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Ad Traffic Validation

Brand Bidding

Peak Season Brand Protection: Stop Brand Bidding Violations

USA, Ad Traffic Validation, Blog /

Would you pay twice for the same customer? Many brands do—without knowing. Every time your top-of-funnel campaigns drive branded search traffic, affiliates and ad networks are watching. Some quietly bid on your brand name, intercept clicks meant for your site, and take credit for conversions they didn’t create. You pay once to generate the intent. Then again, as a commission on your traffic. During high-demand seasons, this problem scales fast. CPCs rise, ROAS drops, and budget burns faster than it should. Most marketers chalk it up to increased competition. But the real threat is invisible: brand bidding by partners you’re already working with. This guide breaks down exactly how affiliate brand bidding works, how it distorts your campaign performance, and what to do to stop it in real time—before it eats into your seasonal results. Why High-Demand Seasons Invite Brand Bidding Top-of-funnel campaigns aren’t just good at driving awareness. They spike branded search queries. As performance teams push seasonal offers through social ads, influencer drops, or email blasts, users start googling the brand directly. That’s the window affiliates and ad networks wait for. They target your brand name because these aren’t rivals or fakes. They’re your own affiliate partners, coupon sites, or arbitrage platforms. Here’s how it happens: · Coupon aggregators bid on your brand plus terms like “discount” or “promo” to catch deal-hunters. Even if you don’t work with them directly, many ride through indirect affiliate links. · Automated bidding tools used by partner platforms use dynamic scripts to spot trending queries—your brand being one of them during a big campaign. · PPC arbitrage networks snap up brand terms at scale and send users through a redirect maze, taking a cut of the conversion while inflating your CPCs. The result: you end up paying twice. First to generate the intent. Then to win it back from your own partners. hey know the intent is hot. Their ads show up right above or next to yours, competing for the same clicks you’ve already paid to generate Signs You’re Losing Budget to Brand Bidders Brand bidding often hides behind metrics that appear healthy at first glance. But dig deeper, and patterns start to emerge—especially during high-demand campaigns. These are the most reliable indicators that your branded traffic is being hijacked by affiliates or ad networks. Sudden Branded CPC Spikes During Campaigns If your branded search CPCs climb sharply during a sale or new product drop, and you haven’t changed your strategy, it’s likely external bidders have entered the auction. Affiliates or partner platforms may be targeting your brand keywords This shifts you from low-competition bids into competitive territory, inflating costs by 20–30% or more. You’re now competing for traffic you already created. Drop in ROAS Despite a Stable Media Strategy ROAS should stay consistent when targeting, creative, and user intent remain steady. If it drops without a clear cause, CPC inflation from brand bidding may be the culprit. You’re still getting conversions, but at a higher acquisition cost—and sometimes paying an unnecessary commission on top of it. This directly reduces your return. Performance Plateaus as Spend Increases You increase your media budget expecting higher conversions, but results don’t scale. That’s a sign your campaign isn’t reaching more users—it’s just paying more for the same ones. Bidding partners can drain your daily budget early in the day, especially if their tools ramp up aggressively on trending brand terms. Your budget runs out before the day’s highest-intent traffic arrives. Affiliate Reports Show High Last-Click Wins on Branded Terms If affiliates suddenly show strong performance from last-click conversions and branded queries, take a closer look. Partners who haven’t changed tactics but start claiming more conversions may be targeting your brand name. Campaign Budgets Exhaust Early in the Day Brand bidding drives up CPCs quietly. When that happens, your campaign spend gets used up faster. If your branded campaigns go offline by afternoon, it’s not just strong demand—it could be your own partners outbidding you, forcing premature pauses in delivery during critical traffic windows. Traffic or Click Surges in Irregular Geographies If affiliate-referred traffic starts showing higher CTRs from regions not aligned with your core market, this could be automated bidding behavior. Some arbitrage networks use scripts to scoop up branded traffic wherever they can find it, regardless of quality or location. These patterns waste spend without contributing meaningful conversions. Spotting these signals early gives you the chance to stop CPC leakage before it spirals. Passive monitoring doesn’t cut it during peak periods—especially when brand bidders are watching your campaigns as closely as you are. The Real Cost of Ignoring Brand Bidding During Peak Periods When brand bidding by affiliates or ad networks goes unchecked, the damage isn’t just in a few lost clicks. It hits multiple layers of your performance stack. · CPC inflation from competitive auctions Branded keywords typically deliver high ROI due to lower CPCs and stronger intent. But during high-demand periods—sales, product launches, festivals—affiliate partners and coupon sites often start bidding on those same keywords. This competition drives up the auction price. Brands that normally pay ₹4–5 per click may suddenly pay ₹6–7 for the same traffic. That’s a 25–30% increase in acquisition cost without a corresponding lift in quality or volume. · Paying twice for the same user. First, you run TOF campaigns to build intent—think influencer reels, paid social, email, SMS. Then, that user searches for your brand. If an affiliate’s ad appears above yours and gets the click, you pay again in the form of a commission. That’s media spend plus affiliate payout for a single conversion. It erodes the margin and misrepresents channel efficiency. · Attribution distortion. Most brands rely on last-click attribution models. Affiliates and arbitrage platforms know this. They aim to be the last touchpoint by intercepting brand searches. This hijacks credit from the real performance drivers, like your paid social or content efforts. Over time, this distorts media performance data, leading to misallocated budgets. · Faster budget exhaustion. Higher CPCs mean your daily

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full funnel validation

Reclaiming Digital Transparency: 1000Farmacie’s Full-Funnel Approach

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

The dashboard says ROAS is up. Conversions are climbing. The team’s celebrating. But beneath the surface, something’s off. Traffic looks strong—but isn’t converting. Budgets are growing—but impact isn’t. That’s the trap of affiliate fraud and misattribution—they inflate performance on paper while draining real results. From cookie stuffing and click spamming to bot traffic masked as human behavior, invisible threats distort the numbers marketers rely on most. The missing layer? Full-funnel validation. This blog breaks down how misattribution quietly sabotages performance, why validation is no longer optional, and how 1000Farmacie uncovered the gap—and fixed it. The Hidden Cost of Misattribution Affiliate marketing promises performance-based growth—but what happens when the performance you’re measuring isn’t real? Misattribution is one of the most under-recognized threats to marketing efficiency. It occurs when credit for a conversion is incorrectly assigned to the wrong source—often due to deceptive practices designed to exploit attribution models. In affiliate campaigns, where commissions and payouts depend on tracking performance, this opens the door for fraud. Fraudsters use several tactics to hijack attribution and artificially inflate results: Cookie Stuffing: This involves secretly placing multiple affiliate cookies on a user’s browser without their knowledge or action. If the user later makes a purchase—regardless of the actual channel that influenced it—the fraudulent affiliate still gets credit. Click Spamming: Also known as “click flooding,” this technique sends a high volume of low-quality or automated clicks hoping to match a legitimate conversion through sheer volume. It’s a numbers game that can distort your attribution data and create phantom performance. Bot Traffic: Sophisticated bots mimic human behavior—browsing products, clicking links, even triggering conversion pixels. These non-human visitors can seriously inflate your traffic numbers, conversion rates, and ROAS, all while draining budget. The impact isn’t just technical—it’s strategic. When misattribution is baked into your performance metrics: Budgets get misallocated to underperforming or fraudulent affiliates. Reports tell a distorted story, masking the real sources of growth. Optimization decisions become flawed, leading marketers to double down on what isn’t working and overlook what is. Worse, it creates a false sense of success—campaigns that seem to be thriving on the surface may actually be leaking value underneath. So here’s the question: How much of your affiliate “performance” is actually performance—and how much is fraud disguised as success? Why Full-Funnel Validation is the New Must-Have If misattribution is the invisible leak in your performance marketing, full-funnel validation is the essential tool to detect—and seal—it. At its core, full-funnel validation involves verifying every stage of a user’s journey, from the initial click on an ad or affiliate link to the final conversion. This comprehensive approach delves deeper than surface-level metrics to assess whether the traffic, clicks, and conversions are legitimate, human, and incremental. Here’s how it operates: Traffic Quality Checks at the top of the funnel detect suspicious patterns—such as bots, data center IPs, or abnormally high click rates. Engagement Validation in the middle of the funnel monitors behavioral cues: is there genuine user interaction, or just empty clicks? Conversion-Level Analysis at the bottom ensures that attributed sales are backed by authentic user journeys—not automated scripts or cookie drops. This layered approach provides marketers with comprehensive visibility into the authenticity of their traffic. The necessity of full-funnel validation becomes even more evident when considering the current landscape: Bot Traffic: In 2023, bots accounted for nearly half (49.6%) of all internet traffic globally, with “bad bots” responsible for a third of this figure.   Affiliate Fraud: In 2022, fraudulent clicks constituted 17% of all affiliate traffic, leading to an estimated $3.4 billion in losses.   Ad Fraud Growth: Ad fraud is projected to cost advertisers $84 billion in 2023, accounting for 22% of all online ad spend, with expectations of this figure rising to $170 billion by 2028.   The benefits of implementing full-funnel validation are substantial:  Improved Attribution: Accurately identify which partners and platforms genuinely drive value—and which ones are manipulating the system.  Smarter Budget Allocation: Redirect spending toward high-performing channels and eliminate wasteful or fraudulent ones.  Real-Time Insights: Detects and addresses fraud as it happens, preventing damage before it escalates. Without full-funnel validation, many marketers are operating in the dark—especially in affiliate-heavy campaigns, where performance-based payouts create strong incentives for manipulation. Modern marketing demands more than just tracking conversions; it demands proof of authenticity. Full-funnel validation is the safeguard that ensures your data, decisions, and dollars are grounded in reality. Case in Point: 1000Farmacie’s Affiliate Campaign Was Underperforming—But Looked Great on Paper 1000Farmacie, a leading digital pharmacy marketplace in Italy, serves over 1 million retail customers with more than 800,000 orders annually. As part of its performance marketing strategy, the company relied heavily on affiliate partnerships to drive conversions and grow reach. On the surface, the numbers looked strong. But beneath that surface, there were serious issues affecting efficiency and accuracy. When mFilterIt stepped in, their full-funnel fraud detection and validation uncovered critical insights:  28% of affiliate traffic showed signs of invalid activity—including tactics like click spamming and cookie stuffing. A significant portion of traffic displayed non-human behavior patterns, such as:  Visits originating from data center hubs.  No mouse movement, scroll, or swipe behavior. Misattribution at the order level accounted for a large share of the problem, distorting ROI and misguiding budget allocation. To address these issues, 1000Farmacie deployed mFilterIt’s full-funnel validation and real-time fraud prevention stack, which included: Automated blacklisting APIs integrated directly with ad managers to block fraudulent sources in real time. Traffic quality validation from visit to conversion, identifying anomalies and flagging suspicious sessions. Omnichannel monitoring dashboards that offered transparency across paid and affiliate channels. Ongoing campaign optimization with a focus on reducing invalid traffic and correcting attribution errors. By validating 5.7 million visits and 60+ paid channel orders, and reducing incorrect attribution by 20% on affiliates, mFilterIt helped expose the disconnect between reported and real performance—proving that what looked like success was, in fact, driven by inefficiencies and fraud. The Outcome: Real Efficiency, Better Attribution, Higher ROI With full-funnel validation in place, 1000Farmacie was able to move from reactive to

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Pop-Under Fraud: The Hidden Leak in Your Ad Budgets

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

You’re investing heavily in digital advertising, expecting real engagement, quality traffic, and conversions. But what if a large portion of your ad spend is going to waste without delivering any real results? Pop-under fraud is a hidden threat that inflates your impressions, skews performance metrics, and leads to skyrocketing bounce rates—all while failing to bring genuine customers to your brand. These fraudulent ads load behind the main browser window, making it seem like your campaign is performing well when you’re paying for traffic that has zero intent to convert. The result? Misleading analytics, wasted budgets, and missed revenue opportunities. In this blog, we’ll break down what pop-under fraud is, how it affects your digital ad performance, and, most importantly, how you can prevent it from draining your marketing investments.  What is Pop-Under Fraud?  Pop-under fraud is a deceptive advertising practice where fraudulent ads appear behind the main browser window. These ads generate fake clicks and attract low-intent users who have little to no engagement with the website.   Key Signs of Pop-Under Fraud:  High impressions but low engagement (no clicks or conversions).  Traffic spikes from low-quality placements or unknown publishers.  Ads appearing in hidden windows or background tabs.  Sudden rise in bounce rates and bot-like activity.  Pop-unders can be further exploited for cookie stuffing, allowing unauthorized tracking without the user’s knowledge. This also raises brand safety concerns when the pop-under displays content unrelated to the user’s intent or triggers without any direct user action, such as a click.  We recently analyzed a campaign where pop-under traffic was unusually high, with most users coming from odd screen resolutions, a clear mismatch compared to the organic traffic trend. Who is Affected by Pop-Under Fraud? Advertisers, marketers, and businesses that invest in digital advertising are the primary victims. This fraud wastes ad budgets and provides misleading performance data, making it harder for brands to achieve real growth.  When Does Pop-Under Fraud Happen? It occurs when fraudulent methods like malware installations, ad stacking, and hidden redirects are used to serve ads in the background. This often happens in low-quality placements where user engagement is not genuinely earned.  Where Does It Happen?  Pop-under fraud can occur on various digital platforms, including websites with poor ad quality control and deceptive ad networks. It is more common in low-quality placements that do not prioritize transparency. This type of fraud leads to wasted ad spend, misleading performance metrics, and zero impact on brand engagement. It can also expose brands to reputational risks when their ads appear on unrelated or unsafe content.  How Can Advertisers Fight Back?  This section outlines three key strategies advertisers can use to combat fraudulent or ineffective ad placements and ensure their advertising budgets are well spent. Here’s a breakdown:  Use viewability tracking to measure real engagement and ensure ads are seen: Viewability tracking helps advertisers determine whether their ads are actually being viewed by real users.  Metrics like time-in-view (how long an ad remains visible on screen) and percentage of ad visible (e.g., at least 50% of an ad being in view for at least 1 second) help assess engagement.  This prevents advertisers from paying for impressions that are technically delivered but never actually seen by users.  Implement ad fraud detection tools to identify and blacklist suspicious publishers: Fraudulent publishers often use bots, click farms, or hidden ads to generate fake impressions and clicks, leading to wasted ad spend.  Ad fraud detection tools analyze traffic patterns to flag invalid traffic (IVT) and blacklist fraudulent websites or apps.  This ensures that ads are served only on trusted, high-quality platforms with real human audiences.  Analyze bounce rates and session durations to detect abnormal user behavior: Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who leave a website after viewing only one page.  Unusually high bounce rates or very short session durations can indicate bot activity or accidental clicks, rather than real user interest.  Advertisers can use this data to refine their ad placements, optimize landing pages, and filter out sources that drive low-quality traffic.  Conclusion Pop-under fraud is a silent budget killer, deceiving advertisers with fake impressions and bot-driven traffic. If left unchecked, it can drain your resources and compromise your marketing success. The good news? You can take action today. Invest in ad fraud detection tool, monitor engagement metrics, and stay vigilant about where your ads appear. Don’t let fraudsters win—take control of your advertising strategy and ensure your budget drives real, meaningful results.   Ready to safeguard your campaigns? Start by auditing your traffic sources and implementing fraud prevention measures now! 

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cloaking-in-brand- bidding-protect-your- traffic-&-revenue

Cloaking in Brand Bidding: How Fraudsters Conceal Their Tracks to Evade Detection?

Blog, Ad Fraud Blog - Valid8, Ad Traffic Validation /

Imagine spending years building a strong brand presence, only to have fraudsters hijack your traffic and revenue using deceptive tactics. You invest heavily in search engine advertising, expecting customers searching for your brand to land on your legitimate pages. But instead, they are unknowingly misled to counterfeit product pages, unauthorized affiliate sites, or even direct competitors. This deceptive practice, known as cloaking in brand bidding, is a growing menace that threatens both brand integrity and consumer trust. If left unchecked, it can drain your marketing budget and damage your reputation before you even realize it.  Why do Fraudsters Use Cloaking in Brand Bidding?  Fraudsters leverage cloaking in brand bidding as a deceptive strategy to maximize their gains while avoiding detection. Their primary motives include:  -Evading Detection: Cloaking ensures that search engine monitoring and brand compliance teams see a compliant landing page, while real users are directed to misleading content. -Capturing Competitor Traffic: By bidding on branded keywords, fraudsters hijack organic traffic intended for the brand, diverting potential customers to counterfeit products, unauthorized affiliate offers, or even competitor sites. -Exploiting Brand Trust: Users searching for a specific brand inherently trust ads associated with it. Cloaking exploits this trust to mislead users, increasing fraudulent conversions. -Bypassing Advertising Restrictions: Search engines and ad platforms have strict policies against unauthorized brand bidding, but cloaking helps fraudsters divert these regulations without immediate repercussions.  Why Advertisers Must Address Cloaking Effectively  Ignoring cloaking in brand bidding can have severe consequences for brands. Here’s why advertisers must act:  -Brand Reputation at Risk: When users are misled by fraudulent ads, they may develop negative perceptions of the brand, leading to loss of trust and loyalty. -Revenue Leakage: Fraudsters take away potential sales, directly impacting the brand’s bottom line. -Unfair Market Manipulation: Legitimate advertisers invest in compliance and quality, while fraudsters exploit the system to gain an unfair advantage. -Potential Legal Complications: Unauthorized brand bidding and deceptive advertising practices could result in legal disputes, affecting brand credibility and resources. -Ad Policy Violations: Brands that fail to address cloaking risk non-compliance with search engine policies, leading to penalizations or ad restrictions. How to Detect and Combat Cloaking in Brand Bidding  Brands must implement a multi-layered approach to prevent and mitigate cloaking attempts. Here’s how:  -Deploy Advanced Monitoring Tools: Leverage solutions like Ad Fraud Solution by mFilterIt offer real-time monitoring, detecting cloaked ads and unauthorized brand bidding. -Strengthen Compliance Measures: Establish clear guidelines for affiliates, resellers, and partners to prevent deceptive advertising tactics. -Enforce Legal Protections: Take legal action against fraudsters leveraging cloaking to violate trademark rights and mislead consumers. -Collaborate with Ad Platforms: Work closely with search engines and ad networks to report and eliminate fraudulent ads promptly. Stay One Step Ahead  Cloaking in brand bidding is a persistent and evolving threat, but with the right strategies, brands can protect their reputation, revenue, and digital presence. By leveraging AI-powered fraud detection tool, enforcing compliance policies, and working closely with ad platforms, businesses can stay ahead of deceptive advertisers and maintain control over their brand visibility.  Want to secure your search ads against cloaking? Contact Us. 

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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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impression

Impression Validation: Ensuring Your Ads Reach the Right Audience

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

In the world of digital advertising, getting your ads seen isn’t enough, you need to ensure that the ad is seen by your targeted audience. It’s about making sure those impressions—when someone sees your ad—are valid and genuinely reaching the right audience. This is where impression validation becomes crucial. It’s the process of verifying that your ad impressions are not only seen but also viewed by the right people who have a higher likelihood of engaging with your content. Why impression validation matters: Eliminating Fake Views The digital advertising space is vast, and not all impressions are created equal. In some cases, ads may be shown to bots, low-quality traffic, or irrelevant audiences. Impression validation helps you filter out these “fake” impressions, ensuring that real people who are interested in your product or service are the ones seeing your ads. This helps you avoid wasting your budget on views that don’t matter. Understanding User Intent Validating impressions is also about understanding how likely a viewer is to engage with your ad. Are they truly in your target demographic? Did they spend time on your page after seeing the ad, or did they scroll past it without a second glance? fraud Detection help assess these behaviours to ensure your ads are reaching the most relevant audience. Optimizing Ad Spend By validating your impressions, you’re able to allocate your budget more effectively. Instead of throwing money at impressions that aren’t adding value, you can focus on those that are likely to drive conversions. This leads to a better return on investment (ROI) and more meaningful interactions with your audience. In the end, impression validation isn’t just about counting views—it’s about ensuring your ad budgets are well spent by reaching the right people with genuine potential to convert into a lead or generate a sale. By focusing on valid impressions, you can optimize your campaigns for greater success and better engagement. To learn more about impressions validation, reach out to mFilterIt.

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image

Click Tracker: How Accurate Click Tracking Can Save Your Ad Campaign

Blog, Ad Fraud Blog - Valid8, Ad Traffic Validation /

Digital advertising demands proactive measures to ensure every click is measured and validated.  Approved Click Trackers are now mandatory if anyone wants to track p-max or demand gen campaigns. However, click tracking needs to be backed up with comprehensive monitoring to ensure genuine engagements that reflect the impact of an ad campaign. This is the gap fraudsters exploit manipulating clicks to divert ad budgets without driving real results  Let’s explore what advertisers can do to for click protection, ensuring click integrity and the role of efficient click tracker.   Why use a Click Tracker?  Click Tracker approved by Google helps advertisers track clicks on their ads while maintaining compliance with Google’s advertising policies.   Compliance with Google policies ensures the prevention of malicious or deceptive tracking practices that could negatively impact user experience. Google-approved click tracker meets these standards, ensuring that ad clicks are tracked accurately and provide enhanced transparency. This helps reduce the risk of ad abuse and misreporting, which could otherwise cost advertisers money and distort performance metrics.  Click trackers enable advertisers to monitor ad performance precisely by tracking user behavior. This data includes metrics such as conversions, session duration, and user journey, allowing marketers to better understand the effectiveness of their campaigns and optimize accordingly. Since Google’s ad platform integrates seamlessly with approved click tracker advertisers can implement these tracking solutions without compatibility or functionality issues. By accurately tracking ad clicks and subsequent actions, advertisers gain valuable insights into which keywords, ad formats, and targeting options drive conversions, ultimately leading to higher ROI and relevance through data-driven decisions.  Click Fraud Detection Our google-approved click tracker is more than just a click counter or measurement instead it’s an extension of our capabilities. The follow-up measurement should be clicking fraud prevention differentiating genuine clicks from fraudulent ones with advanced algorithms to analyze traffic, identifying patterns associated with fraud, such as repetitive or high velocity clicks from the same source, and filters them out.   mFilterIt can help advertisers gain visibility into every stage of the conversion funnel, from initial clicks to meaningful user actions. Safeguard ad budgets from making payout for fraudulent clicks and ensures engagements are genuine.  Preventing Click Spam Click spam is where fraudsters generate fake clicks to earn ad revenue or inflate engagement metrics and skew campaign performance metrics. It makes analyzing ad campaign performance difficult with inflated numbers.   Combat click spamming using multi-layered analysis techniques that include deterministic, heuristic, and behavioral checks. This ensures clicks are coming from legitimate IPs or devices, detects suspicious patterns, like a high volume of clicks from a single source, indicating potential fraud. Looks deeper into user behavior to ensure it aligns with expected patterns, filtering out traffic that doesn’t show genuine user intent.   Effective click spam prevention ensures that ads reach genuine users who are more likely to convert, rather than wasting impressions on fraudulent traffic.  Ad Campaign Performance optimization Accurate measurement of clicks and conversions is crucial for assessing ad campaign performance and scaling effectively. Without a reliable click fraud protection, advertisers run the risk of making decisions based on inflated or inaccurate metrics. Click tracker provides the data necessary to analyze and evaluate campaigns with confidence, ensuring that reported clicks translate into real, user-driven events.  -Optimize Ad Spend By focusing on genuine conversions rather than inflated click numbers, ad spend is optimized toward high-quality traffic.  -Scale Campaigns Effectively Accurate data enables advertisers to scale successful campaigns without worrying about ad fraud undermining performance.  -Build Trust Transparent and accurate metrics foster trust between advertisers and their stakeholders, creating confidence in ad effectiveness.  Accurate and fraud-free metrics allow marketers to make data-driven decisions, increase ROI, and scale campaigns based on reliable results.  How mFilterIt help in Click tracking along with Full-funnel protection Brands heavily invested in online display and video ads across websites to build brand awareness and drive engagement. This ensures that transparency in the ad campaign is of utmost importance not just to safeguard ad spending but also to protect brand reputation.  One of the major challenges is when the companies notice a sharp increase in ad impressions and clicks on their ad campaigns, but the result is minimal impact on key engagement metrics. Such discrepancies suggested ad fraud was wasting the company’s budget and skewing data, making it difficult for their marketing team to understand genuine campaign performance and target the right audience.  mFilterIt ad fraud detection and prevention tools for a comprehensive approach to tackle ad fraud, identified and filtered out fraudulent activity across multiple dimensions, ensuring the company’s ad spend was optimized toward genuine engagement.  – Real-Time Conversion-Based Analysis  Analyzed traffic in real-time to detect abnormal patterns, such as sudden spikes in clicks from specific regions, devices, or IPs.  To complement click and impression verification, mFilterIt also tracks user interactions beyond clicks. By analyzing click-to-event conversions filtering out fraudulent clicks that did not lead to real user engagement, ensuring their ad spend was driving actual interactions and interest.  – Bot Detection and Elimination  Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are used to identify bot behavior, distinguishing between automated traffic and real users as bots often mimic human behavior. Our heuristic and behavioral checks flag them off and ensure swift blocking and blacklisting source with automated process.   – Domain and Ad Placement Verification Fraudsters disguise low-quality sites or non-existent domains to pass as premium inventory. mFilterIt ad verification tools helped ensure the company’s ads appeared only on legitimate, brand-safe websites by matching domain data, placement information, and ensuring alignment with the campaign’s target audience.  Conclusion Click tracker serves as a first line of defense, ensuring ad budgets are directed toward genuine traffic, followed by multi-layered full funnel approach with integrated brand safety to optimize campaign performance. It allows brands to measure click-to-event conversion, giving a clearer picture of campaign impact.   As digital advertising continues to grow, so does the need for mFilterIt Click Tracker and Valid8 for full funnel protection, ad traffic validation, ad fraud detection and lead optimization that

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ad fraud

Full-Funnel Ad Fraud Protection: Beyond Impressions & Viewability

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

Ad Spending in the US market will reach $421 billion in 2024. Out of a market worth $143 billion, TV and video Advertising stands out as the largest market there. Accurately measuring an ad campaign’s effectiveness is essential. It is the marketer’s job to protect against waste and improve campaigns’ ROI. Adopting ad fraud detection tool driven by AI-ML tech can achieve this. According to the Statista Report, by 2029, it has been estimated that 87% of advertising revenue in the United States will be attributable to programmatic advertising. Need for Full Funnel Protection When it comes to combating ad fraud, one must understand that the focus on impressions alone will not work. It is imperative to adopt full-funnel protection, focusing on detecting ad fraud and preventing it within the entire customer journey from the first impression to post-click interactions. Here’s why- Impression Validation is not enough. Full funnel protection is a must as impression validation is not enough. It’s not a foolproof indicator of ad fraud. Here’s why: Bot-generated views and impressions: Bots can be programmed to simulate human behavior, including scrolling and pausing on pages, to ensure ads are “viewed.” These bots can inflate viewability rates without generating any real user engagement. Low-Quality Traffic: Even if a human views an ad, the traffic may come from low-quality sources like click farms or websites with minimal user engagement. These impressions may not lead to conversions or meaningful interactions. Click-Through Rates (CTR): While viewability indicates if an ad was seen, CTR measures if it was clicked on and engaged with. A high viewability rate and a low CTR can be a red flag for low-quality traffic or ad fraud. Low conversion rates: Ultimately, advertising aims to drive conversions, such as sales or sign-ups. A high viewability rate without corresponding conversion increases is always suspicious Data is limited Trackers easily bypassed by using Safe-Frames / iFrames Due to the huge volume of impressions, only sampling is executed but with limited time for analysis (~20ms). Limited data for analysis covering only IPs and user agents. Impressions are the easiest to spoof! Deeper Fraud Checks Fraud is not only inflated impressions. There are several ad techniques used by publishers such as ad pixel stuffing, domain spoofing, fake clicks, etc. A comprehensive validation process needs to be in place covering deterministic, behavioral, and heuristic checks for a multilayer approach to fraud prevention across the funnel. Full-funnel checks address these deeper issues to guarantee that the figures reflected in the campaign metrics translate to valuable interaction from the target audience. Combined Power of Click & Down the Funnel Analysis Embrace the power of click validation and ensure the click turn visits with genuine engagement.  Seek validation beyond those that bypass walled garden restrictions, and ensure a more reliable environment on advertiser’s own pages. For lower volume, allows census analysis and makes sure that more time is available to track user behavior patterns and generate genuine engagement.  Track bot patterns vs huma to detect sophisticated fraud like mouse movements and cover all campaign types with down-the-funnel analysis mFilterIt vs Competition – Pre-Bid Analysis vs Post-Bid Analysis There are several ad verification tools on the market. However, they differ in their effectiveness in providing ad verification services. This will examine the relative advantages for us against its competitors in both pre-bid and post-bid analyses. mFilterIt: A Full-Funnel Approach We detect fraud in post-bid analysis; thus, fraud detection is our strong suit. It employs techniques for the detection of fraud that reach beyond the most basic advertisement viewability measures. Impression Fraud Detection- We detect up to 15-20% fraud in campaigns. When it comes to validation at the impression level, the focus is on both real human impressions, impressions on Made-for-ad sites, and frequency cap violations. Also, viewability scores are measured to counter fraud throughout the life cycle of the campaign. Click Validation- Validate click with visit lead intent to check on campaign performance. Visit Intent Scoring is a must for improved channel management and retargeting campaigns Getting a lead is not enough to ensure a swift automated process in place for lead validation and lead quality assessment for setting priorities. Competition: A Narrow Focus on Viewability & Pre-Bid Validation Impression Fraud analysis is better at the post-bid stage than pre-bid, measuring performance beyond viewability metrics. In pre-bid analysis, i.e. before the ad is served, fraud can be identified based on only two parameters, IP and User Agents. Also, the time for analysis is limited to 10 milliseconds. This results in a meager 2% fraud identification. This is where a post-bid analysis trumps a pre-bid impression validation. Now that we have several more parameters fraud detection is done on deterministic and heuristic measures as well. This results in the detection of higher invalid impressions of 15-20%.  This results in improved ROI on Ad spending. Post-bid analysis is a more beneficial method for detecting ad fraud. As viewability is not a measure to detect fraud, most of our competition focuses on advertisers spending an average of 15% of their programmatic budget on MFA sites, but some may spend as much as 42%. While 35% of programmatic spending is wasted on low-value environments like MFA sites.   By focusing on robust ad fraud solution advertisers can combat the various forms of fraud that undermine their campaigns across digital advertising platforms. Prioritizing impression validation is essential for maximizing return on investment and maintaining trust in the advertising ecosystem. Understanding the Scope and Limitations of Industry Accreditations Limited Geography Some accreditations are largely limited to the US Market. However, competitors use these globally as a selling point. These accreditation bodies have recently come out to express their discontent with traffic validation platforms using it globally. Brands and agencies must check the geo-limitations of accreditations before onboarding the platform. Service-Specific Accreditation A part of these accreditations is granted on a service-by-service basis, rather than offering blanket accreditation for entire platforms. Each service or tool must be evaluated separately for its compliance with standards. Exclusion in Major Platforms Notably, brands must do a platform-wise analysis

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ctv ad fraud detection

Is your CTV Ads Budget ROI Optimized with Ad Fraud Detection?

Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

Connected TV (CTV) ads have emerged as a powerful digital advertising medium for brands looking to engage in a more targeted and interactive manner. As CTV viewing time has doubled over the last four years, CTV ad spending is also projected to reach $27.47 billion.  Some of the popular CTV platforms for advertising are Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, etc. The radical shift in viewership from traditional TV to streaming TV has opened this great opportunity. However, the opportunity is coupled with threats and challenges to ensure the integrity of ad traffic. Advertisers spending on CTV ads risk wasting precious ad budgets on illegitimate views and impressions, ultimately diminishing their return on investment (ROI).   According to a recent study, in the second quarter of 2024, 19.4% of programmatic ad traffic to CTVs was invalid worldwide. To protect CTV ad campaigns, automation with advanced processes and AI ML-powered solutions is necessary.   Let’s dwell deeper and explore why validating ad traffic is essential for CTV campaigns and how it can significantly enhance your advertising effectiveness and profitability.   What is CTV ad fraud?  Approximately, $1.14 billion in global CTV open programmatic ad spend was lost to invalid traffic in Q2 2024. This highlights the gravity of ad fraud in the CTV ecosystem. CTV ad fraud causes inflation in ad campaign metrics of CTV ads due to invalid traffic, bot-driven engagement, and app spoofing. Some of the most common CTV ad fraud include:   Invalid or Bot Traffic: That does not come from a genuine user, including traffic generated by data centers (DCH), automated clicks, and other non-human sources. Bots generate fake ad views or clicks, making it appear as though there is legitimate engagement from real users.  Device Spoofing via: Creating fake CTV devices or apps to mimic real ones. It often tricks advertisers into buying ads on non-existent or fraudulent platforms.  VPN/DCH: Traffic coming from Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or data centers, is often used to hide the true location of the user and generate fake engagement from non-targeted regions.  CTV ad fraud also includes device spoofing, running ads through secondary devices while the TV is off, and invalid server-side ad insertion (SSAI).  Campaign Optimization for Frequency Cap Violations: Improve performance while preventing frequency capping violations, which occur when an ad is shown to the same user too often. By monitoring and managing frequency, advertisers can enhance engagement and reduce ad fatigue, ultimately maximizing return on investment (ROI).  Viewability Attention Metrics: The issues occur when advertisements are assessed for their visibility without adequately measuring user engagement. This leads to a mismatch between the visibility of ads and genuine interactions, resulting in distorted performance metrics.  Impact of CTV Traffic Fraud  Addressing CTV ad traffic fraud is essential to protect advertising investments and ensure accurate performance measurement. Implementing advanced fraud detection solution can mitigate these impacts, leading to more effective and efficient CTV advertising campaigns. Wasted Ad Spend: A significant portion of the advertising budget is lost to fraudulent traffic. CTV fraud detection and ad Traffic validation can identify any ineffective allocation of marketing resources.  Distorted Performance Metrics: Inaccurate data on ad impressions and engagement due to skewed metrics leading to misguided strategic decisions.  Reduced ROI: Lower return on investment due to non-human interactions or invalid traffic, which makes it difficult to achieve campaign objectives.  Damage to Brand Reputation: Ads potentially appearing in inappropriate or non-existent placements lead to a loss of consumer trust and brand credibility.  Inaccurate Audience Targeting: Ineffective targeting and personalization efforts due to misleading information about audience demographics and behavior.  Compromised Strategic Planning: Inability to accurately measure campaign success and challenges in optimizing future campaigns based on flawed data.  Competitive Disadvantage: Brands without robust fraud detection may fall behind competitors and reduce the effectiveness of marketing strategies compared to competitors using advanced fraud prevention.  Case Study  Improving CTV Ad Campaign Performance for a Global Energy Player  A leading global player in the energy sector was running CTV audio and display campaigns on Roku TV to boost visibility and audience reach.   Challenge: Despite substantial digital spending, the brand was experiencing low reach and engagement metrics (impression & viewability, completion rate, VTRs, reach and frequency metrics) which did not align with its investment. The primary challenge was the discrepancy between the digital spending and the actual reach and engagement metrics. The brand suspected that a significant portion of their ad traffic might be fraudulent, negatively impacting their campaign performance and ROI.  Solution: mFilterIt was brought in to validate the traffic for the CTV campaigns, ensuring that the brand’s ads were only shown to legitimate viewers. The process involved identifying B.A.V (Brand Safety, Ad Fraud & Viewability) & F-Cap over-exposure prevention to ensure the impression gets served within the frequency defined by the advertiser, brand safe, and non-IVT only.  Results: The mFilterIt analysis for the video campaign showed, that the average fraud was around 16% invalid traffic including 6.11% from invalid geographies, and the rest was from repeated IP bots, device repetition, and low-intent users. Reach and frequency metrics were also analyzed to streamline budget performances.  For the banner campaign, the average fraud was around 17% invalid traffic with a major chunk coming from repeated IP bots 14.49%, and the rest of the invalid traffic was from invalid geographies, DCH, and low intent users.  After implementing mFilterIt CTV ad traffic validation, the brand saw a significant improvement in its campaign performance. This led to a 4% increase in conversion rate and an 11% lift in ROI.  Impact of CTV Traffic Fraud  Addressing CTV ad traffic fraud is essential to protect advertising investments and ensure accurate performance measurement. Implementing advanced fraud detection solutions can mitigate these impacts, leading to more effective and efficient CTV advertising campaigns.  Wasted Ad Spend: A significant portion of the advertising budget is lost to fraudulent traffic. CTV fraud detection and ad Traffic validation can identify any ineffective allocation of marketing resources.  Distorted Performance Metrics: Inaccurate data on ad impressions and engagement due to skewed metrics leading

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