Ad Fraud

Ad fraud has become the most talked about thing in the digital ecosystem in the last one decade. Over the years it has become sophisticated and led to huge losses for the advertisers. According to the last measured stats, the potential loss due to ad fraud in 2024 will be around $100 billion.   And if marketers who are running impression campaigns are thinking that ad fraud is not impacting their ad campaigns, take a look at your campaign data.   If you see unusual traffic from sources outside your targeted area, there is one red flag for you to check. And like this, there are many more.   Impression validation is as crucial as validation of other hard key performance metrics. It helps advertisers get transparency at the beginning stage of the ad campaign and help them stop it at the root before it impacts the entire campaign, especially metrics like installs and events (like subscription, or first transaction) where the cost is higher.   Let’s understand in detail how impression fraud validation is essential for app marketers and how MMP’s are hiding the actual impact of fraudulent impressions.   MMP’s are hiding the full picture from you   Mobile Measurement platforms or MMPs often play a significant role in app marketing. They help the advertisers track the last click attribution of their ad campaigns and track app performance. There are a few MMPs who also provide ad fraud detection tool bundled with their attribution services. However, ad verification by MMPs have their own limitations.   -Focus on Attribution, Not Validation: Their core services are limited to attribution and not validation. MMPs get paid on the number of attributions made and when they detect fraud on these attributed sources, it directly impacts their revenue creating a conflict of interest. Therefore, they detect only 10-12% of the fraud and the rest of the fraudulent traffic remains undetected.  -Limited Scope of Fraud detection: The MMP’s don’t have the capability of doing deeper checks. They can detect fraudulent traffic based on basic checks and they often miss sophisticated fraud techniques.   -Lack of Real-Time Fraud Insights: The attribution platforms cannot provide real-time fraud insights to advertisers. Their usual timeline for generating ad fraud reports is D+7, where if the fraud is detected by the 20th, the advertisers will receive the report by 28th of the month. This further delays the preventative measures which the advertiser could have taken against these fraudulent sources.   Why App Advertisers Need to Look for an Advanced Ad Fraud Solution?   In comparison to the fraud detection done by MMPs, mFilterIt’s Valid8 solution uses a more holistic approach against the sophisticated fraud techniques. Some of the differentiating factors which will help you realize the difference:   -Transparency on real % of fraud: When MMPs detect less % of ad fraud, the advertisers are not aware of the actual number of fraudulent traffic sources. This further impacts the efficiency of the ad campaigns, and the advertisers end up losing money twice. First, on the invalid traffic interacting with their ads before validation, and second when the actual number is not reported by MMPs. With mFilterIt, brands can transparency at the source-level and identify which traffic sources are skewing the metrics.  -Provides real-time analytics and blocking: Using mFilterIt’s ad fraud detection solution, the advertisers can get real-time analysis of the fraudulent traffic and block them in real-time. This helps advertisers to save money on both invalid traffic on ads and attribution cost for these traffic sources to MMPs.   -Give full funnel protection: Unlike the MMPs, our ad fraud verification tool protects the campaign holistically. Our full-funnel coverage not just validates traffic at impression-level, but also at the install and event level to reduce the impact of fraud. This ensures that cleaner traffic reaches the end-of-the-funnel, resulting in a better conversion rate.   A Real Case  Here is a real case of a brand which was running an install campaign. By partnering with mFilterIt the brand was able to identify the impact of invalid traffic at the impression level. Upon further analysis we found two specific reasons for invalid traffic – impression spamming and traffic coming from incorrect region. We identified the cause and started blocking invalid traffic which resulted in an increase in organic traffic at the install level.    Takeaway  Ad fraud is evolving, and it can easily bypass the basic checks by MMPs. For advanced fraud techniques, you need an advanced ad fraud detection tool in your tech stack. While looking for an ad fraud verification vendor for your app campaigns, don’t believe the surface level reports and checks. It is time to ask for transparency and ensure that your entire ad campaign is protected, thereby your ads are seen by a genuine audience resulting in better conversions.   To get details on how we do it, get in touch with our experts  

For digital marketers, walled garden is not a foreign word. However, we will take a quick minute to throw light on it.   Walled gardens is a term coined in digital marketing for closed advertising environment where all the operations are controlled by the ecosystem provider. Some of the major players ruling this landscape are Google, Meta, and Amazon. They offer the advertisers access to a large set of audiences and comprehensive data analytics.  Due to the nature of walled gardens, these platforms are often perceived to be a protected space for advertisers. This means that the traffic is assumed to be high quality.   However, reality is not exactly black and white. It is grey.   Let’s find out.   The Myth is – Walled Gardens don’t have bot traffic   When advertising on walled gardens, the advertisers often perceive that their ads are receiving filtered traffic, due to the close nature of the walled garden ecosystem.   The walled gardens claim robust proprietary technologies and algorithms that filter out suspicious or bot-driven activity, leading advertisers to believe these environments are more secure.   However, this “black box” approach also means that advertisers must trust the platform’s own reporting and assurances. Independent verification is limited, so advertisers often accept the platforms’ claims at face value. The perception of reduced bot traffic is partly an outcome of this reliance on self-reported data, alongside platforms’ reputations and massive resources dedicated to tech infrastructure and security. These walled gardens can detect and safeguard from general invalid traffic, however the bots have also become sophisticated over the years. Its ability to mimic human behavior makes it easy to bypass basic rule-based checks. Due to opaque reporting, the advertisers are unaware of the quality of their ad traffic and who is watching their ads. Sophisticated Bots penetrate walled gardens  Sophisticated bots are designed by fraudsters to mimic human behavior in ways that they can mask their movements to evade detection. These bots are capable of taking actions like clicking, scrolling, and even fill forms, which makes it difficult to identify then and differentiate from real users.   These sophisticated bots can even adapt with platform-specific platforms, adjusting their patterns to avoid suspicion. As walled gardens restrict access to third-party ad fraud detection solution, resulting in limited visibility and transparency for advertisers, these bots use this opportunity. Signs of a Sophisticated bot activity   Repetitive visits from a single device  In this case, visits came repeatedly from a single device in a short span of time, indicating abnormal traffic.    Multiple visits in short time span from a single device  In this case, the visits are coming in a short time from the same device fingerprinting, indicating a bot traffic.  Impersonation of a specific device   In this case, the fraudsters impersonate the identity of a specific device. This technique is used by fraudulent affiliates to exhaust the ad budget. Due to this no event (lead/purchases) come from this device. In this case, the visits are coming from a single device, where the user agent at client and server are different, indicating abnormal behaviour.     Partner with an ad fraud validation tool for walled Garden  No platform is immune to bot traffic, including walled gardens. To get full transparency of their ad traffic, advertisers need an advanced solution that can identify sophisticated bots patterns effectively and block them proactively.   The benefit of blocking bot traffic is not limited to clean traffic, but it also helps to improve conversion rate of the ad campaigns. To ensure that the sophisticated bot traffic doesn’t bypass the detection methods, we at mFilterIt use a full-funnel approach along with identifying device signals, behavioral and heuristic checks.   Unlike traditional ad fraud solution vendors, mFilterIt goes beyond the impressions and clicks level to identify sophisticated bot traffic. Our solution detects suspicious traffic at the visit level where more sophisticated patterns can be detected and blocked.   Therefore, protection at just the impression and click level is not enough. Advertisers have to look beyond that to ensure their campaigns on walled gardens are protected from bot traffic.   How did an automobile player improved their conversion rate using Valid8 by mFilterIt?   The major automobile player was running Google search campaigns to bring traffic to their website from various meta platforms. But despite substantial spending, the conversion rate was suspiciously low. Upon identifying suspicious ad traffic patterns, we started the blacklisting process. This resulted in cleaner clicks and lead, improved conversion rate and a savings of $0.47 million for the brand.   Refer to the images below to see the results:   A 13% drop in click fraud and 11% drop in lead fraud rates  A 1.75x increase in conversion ratio  Start Blocking Bot Traffic on Walled Gardens   While walled gardens are trusted for their controlled and secure environment, the reality is that they are not bot-free. To protect ad campaigns from the sophisticated patterns of bot, the advertisers need an additional layer of protection by partnering with ad fraud detection vendor with advanced technology to ensure their ad budgets are consumed to attract genuine audience instead of bots. As bots continue to evolve, advertisers need transparency to evaluate where their ads are shown and who is watching their ads to better assess the quality of their ad traffic and maintain campaign integrity. Get in touch with us today to see how Valid8 by mFilterIt can help you uncover and eliminate hidden fraud in your walled garden campaigns.

Imagine a bucket with a small but constant leak. You pour water daily, yet the water level barely rises. Running lead campaigns with junk leads in your CRM is similar.   You’re investing resources, yet the actual value doesn’t grow. Junk leads, like leaks, waste resources, and hold back growth, leaving your team stretched and chasing unqualified prospects.  For a digital brand investing heavily, the pain point is clear: valuable marketing and call center resources are wasted on unproductive leads, reducing campaign efficiency and conversion rates. One of the sure-fire methods is lead punching used by fraudulent publishers to get money out of advertisers.   The only catch here is – Lead punching only helps these publishers get money, the advertisers are only left with false, or junk leads.   What is Lead Punching? Lead punching is one of the fraudulent practices used by dishonest publishers or affiliates to deliberately submit false lead information, using real names, phone numbers and email ID of a person. This information is easily accessible across multiple sources at a minimal cost, which makes it easy for fraudsters to exploit. They use this data to fill out lead forms, ensuring the details appear legitimate.   However, in reality the real person is not aware of filling in the lead form or even having interest in the service. Therefore, when the sales team follows up, these supposed leads deny submitting any form or even knowing about the company.    This forms easily 30-40% of the total leads which a typical client receives. So not only is the advertiser losing media budget by paying for these junk leads, but they also end up burning call center costs in calling up these leads. Marketing teams also add these leads into a CRM and do Email / WhatsApp marketing on these. Now they waste further money in reaching people who have no interest in their products.   Many advertisers try to implement CAPTCHAs and OTP to prevent bot-driven leads. However, these techniques can also be bypassed. Using disposable phone numbers, OTPs can be bypassed. There are also Captcha solvers available at just one click.  Therefore, implementing these checks cannot guarantee clean leads.   How does it impact CRM health?   – You waste marketing spend on irrelevant leads When marketing budgets drive unqualified traffic, a significant chunk of that spend is essentially wasted. Over time, these costs add up, creating a heavy financial toll on lead generation campaigns that fall short of delivering qualified prospects.  – Your call center team spends time calling irresponsive and irrelevant leads Junk leads consume precious time, especially for call center teams and sales representatives. Every call, follow-up, and email sent to an unqualified lead diverts resources from real prospects, reducing the efficiency and morale of your team.  – You miss the 5-minute rule According to this rule, the chances to connect with a prospect increases 100 times when connected within 5 minutes instead of waiting for an hour.  With resources tied up on low-quality leads, high-potential prospects might get lost due to delayed follow-ups or overlooked engagement. Junk leads indirectly lead to missed revenue opportunities by diverting the attention of your team.  – Your brand name loses credibility Repeatedly reaching out to leads who lack interest can be a poor reflection on your brand. In some cases, it may even create negative associations if potential customers perceive your company as inattentive or misaligned with their needs.  Strategies to Eliminate Junk Leads and Focus on Quality  Taking control of your lead quality requires a well-structured approach, integrating technology and a clear strategy at each step of the funnel. Here’s a roadmap to clean up your lead pipeline and prioritize high-value prospects.  1. Clean Traffic and Fraud Prevention  Start by eliminating invalid traffic sources and preventing fraud with real-time validation tools. Filtering out traffic that doesn’t meet quality standards early on ensures that only leads with genuine potential enter the funnel. By removing these invalid visits at the start, you create a cleaner foundation, setting the stage for more effective lead nurturing and conversion efforts.  2. Intent-Based Visit Analysis  Once you’ve ensured traffic quality, dive deeper by analyzing the intent behind each lead’s visit. Look at the behavior of leads on your website—time spent, pages visited, and actions taken. This stage is crucial for gauging how interesting a lead truly is. Intent-based analysis lets you sort out window-shoppers from those genuinely interested in your product or service, allowing your team to prioritize leads that show clear signs of potential.  3. Lead Scoring and Validation with CRM Integration  For an optimized lead funnel, integrate your CRM with automated lead scoring tools that assess demographic data, engagement level, and previous behavior. Leveraging AI and ML-based technology, you can assign scores to leads based on these criteria, making it easy to prioritize high-potential leads. With a streamlined CRM, your sales team can focus their follow-ups on leads more likely to convert, saving time and increasing productivity.  4. Funnel Optimization and Junk Lead Filtering  With a system in place to identify quality leads, refine your funnel by regularly reviewing and tweaking the criteria that classify leads. By tightening filters and adjusting scoring parameters, you can progressively reduce the entry of junk leads, creating a cycle of continuous improvement in lead quality.  How mFilterIt validate leads on the CRM?   mFilterIt’s solution empowers advertisers with transparent, data-driven insights into CRM data. By collecting key metrics—such as website behavior, sales funnel, revenue, and attribution data—this mechanism uses advanced AI & ML algorithms to analyze each lead’s journey. The unique rule engine provides in-depth conversation and attribution analytics, categorizing users by intent (high, moderate, or low). This user-intent scoring, combined with visit analytics, gives advertisers clarity on lead quality and helps optimize campaign efforts. The solution enables brands to focus on high-intent leads, ensuring accurate reporting and maximizing ROI from their CRM data.  Clean Your CRM with Advanced Technology  For marketers, the focus shouldn’t just be on generating leads but on ensuring the quality of each one. By investing in

Imagine the plight when the ad spends which were allocated to acquire new users and expand reach is now being cannibalized by nefarious affiliates. Brands and agencies often consider well-reputed platforms like Google, Facebook, and other platforms to give them good-quality traffic.   In 2022, advertising spending that was wasted due to invalid traffic was $54.63 billion on the global level. The Statista projected that by 2027, the spending would reach $870.85 billion.  Click Spam and Fake Attribution are all instances of click Fraud, and they contribute to 74% of Click Fraud.    What is Click Fraud?   Click fraud, also referred to as pay-per-click fraud, is a kind of fraud that artificially inflates traffic statistics for online advertisements. In the typical pay-per-click advertising model, advertisers pay a fee for each click on their advertisement, hoping that they have attracted a potential customer.   Click fraud creates the illusion that many potential customers are clicking on the ad. However, the advertiser is unlikely to make any real human visits from these clicks as they are done by bots. It is done to increase the revenue of the publisher, and it drains the advertiser’s budget.   Types of Click Fraud?  Click Fraud ID is dominant both in the web and app ecosystems. Various types of click fraud can be seen in the digital ad ecosystem.   Sophisticated Bots- Bots are automated scripts acting as users, they go on targeted websites and create fake impressions. Bot activity comes from devices infected with malware viruses.  Click Farms – A click farm is a network of bots or a fraudulent operation of publishers that employs large groups of people to manually click on paid online ads.   Ad stacking – It is a type of mobile ad fraud in which the fraudsters stack or hide multiple ads on top of one another beneath the primary ad.   Install Hijacking– This kind of click fraud aims to make an application installation appear legitimate.  This is accomplished by installing a fraudulent app covertly. The fraud app overtakes tracking codes and attributes these installs as one that occurred because of it.   Device ID fraud– This method is used on device farms with multiple devices. The device downloads an app and clicks on real ads by using a script to click on actual ads. The gadget is then reset after that. This keeps happening over and over. There are IP address switches involved to gain the legitimacy of the act.   Incentivized traffic– Traffic created by users who visit websites in exchange for various rewards such as money gifts, discounts, whitepapers, or game tokens. It increases website traffic and provides insightful customer data.   Red Flags of Click Fraud?  If your PPC ads regularly exhibit any of the following signs, you may need to consider reducing your exposure.   High Bounce Rate   Unprecedented increase in impressions and clicks   High traffic rate but low conversions. Unusual clicks from some obscure country   Anomalies in performance data  Brands need a multi-level protective mechanism to track and validate click impressions on ads. Advertisers must strengthen their defenses and prevent wastage of ad budget.   How can it be Prevented?  By implementing an active ad fraud detection system that keeps an eye on clicks and impression integrity. With AI-ML advanced technology,mFilterIt assists advertisers in real-time click fraud detection. The sophisticated algorithm aids in locating anomalies in the click data.   Let’s understand this with a case study of a major automobile player running a Google search campaign to attract new customers through various meta platforms.   Use Case   The Client faced challenges despite a healthy advertising spend, the conversion ratio (lead generation) was suspiciously low.   The key initiative to resolve this issue involves the process of:   Blacklisting is aimed at filtering out fraudulent clicks and leads.  Ensuring cleaner traffic   Initially, the fraud rates were high with click rates at 21.44% and lead fraud at 15.56%.   After the blacklisting process began there was a significant drop in fraud rates.   Click fraud has reduced by 13% and lead fraud has reduced by 11%.   Conversion Ratio trends showed an upward trajectory from 3.82% to 6.71%.   The impact on the brand blacklisting process enabled the brand to save $0.47 million due to reduced fraudulent activities and improved conversion rates.   The case highlights the importance of monitoring and managing digital advertisement campaigns to mitigate click fraud and optimize performance.   Final thought   Unchecked click fraud has the potential to damage a brand’s online reputation and gradually reduce trust in digital advertising campaigns. mFilterIt provides a strong answer to this widespread problem by successfully detecting and guaranteeing that advertising dollars are spent on genuine interactions. By removing invalid traffic, and blacklisting process with maximization of return on investment, it is an indispensable instrument to counteract click fraud.   Get in touch to learn more about Click Fraud.  

Profit. That’s the main goal of every business. Amongst all advertising solutions, pay-per-click advertising is considered highly lucrative to achieve this goal. But new ad fraud techniques being discovered each day, such as click farms, are costing advertisers around the globe billions of dollars. Click farms are wreaking havoc in the digital world, duping innocent marketers and forcing vulnerable farmers to work in poor conditions. Thanks to human interference, click farms outsmart even the most sophisticated bot detection solutions. These farms could be why you cannot meet your goals despite hitting your KPIs. Understanding Click Farms Managed by human-run fraud organizations, click farms exploit large numbers of low-wage workers from developing countries. The job of these workers demands clicking not on a few but thousands of online paid ads, social media posts, or PPC ads. Workers in click farms click on ads without intending to convert and add empty impressions to the metrics. The fraudsters often go as far as visiting the sites, filling out the form, authorizing application installations, or making a (fake) purchase. Click fraud activity artificially inflates the number of clicks and impressions, draining your advertising budget and increasing the click farm’s revenue in the process. Click farms also make it difficult for marketers to ascertain a campaign’s true performance. The fake impressions, likes, and clicks can make a post or campaign appear more popular than it is, leading to false engagement numbers, thus the said challenge. These numbers also lead to the spreading of misleading information among consumers. Besides, since these farms are managed by humans and not bots, click fraud detection has become more challenging. An Overview of the Click Farm Operations Primarily, click farms are focused on three major aspects of digital advertising solutions. Social Media Platforms: Occurring on all social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, click farms not only increase the number of impressions and clicks in just a few days but also artificially boost posts. PPC: With PPC advertising, advertisers pay for clicks. Click farms are used to drain ad budgets by producing fraudulent clicks on ads. Website Traffic: Ad publishers often employ PPC farms to inflate their traffic numbers. This can help them make their websites appear as lucrative and real estate. Types of Click Farms Three major types of click farms are running in developing countries, like India, China, Bangladesh, Philippines, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Human-based These are run by organizations where owners employ individuals to generate traffic and increase engagement metrics. Bot-based These are similar to human-based. The only difference is the number of people engaged in the operation is less. More bots are employed to achieve the same results. Mixed As the name suggests, this type of click farm is a combination of both. Some individuals are employed to manually generate revenue for the fraud organizations, while others are hired to control bots and other click fraud software. Impact of Click Farms on Advertisers In 2022, the cost of digital advertising fraud, including click farms, reached a staggering $81 billion, expected to reach $100 billion by the end of 2023. For every $3 advertisers spend on digital ads, $1 is lost in some form of ad fraud. The financial implications of click fraud on advertisers are certainly a great deal. But it doesn’t just end there. Advertisers are impacted in more ways than one. Decreased return on investment (ROI) due to inflated metrics CPI, cost per impression, is a metric that advertisers use to gauge an ad campaign’s effectiveness. Since click farms aimlessly click on paid ads, it artificially inflates the CPI metrics, making it challenging for advertisers to verify their target audience. The ads do not reach the targeted users and spread false information among advertisers about their cost per impression. Click farms also hamper CPC (cost-per-click) metrics. The increasing number of fake clicks adulterates the number of genuine clicks. Furthermore, this fraud leads to a false increase in the cost of each click in the bidding, increasing the cost per genuine click in the process. Consequently, advertisers are left with poor quality traffic, drained ad spend, and decreased return on investment. Erosion of trust in digital advertising platforms Paid digital advertising is often a solution businesses opt for to increase their sales. However, with the increasing number of ad fraud techniques and invalid click impressions, advertisers’ faith in these practices is shaken. This lack of trust adversely affects ad spend and brand marketing tactics. Building a mutually beneficial relationship among advertisers and platforms becomes a real challenge, distorting the broader digital advertising ecosystem. Negative effects on brand reputation One of the serious implications of ad fraud by click farms is the destruction of brand credibility. Fake clicks and impressions may make genuine customers feel deceived and lose their trust in the brand. Moreover, bot-based click farms that generate fake interactions on websites or social media platforms may degrade the user experience. Spam or excessive fake comments may make it challenging for genuine customers to navigate through the clutter of fake discussions and truly engage with the content. This frustrates the customer and negatively affects the brand’s reputation. How to Detect and Prevent Click Fraud Now, we know click farms are operated by real humans, unlike other ad fraud maneuvers that use bots. Due to their certain behavioral patterns, distinguishing between fake and real users is fairly easy. However, the same cannot be said for click farms since they mimic human behavior and patterns. To fight the rising ad fraud techniques, ad networks have their protection tools in place to identify the imposters. For instance, Google has an Ad Traffic Quality Team in place to detect and filter out invalid activity by using automatic filters, deep research, and live reviewers. To add a layer of protection, brands may deploy click fraud protection software, like mfilterIt. These tools use machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect instances of ad fraud in real-time. Some tools may even allow you to block fraud sources automatically, eradicating the room for human error. Are Click Farms Legal? Click farms

As the digital advertising landscape continues to thrive, more instances of fraud are also being highlighted. A report by ANA (Association of National Advertisers) suggested that advertisers on the platform may have been losing as much as 23% of their ad budgets to fraudulent activities. Understanding ad fraud may be the most basic yet most important step for advertisers worried about protecting their campaigns and making the most of their ad budgets. This article will help you do exactly that. In the subsequent sections, we will discuss one of the most prevalent forms of digital ad fraud, commonly known as click fraud. In a nutshell, click fraud is the term used to describe the act of clicking on advertisements with malicious intent. Most fraudsters commit click fraud to claim credit for fraudulent clicks and make a quick buck. Unfortunately, because executing click fraud is relatively simple, it is one of the most common forms of ad fraud. According to some studies, fraudulent clicks account for as much as 36% of the total clicks on display ads. The story of search ads is similarly harrowing, with some estimates saying 11% of all search ad clicks are fake. Understanding Click Fraud So how does click fraud take place? In its simplest form, click fraud is committed using click farms. These are bot-powered or human-powered establishments in developing countries where resources are relatively cheap. This bot or human labor is used to generate fraudulent clicks on advertisements. Malicious publishers, who are usually in cahoots with click farm owners, get paid for these fraudulent clicks, while the advertisers paying for the clicks get no real value from their campaigns. Since many click farms employ real human beings, their activity closely resembles genuine user behavior, flying under the radar of fraud filters used by advertising platforms. Other click farms employ networks of sophisticated bots that can replicate human activity and pass through the ad platforms’ fraud filters. Besides the obvious objective of making a quick buck, fraudsters may employ click farms for a variety of other reasons. For instance, some businesses may employ the services of a click farm to undermine the advertising efforts of their competitors. While click farms are the simplest way to execute click fraud, there are other more complex methods employed by sophisticated fraudsters. Some of the most common ones include: Crowdsourced Click Fraud: Have you ever visited a website that said something like “click these ads to support our website”? If so, you may have witnessed crowdsourced click fraud taking place. Here, the publishing website gets paid for each click on the ad, and the clicks come from genuine users. However, since the clicks are mostly done to ‘support the website’, they usually don’t have any sort of purchase intent behind them. This means the advertisers pay, and the fraudulent publishers get paid for useless clicks. Incentivised Traffic Click Fraud: In some cases, publishers offer some sort of reward to visitors or users in exchange for a click on an ad. The most common example of this can be observed in the case of smartphone games. Gaming apps incentivize users with in-game benefits in exchange for viewing or clicking on ads. Once again, the users clicking on these ads have absolutely no interest in the services or products they offer. Hence, these clicks have no value from the advertiser’s perspective, who still has to pay for them. Botnet Click Fraud: Botnets are large networks of computers infected with malware. The malware allows fraudsters to execute commands on these devices, which real users usually own. These commands, which often include visiting certain websites and clicking on ads (in other words, click fraud), are often executed without the knowledge of the owners of the devices. Hit Inflation Attacks: This is perhaps the most notorious form of click fraud. A hit inflation attack redirects users to a website they never intended to visit and clicks on the ads on that website. Before the user can do anything about this, they are redirected to the website they originally tried to visit. Now that we understand how click fraud works let us look at some obvious and some not-so-obvious ways it affects advertisers. The Impact of Click Fraud on Advertisers As you may be able to guess, click fraud impacts advertisers in multiple ways. For the sake of understanding, we have divided these into the following categories: Financial Implications Wasted ad spend is the most obvious impact of click fraud on advertisers. It is also perhaps the most serious. Wasted ad spend translates into a lower return on investment. In some instances, this may mean that the affected businesses may reduce their spending on digital advertising, or worse, they may completely put a stop to their digital advertising efforts. When this happens, the business ends up losing on two fronts. Besides losing their allocated ad spend to fraud, the company also ends up paying the opportunity cost of not continuing advertising on digital platforms. Distorted Performance Metrics A relatively less obvious impact of click fraud is the skewed ad campaign metrics it produces. Sources of click fraud often lead to an inflated click-through rate. In some cases, the biggest individual sources of ad traffic turn out to be the sources of fraudulent traffic. In such cases, the advertisers responsible for optimizing the campaign may allocate more budget to these sources of inflated traffic that are sending fraudulent traffic to their website. This may also mean that advertisers may ignore perfectly valid traffic sources that may send fewer but highly relevant prospects to their websites. Damaged Reputation and Trust Click fraud doesn’t just affect brands and advertising platforms. It also involves and impacts real users. In most cases of click fraud, genuine users are subjected to bad user experiences. When such experiences occur during their interactions with a brand, it may impact the brand’s image in the user’s mind. Click fraud also impacts the trust between advertisers and advertising platforms. Even ad platforms that may be actively trying to

Every click and impression counts! The dynamic landscape of digital advertising requires advertisers to maintain the integrity of ad campaigns. It might seem an uphill battle to optimize performance and safeguard the ad spend but proactive monitoring and fortifying their ad campaigns can protect them from menace like click fraud and spamming threats. The burning question here is – are these efforts enough? Do they protect against ever-evolving sophisticated threats? Is it building trust and transparency along with preventing wastage of ad spending? Let’s explore! Click Integrity Monitoring to Reducing Spamming and Click Fraud Consider the scenario – You’re running a digital ad campaign targeting users in India. But, you notice a surge in clicks that seem too good to be true. If you have an efficient click validation mechanism in place, you will uncover the sinister truth – click spamming is at play. Imagine the horror – if you don’t have such capability! The deceptive practice of generating invalid clicks on ads with malicious intent and you were making payout for these invalid clicks and impressions. Fig. 01: Checks via Click Integrity Click fraud poses a significant threat to advertisers worldwide from India to Southeast Asia (SEA) and the United States, no corner of the digital landscape is immune to this menace. Advertisers need to fortify their defenses and prevent the wastage of advertising budget. An active ad fraud detection that monitors clicks and impression integrity enables you to mitigate fraudulent clicks, safeguarding your brand’s reputation and preserving your ad budget. Building Trust Through Transparency to Prevent Click Fraud Trust is the currency that fuels success. Advertisers seek transparency and accountability from their partners. The goal is clear – They need optimal results from their advertising efforts and enhanced ROI on ad spend. Consider a scenario –  you’re a brand operating in the competitive landscape of the United States, where click fraud and spamming tactics run rampant. Your ad campaign is gaining traction, but you suspect foul play behind the scenes as invalid clicks are ruining your ad campaign performance metrics. Monitoring your click integrity empowers advertisers to thrive in such scenarios. Brands need a multi-level, defense mechanism across the funnel to meticulously track and validate ad impressions and clicks. Case Study: Major EdTech Player in India Analysis period in February 2023 started running a performance campaign to acquire new customers monitored by mFilterIt ad traffic validation solution. They were able to identify fake clicks and safeguarded their budget from heavy payouts. Fig. 02: Fraud detection and analysis with click & impression integrity for an EdTech player. The brand saved a massive amount of ad spend over 3 Months. For this EdTech company, the major issue was Fake Attribution (52.45%), The affiliates attributed installs by generating fake clicks after the user installed the app. The install was organic but due to the fake click, the install was attributed to the affiliate so that the affiliate could gain monetary benefits from the brand. Cases like these illustrate that the problem is beyond click spamming. Fake or invalid clicks are one part of the fraudulent activities that adversely impact the efficiency of ad campaigns. To fortify their ad campaign performance, they must optimize every aspect across the funnel with multi-level defense. Fig. 03: Impact of Click Fraud The Way Forward Monitor Your Click Integrity for a Brighter Future! Maintaining click integrity is non-negotiable. It’s the cornerstone of trust and transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem. What’s the moral of the story? So, dear advertisers, safeguard your brand’s reputation, optimize campaign performance and combat click fraud to reduce spamming. Start a new era of trust and build transparency in the digital ecosystem. Don’t waste your precious resources. Instead, focus your efforts on maximizing the impact while ensuring click integrity to steer your ad campaign strategically. Get in Touch to learn more about Click Fraud detection and prevention.