a pixel: 1. Install the Pixel: The first step is setting up a pixel on the platform you’re using, such as Meta Ads, Google Ads or mFilterIt Visit Pixel. These platforms typically provide easy-to-follow instructions for adding the pixel to your website. You’ll either add the pixel code directly to your site’s header or use a tag manager to simplify the process. 2. Define Your Conversion Goals: After adding the pixel, you need to define what actions you want to track as conversions. This could include activities like making a purchase, submitting a lead form, or completing a registration. Most platforms let you set up multiple conversion events to capture various types of user actions. 3. Test the Pixel: Once the pixel is installed, it’s important to test it to ensure it’s working correctly. Tools offered by platforms like Meta allow you to check if the pixel is firing as expected. If you find any problems, double-check your website’s code or try reinstalling the pixel. 4. Analyze and Optimize: When users complete the defined conversion actions, the pixel sends the data back to the platform, giving you valuable insights into your conversion rates. Use this information to see which ads or traffic sources are performing best and adjust your campaigns to optimize results. Tracking conversions with a pixel is a powerful way to evaluate return on investment (ROI), refine targeting strategies, and ultimately enhance the success of your marketing campaigns. Connect with us, to start your conversion tracking.

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