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Can Ad Fraud Detection Stop Your Brand’s Growth? Know the Truth

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Ad Fraud is a term that has shaken the entire digital advertising ecosystem in the past decade. Every year, fraudsters are becoming sophisticated and smart in stealing revenue from advertisers. Whether it’s advertisers, publishers, or ad networks, no one is safe from the threats of cybercriminals. The legitimate publishers get their genuine clicks stolen by fraudsters. Whereas the ad networks have to see their performance suffer and campaigns fail. And the worst of all happens with the advertisers as they pay for both invalid users and organic downloads. In this fight between the fraudsters and the digital marketing ecosystem, myths make the advertisers question the ad fraud detection vendors while the fraudsters feed on their money. Here is another myth that is making noise lately. In this blog, we are busting this myth with some facts which will help you understand the importance of an ad fraud detection software. What is cooking? In the digital advertising world, publishers are spreading the word that they are not able to scale an advertiser’s business due to ad fraud detection solutions. However, the reality is different Publishers lose a high percentage of their revenue due to ad fraud detection solutions. For instance, if an ad fraud preventive service provider detects 70% of fraud coming from a specific source, then that particular publisher receives a payout on just 30% of the genuine traffic by the advertiser. Publishers & MMP union Some of the renowned Mobile measurement platforms (MMPs) also offer ad fraud detection services clubbed with their attribution services. They claim that they will detect fraud in the data attributed by them to an app advertiser and ensure that they receive clean traffic. However, there is a catch. The MMPs bill the advertisers based on the number of attributions. Hence, if the MMPs detect a higher number of frauds on the attributed data, they will lose revenue. Therefore, to ensure that their revenue is not impacted, the MMPs detect 10-12% of the fraud and the rest of the fraud remains undetected. This benefits the MMPs and the publishers as they can claim higher payout from the advertisers. As the MMPs detect low fraud, the publisher encourages the agencies, advertisers, and other stakeholders to use the MMP ad fraud detection as it will eventually benefit them. This is similar to a situation where the culprit is telling to choose where to go and file a complaint to keep themselves safe. And listening to this, the advertisers fail to detect the real fraud and end up losing huge revenue. What do advertisers miss? Real % of Fraud: Due to less fraud reporting by MMPs, the advertisers remain in the dark regarding the actual fraud numbers. This further affects the performance of the ad campaigns, and the advertisers end up losing money twice to invalid traffic. First, they lose money to the invalid traffic before ad fraud solution. Later, they end up losing money on invalid traffic that is not reported by the MMPs. Growth Opportunities: The advertisers use an MMP to measure the performance and get analytical data for their campaigns. However, due to less fraud reported by MMPs, the marketers stay under the impression that their campaign performance is good. Furthermore, as the marketer takes decisions based on this skewed data, they end up investing more in the wrong campaign. This further hampers the overall growth of the business. mFilterIt Vs MMPs In comparison to the fraud detection done by MMPs, we ensure holistic protection of advertisers from ad fraud. Our ad traffic validation suite enables: Full-Funnel Protection MMPs can detect the general bots, but they often miss to detect the signs of sophisticated bots in an ad campaign. As sophisticated bots can easily mimic human behavior, they are hard to detect and require an advanced solution. With our full-funnel approach, we detect sophisticated bot patterns in real-time to help advertisers take immediate action to curb the impact. Detect New Bots Across Domains Every day a new bot is coming, and it is hard to detect across all platforms and domains. MMPs often lose the time to respond to the threats as their systems and rules are updated once in 6 months or a year. Whereas we detect a new bot on any campaign, we ensure to flag it across all the advertisers/campaigns. This results in the protection of ad campaigns from the impact of the new bot. Proactive Reporting The attribution platforms provide a late ad fraud report to the advertisers. This means that if the ad fraud is detected by the 20th of a month, then the advertisers will receive the report on the 28th of that month. This further delays the process of taking preventative measures against fraudulent sources. Furthermore, it also affects the invoicing and closures at the end of the month, and even after taking so much time they fail to detect the right number of fraudulent sources. Whereas we provide D-1 data, which means that if the fraud is detected by the 20th of the month, the advertiser gets the report on the 21st of the month. This helps the advertiser to understand the possible impact of the ad fraud and take preventative measures immediately without wasting further ad spends on irrelevant traffic. Early reporting also helps publishers to optimize better and reduce the threat of fraud. Forget the Myth, Believe in Facts With the fast-growing world of digital ad fraud are making their every move smarter, more discrete, and an illusion to the naked eye. To ensure your marketing efforts are not wasted, it is important to fight against fraudsters with an advanced ad traffic validation solution. A reliable ad fraud detection and prevention solution will help to detect fraud in real time and provide holistic protection against sophisticated bots without impacting your growth. The only party affected is the publishers as their pay-out decreases when an effective ad fraud tool is in place. It’s time to believe the data, not the myths. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn

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How To Combat Bot Traffic with Google Analytics?

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The word ‘Bot’ can be both good and bad in the digital marketing ecosystem. There are good bots like the search engine crawlers which help to improve your website performance. On the other hand, there are bad bots that are used by cybercriminals to commit unethical activities like ad fraud and stealing advertisers’ ad spends. Half of the internet’s traffic consists of bots, of which 65% are bad bots. In recent events, bad bots have costed brands more than just money. The latest news of Elon Musk dropping out of a $44 bn deal with Twitter due to fake accounts is a sign of how deep-rooted the issue is. As a marketer, you need to be aware of who is visiting your website. When analyzing data, it is important to ensure that your data doesn’t consist of bot traffic. With the help of Google Analytics, you can detect and filter the bot traffic to see cleaner data points. Thinking about how to detect bot traffic on Google Analytics? We have included the most common tell-tale signs to detect bot traffic on your Google Analytics. 4 Signs to detect Bot Traffic on Google Analytics 1. Unusual Traffic If your website visit increases from an average number of 1,000 to 20,000 or you see a similar spike in a short interval of time without any marketing efforts or unknown reasons, it is not good news. Your website traffic is polluted with bots if you see a sudden spike in your website traffic, and there are certain things you might notice: Page views less than 1 second on single pages No location or location set of a botnet Keyword searched or domain name with the word “Bot” 2. Unknown Referral Traffic Referral traffic refers to the traffic that comes to the site by clicking on a link in another domain or platform. It is also used as a medium for bot traffic. These sources can be detected manually on Google Analytics. Some of the common signs of bot-generated referral traffic are: Sites with spammy-looking domains Referral sites with unusually high visits 3. Unusually Low Page-Time Unlike the human way of browsing, the bots are programmed in a way that they behave in the same pattern. When looking at the Google analytics data, check for sources that have a page visit time of less than a minute. Bots are programmed to just add a visit to the page which is usually 1 or 2 seconds maximum. It is obvious that a human will not come and stay on a page for less than 1 second, and hence you can detect the traffic generated by bots. 4. Strange Metrics The classic sign of bot activity on your site is if you see something at an extreme or unusually low. For instance, if you see bounce rates of sources at 0% or 100% then there is a high chance this visit is from a fraudulent source. Is detecting bot traffic on Google Analytics enough? Google Analytics allows you to exclude bot traffic to see a clear picture of your data without fraud traffic. With the help of Google Analytics, you can get a better insight into how much website traffic is genuine to make a better business decision. This can help you exclude the bot traffic showing on your analytics data, but the real impact of bot traffic will still exist. Thus, just the bot traffic detection on Google Analytics is not enough. To protect your websites and ad campaigns from the impact of bot traffic, you need an advanced ad traffic validation suite. This can prevent bots from draining your ad budget on invalid traffic and skewing your data. Advanced Problems Need Advanced Solutions The general bots are easy to detect by analyzing the unusual bot patterns. However, the sophisticated bots are programmed in a way that they can easily replicate human behavior. And thus, an advanced ad fraud detection tool becomes necessary to combat this problem. mFilterIt’s ad traffic validation suite detects bot traffic in real-time and eliminates them to prevent further wastage of ad spends. With the capabilities of AI, ML, and data science, the solution detects and analyses the bot patterns based on various parameters and blacklists them. Takeaways There is no one way to fight ad fraud and win against the fraudsters. With the help of analytics, you can take better business decisions by excluding the bot traffic sources from your data points. With the right mix of both analytics and ad fraud detection, you can combat ad fraud attacks and ensure that only real humans are viewing and clicking your ads and visiting your website.

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Affiliate Programs

Fraud in Affiliate Programs. What Can Marketers Do?

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Affiliate marketing is going to stay in online marketing for a long time. But, along with its popularity in the digital marketing space, it has also been impacted by fraudulent affiliates who are willing to dig out money from advertisers. Fraud in affiliate marketing is evolving with time, and fraudsters are finding different ways to scam the merchants. But before we dive into the types of affiliate fraud, let’s start from the basics and understand all about the affiliate program and how it works. What is an Affiliate Program? In an affiliate program, there is an agreement between a business and an affiliate (business or influencer). An affiliate gets paid by the merchant when a visitor redirected from the affiliate link performs a certain action like visits, purchase, or to fill a form. This is usually done through web content, product integration, or social media. Benefits of an Affiliate Program One of the biggest benefits of the Affiliate Program is that it is a low-risk way to promote products. Apart from this, some other benefits of an affiliate program are: It is performance-based It helps to broaden the audience It boosts the reputation of the brand It is cost-effective It helps to rapidly scale the traffic How does an affiliate program work? In an affiliate program, there are three parties involved in the arrangement: The customer The affiliate site The advertiser site The affiliate program process starts with a contract between the online advertiser website and the affiliate website. According to this, the merchant will pay a commission to the affiliate for sending traffic to their website. Moreover, the agreement also includes the information related to the number of people the affiliate sends to the merchant site or the number of people performing some action like purchasing or filling a form. Affiliate marketing is an easy and effective way to sell products online and helps marketers to spread the word about their business or website. How is it different from an affiliate network? An affiliate network is a well-established platform that has access to a database of members. It enables the marketers and the companies to connect with influencers directly for promoting their products. Whereas an affiliate program is a platform where a marketer has complete control over the entire process. They can set up the rules and the commissions they are willing to pay the affiliates. Things to remember before working with affiliates Ensure to pick affiliates wisely: When choosing your affiliate partner, ensure to inquire and ask for important information. Some of the essential things to focus on are the industry they are part of, traffic estimates, and website URLs. Also, before going forward, ensure to explain the terms and conditions. Set your brand standards right: Ensure to provide the guidelines to the affiliates for representing your brand. Along with this, provide an overview of the brand’s demographics, ideal target audience, and shopping habits. Monitor the affiliate campaigns: Although it seems that the affiliates are trustworthy, it is important to keep a track of the promotions. The marketer must use tech tools to analyse the performance of the affiliate campaigns and promotions run by the affiliates. Keep a context check: Ensure to keep a check on where your ad is appearing. If your ad is appearing on controversial or offending content, it can directly impact the reputation of your brand. Check how you’re promoted: In addition to keeping a check on the placement of the ads, it is also important to check the context of the affiliate’s website content. Appearing on a website with poor and misleading content or a bad design can lead to further damage to the brand’s reputation. Beware of ad fraud: Ad fraud not only drains the advertising budget but also impacts the brand reputation. Due to various techniques of ad fraud, the ads may appear on shady and low-quality websites. It is essential to keep a check on unusual activities and take necessary actions. Fraud on Affiliate Bypassing Strict Checks The fraudsters have various techniques to take out money from the marketers. In affiliate marketing, cybercriminals bypass strict checks provided by the merchant site. One of the common ways to manipulate a marketer is through domain spoofing. The fraudsters replicate a URL of a legitimate publisher and gain the trust of the marketer. Some other methods of ad fraud in affiliates are cookie stuffing and account takeover. In some cases, the fraudsters also plant bots to generate fake clicks, conversions, and transactions. Keyword Bidding Another common way to dig out money from advertisers is by misusing the technique of keyword bidding. In performance marketing, anyone can bid on brand keywords. To flush out money from advertisers, affiliates bid on brand keywords and take back the user to the website. But instead of it being an organic user, it will be an inorganic user and the affiliate partner will be considered as the last attribution source. In addition to this, the advertiser will now pay more to the search engines to bid on their brand keywords as the demand for the keyword increases. In this way, the advertiser eventually has to pay a commission to the affiliate for an organic user that eventually would have reached the website and more money to the search engines for their brand keyword. Fake Social media groups Some fraudsters also use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to trick people into clicking on affiliate links by offering shiny offers and discounts. When the users click on that link, they are taken to a malware-affected website that can hack their system to extract personal information. In another case, the user might purchase from that fraudulent link and never receive the product. In both cases, the advertiser is directly impacted by the fraudsters. In the first case, they are losing potential customers and in the second case, the users lose trust in the brand which further impacts its brand reputation. Incorrect messaging to fool customers There are some cases where we have seen ads promoting

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Travel Meta Search Engines

Travel Meta Search Engines – How Fraudsters Are Ruining It?

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The global travel industry is experiencing sustained growth. Amid this, travel metasearch engines have emerged as a critical touchpoint for millions of travelers looking to compare prices, discover deals, and book smarter. These platforms aggregating hotel and flight listings across OTAs and direct suppliers are no longer just price-comparison tools. They’ve evolved into performance-driven ad marketplaces for travel brands, offering reach, visibility, and high-intent traffic. However, with opportunity comes risks – cyber traps set by fraudsters. Here’s what you need to know about travel metasearch engines and how fraud is exploiting these platforms. What are travel metasearch engines? A travel metasearch engine is a platform that serves as a price comparison website. The customers can compare hotel and flight prices in real-time. These platforms work like an aggregator, taking data from different sources across the internet, like the OTAs (online travel agents) or directly from the hotels. However, the travel metasearch platforms are not booking channels. They just serve as a search engine platform for various travel booking channels. What is their revenue model? The revenue model of travel metasearch engines is the same as the digital advertising platforms. Their revenue comes from metrics like CPC (Cost per click), CPI (cost per impression), CPA (cost per acquisition), and hybrid ads (a combination of CPA and CPC). Is Meta Search a passing trend or the future of travel? The pandemic has brought a massive change in the behavior’s of the travelers. Along with the safety and hygiene, they are looking for more flexible deals and transparency in the price when planning a vacation. To address these changes, the metasearch platforms have become more relevant in the current times. Apart from being a one-stop platform to show the best and budget-friendly deals, it is helpful across travel means and hotels. The metasearch platforms address the core problems of travel portals. After the break of 2 years, the hotels and OTA’s want to be discovered and visible to potential travelers. To fulfill this gap, metasearch offers both discoverability and visibility on its platforms. They also add important information like ratings and reviews for the travelers to make an informed decision. And with travelers taking more informed decisions and newer hotels & OTAs emerging, these metasearch platforms are here to stay for a long time. However, there is a catch. The meta-search platforms also come under the radar of cybercriminals. Fraud in Metasearch Platforms The metasearch platforms charge a cost per click or a commission from the advertisers. This offers a golden opportunity for fraudsters to exploit the system, leading to the wastage of advertisers’ ad budgets and the manipulation of their data. How Does Fraud Happen in Travel Metasearch Platforms? Bot Traffic: The fraudsters program bots to engage with the links of the advertisers on the meta-search platforms. These bots generate fake clicks and inflate the click rate on the advertiser’s website. On one hand, the advertiser receives a high number of clicks, but the conversion numbers remain low. In addition to this, the advertiser has to pay for every click to the metasearch platforms. VPN Proxy: Apart from generating bot traffic, the fraudsters also use VPNs to fake locations and IP addresses. This technique makes it difficult for the advertiser to differentiate between a genuine click and a bot-generated click, and they end up with manipulated data. Competitor Clicks:  In some cases, some travel websites also send bot traffic to their competitors’ listings to manipulate their data. They program the bots to generate fake clicks for the website and keep them under the impression that they are getting genuine traffic. Impact of Fraud Compromised Data: Fraudsters program bots to engage with the links listed on the metasearch engines. These bots generate fake clicks, which makes the advertiser believe that they are getting traffic. However, despite the high number of clicks, the travel platforms do not see any improvement in conversions. Influx in CTR: Due to the impression generated by bots, the CTR is impacted directly and misleads the advertiser. They are under the impression that they are getting genuine traffic. Whereas the reality is that they are only getting invalid traffic. How can we make a difference? We use the capabilities of AI, ML, and data science to detect bot patterns in the traffic coming from the meta-search platforms. With a deep analysis of the data, we identify the fraudulent IP addresses and blacklist them. This ensures that they will not impact the traffic of the advertiser in the future. Final Words Travel is all set to see massive growth after a halt of two years. And while it is an opportunity for hotels and OTAs to gear up and bring more traffic to their website, someone is watching their every move. Fraudsters are not just stealing money from ads, but they are also on a spree to manipulate the growth of advertisers listing themselves on metasearch platforms. To ensure that your money is not wasted on invalid and non-converting traffic, get in touch with an ad fraud detection & prevention solution provider like mFilterIt and weed out fraud from your campaign data. Get in touch with our experts today!

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Gaming Advertisers

Gaming Advertisers vs Fraudsters: Who Will Make It to the Finish Line?

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You developed a game and now you’re willing to go to the next level. To bring new visitors, you decide to invest a huge amount in advertising your game. You get new users and finally, all efforts make sense. However, something doesn’t feel right. Your installs are high, but the conversions are low. Shady users are interacting with your game and your genuine users are leaving. The question is, “Why did this happen?” Your digital ads are under attack by fraudsters. You are unaware of their intentions, and they are just hiding behind the screen to counter your next move. The above scenario is one of the basic cases that a game advertiser has to face. In the pandemic era when the whole world was inside their home, mobile games gave them a chance to escape. In the past 2 years, the number of gamers has increased to 420 million online gamers and approximately 400 gaming companies have come into existence during this phase. One of the reasons for this growth is high disposable income and an increase in the number of smartphones and tablets. With this sudden spike in gamers, advertisement spending in the gaming industry has also increased. In 2021, the advertising spending was estimated at $46.7 billion and is expected to increase up to $130.9 million by 2025 worldwide. It is said that “wherever the money flows, the fraudster’s radar follows it”. And seeing the rapid increase in the gaming industry, the fraudsters are going to sit ideal. In this blog, we are giving an insight into the various ways fraudsters attack digital ads and steal digital ad spend in the gaming industry. Games that Fraudsters Love to Play 1. Steal The Credentials (Account Take Over) Account takeover attacks leave a deep impact on the brand and the consumer’s trust. In this type of fraud attack, the fraudsters obtain personal information like the username, password, or email address to illegally log in to a victim’s account. As the gaming industry continues to grow and every day a new user is joining, ATO attacks have become quite common in this arena. Once the fraudster gets access to the user’s account, they can attempt multiple malicious activities for their profit. Posing as a real customer, the fraudster can get easy access to the account details, withdraw the coins or unique loyalty benefits, make an online purchase, or leverage the stolen account data to hack other accounts of the user on different platforms. 2. Guess who I am? (Fake Accounts) In the gaming industry, it is expensive to acquire new customers and even costlier to convince a customer to make their first in-app purchase. Thus, the gaming brand needs to ensure that the purchases are legitimate. If not, the brand will bear huge losses from the chargebacks. The most vulnerable mobile apps are the ones that allow the player to play for free but have features like in-app purchases. In the case of these apps, the fraudster creates a new account and uses stolen credit cards to purchase digital items, go to the next level, or load the account with gaming currency. Once they have made the account a golden asset, they sell it on a trading site. When the credit card owner calls the bank on account of fraudulent charges, the gaming brand ends up paying for the chargebacks. Not only does the gaming brand lose its money, but its brand reputation is also at stake. 3. Win, Win, or Lose? (Referral & Promo Abuse) Referrals and promotions are run by gaming marketers to engage new customers and retain the existing ones. However, when the fraudsters seep into the sales funnel, they use different fraudulent techniques to abuse the referrals and promos. The Cybercriminals either misuse the promo codes or abuse referral programs by becoming both the referrer and referee. When the cybercriminals abuse the referral programs and the end customer becomes the victim, they lose trust in the brand. They feel that they have been cheated by the gaming brand. And in this chaos, the fraudster wins, and the advertiser loses both money and consumer trust. 4. Tippity Tippity Tap (Click Fraud) Beyond hacking the user accounts and stealing the referral benefits, the easiest way for fraudsters to extract money is through click fraud. Gaming advertisers invest huge budgets to bring new gamers to their platforms. However, these digital ads are under the constant radar of fraudsters, and they find different ways to steal the advertiser’s money. When a user installs a malicious app on their phone, the fraudsters get access to the user’s device and can track their activity. Furthermore, when a user downloads the advertiser’s gaming app, the fraudster fires a fake click in the background. This fake click is attributed as the last click source by the MMPs and the fraudsters get the credit for an organic install. Due to this, the advertisers end up wasting their ad spending on installs generated by fraudsters. What do you need to protect your gaming app? The smarter the advertisers get; the fraudsters ensure to stay one step ahead. They use advanced and sophisticated methods to hide their tracks and keep the advertisers in the dark. To tackle these attacks, advertisers need a solution that can detect the anomalies in an ad campaign and take real-time action to prevent the consequences. mFilterIt’s ad fraud solution ensures to elimination of fraudulent traffic with the capabilities of AI, ML, and Data Science. To reduce the impact of fake users and click spamming, we run various algorithms checks and blacklist the fraudulent IPs and traffic coming from bots or concentrated devices. Kill The Fraudsters, Reach Your Target It’s time that you have the right weapon to attack the fraudsters. To ensure it is not a game over for you, keep a real-time check on the fraudster’s movement. This will help you to prevent the consequences of fraudulent activities and save your ad spending from wastage. And the biggest outcome will be that you will be able to reach

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ad-fraud

You Asked, We Answered: Most Searched Questions About Ad Fraud

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Whether you’re an advertiser, publisher, or user, it is natural to have questions about the growing threats of ad fraud. As the digital marketing world is moving ahead, the fraudsters are also becoming smart and coming up with new techniques to defraud marketers. Just like taking preventative measures against ad fraud is important, it is also essential to stay updated with the terms and techniques fraudsters are using. To ensure this, we have covered the most searched questions about ad fraud to help you understand the nitty-gritty of the techniques and tools used by fraudsters. Get ready to binge-read! What is ad fraud? Ad fraud is an attempt to defraud advertisers to steal money and manipulate their data with invalid traffic. The fraudsters usually use bots to perform ad fraud and trick the advertisers into thinking they are getting genuine users. As a result, the advertisers lose their ad revenue on invalid traffic. Furthermore, seeing the inflated traffic the advertisers think their ad campaigns are working and continue to invest in bot-impacted ad campaigns. According to a Juniper Research report, ad fraud is estimated to cost up to $81 billion by the end of 2022. What is bot traffic? Bot traffic consists of automated traffic coming from bots instead of humans. Every traffic generated from bots is not always fraudulent. Sometimes the search engines send bots to crawl the websites for ranking purposes. However, bot traffic is a concern when it is used as a carrier of ad fraud. Often called SIVT or sophisticated invalid traffic. The bad bots manipulate the data of an ad campaign and commit types of ad fraud like SDK spoofing, fake clicks, and fake installs. How to detect bot traffic? Some of the common ways to detect bot traffic that can be identified on websites, apps, and APIs are: Abnormally high pageviews Abnormally high bounce rate Inflated traffic from unknown locations Abnormal session durations High number of junk conversions What is Impression Ad Fraud? Impression means the total number of times an ad was displayed regardless of whether the ad was viewed or not. Impression fraud happens when the fraudsters create a fake website and list themselves on an ad exchange. When an advertiser buys an ad inventory on these websites, they generate impressions with the help of bots. The inflated impression numbers make the advertisers believe that their ad campaign is getting traffic. Wherein, the reality is that the ads are attracting bot traffic, and the fraudsters are getting money for invalid traffic. What is Ad Stacking? This is a type of mobile ad fraud where the fraudsters ‘layer’ or ‘stack’ multiple ads above one another in single ad placement. While just the top ad is visible to the user, the impression or click is registered for all the ads stacked beneath each other. This further lead to advertisers paying for a fake impression or click. What is VPN Proxy Click Fraud? A VPN is used to create a new IP address and mask the original location of a person. This is a strong tool for fraudsters to hide their tracks of ad fraud practices. With the help of a VPN proxy, they create a new IP address which helps them to keep themselves hidden from the ad fraud detection solutions. The fraudsters use this technique to mask their device location and commit fraud. What is Fake Attribution? A fake attribution is a practice followed by fraudsters to steal the credit of an organic install by reporting a fake click as the last engagement. Being the “last-click attribution”, the attribution platforms consider a fake click as an organic click. Usually, a fake attribution is triggered with a help of malware that comes along when a user installs an app from an unknown source. The malware helps to track the user’s activity and notifies the fraudster when the app install starts. The malware search for the relevant information and populates into a fake click report to register as the last click engagement and gets the attribution for an organic install or one generated by a media partner. What is cookie stuffing? This is a technique used in affiliate marketing fraud where a fraudulent affiliate fools the advertiser into thinking that they have sent traffic to their website. But in reality, they haven’t sent any traffic. This practice is also known as cookie dropping and is one of the commonly used techniques in affiliate marketing. By fooling the advertiser, they get the commission for sending a user to their website. Furthermore, the advertiser is wasting money and getting no users in return from their affiliate campaigns What is Ad Pixel stuffing? The technique of pixel stuffing happens when fraudsters place an ad or an entire website inside a frame of 1×1 pixel using an iframe. This makes it invisible to the human eye. When a normal ad runs, the impressions are tracked for the legitimate ad, as well as the ads that are stacked under the invisible pixel. In this way, the fraudsters receive compensation for those fake impressions. Furthermore, they also use bots to generate fake impressions with the pixel-stuffed ads and drain the advertiser’s budget on invalid traffic. What is Incent Fraud? This is a type of fraud where the fraudulent affiliates run non-incent campaigns on incent platforms. Due to this, they attract low-quality users that install only for incentives and have no interest in the actual app. This technique is usually used to increase the install volumes, fix low CR ratios, moderate the quality of user acquisition, or simply increase the margins. What is Click Injection? This is a sophisticated form of click-spamming which is majorly prevalent in android devices. When a user downloads a malicious app, they allow the fraudsters to detect when any other app is downloaded on a device. Once they know that, fraudsters trigger a click before an install is completed. As a result, the fraudster receives a credit for the install that appears legitimate and results in a CPI payout from the advertiser. What

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genuine-users

You’re Losing Genuine Users. Know Why?

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Imagine you’re running an ad campaign to generate leads for your clothing brand. You have also partnered with an ad fraud detection solution to detect and eliminate invalid traffic. However, one of your legitimate consumers raises a concern. Their card was blocked while making the transaction. Who could be responsible for this? You can blame the fraud detection vendor as they might have flagged a genuine consumer assuming it to be a fraudulent source. While ad fraud prevention is an essential element to eliminate fraudulent sources from ad campaigns, there must be a holistic way to differentiate between a genuine user and a bot without compromising the security of the ad campaigns. This mistake not only costs the brand their revenue, but also the trust of a legitimate user. Know how brands are impacted by this and what you must look for in an ad fraud detection vendor to avoid the case of false positives. What is a false positive? A false positive happens when a legitimate transaction is flagged as suspicious resulting in declining of payment or blocking of a genuine account. As a result, a request from a genuine customer is identified as a fraudulent source. This error happens when a non-fraudulent transaction is flagged by a fraud detection system resulting in the decline of the transaction. Why do false positives take place? The fraud detection systems are programmed to detect fraud patterns in a campaign. However, sometimes the system fails to accurately differentiate between a legitimate and a fraudulent request. As a result, the brand has to bear the collateral damage of false positives. To reduce the consequences of false positives, organizations have experimented with different approaches to try and differentiate between a legitimate and fraudulent user. Based on a checklist This list includes the details like IP addresses, email addresses, and Device IDs that have been identified and marked as either “safe” or “unsafe”. For example, if an IP address is flagged for being a source of malicious or fraudulent activity, then it will be “blacklisted”. Unfortunately, these lists are no longer viable to detect fast-evolving fraud. These lists require continuous refreshing as they get outdated in a short span of time. And these manually designed lists are often imprecise, corrupted, or at the worst expired. As a result, these reputation lists often lead to an increase in the number of false positives. Based on Rules The rules engines are software that is programmed to take actions based on specific criteria. For example, if a business has made a rule check to analyze the billing country and IP country. In this case, any mismatch will be an indication of a malicious account. These rules can be effective in some cases, but it has many limitations. The rules are highly reactive, and the results are based on past experiences. Furthermore, the rules are hard to manage especially in the case of large-scale data. As a result, the false positive number goes up. Based on Rule-based Machine Learning In this process, a training dataset is processed with the help of AI and ML. In this case, all the possible outcomes are programmed with the correct answers to train the algorithm. With the help of supervised machine learning, the brands can detect certain patterns and insights from a set of data. This is further used to make predictions about future outcomes. This is a strong tool for fraud detection, but it has its own limitations. For example, in SML the algorithms require a certain command to perform their tasks. This limits the ability to detect new and unknown fraud attacks. And as the fraudsters adapt to new techniques at a faster pace, it is impossible for an SML-based solution to keep pace. Why do brands need to act against false positives? Friction in users: Due to false positives, a genuine customer becomes the biggest victim. The most common case is when a customer attempts to pay to make a purchase, but for some unknown reason, the payment gets declined. A decline of a payment for an interested user can turn into a case of inconvenience and they drop out to purchase from a different brand or platform. Reputational damage: According to a report, 38% of online shoppers abandon their purchases when asked for an additional security check. They consider switching to a different brand when they experience poor service. Legitimate customers consider multiple layers of security and payment declines as an insult and often don’t take it in a positive light. Due to the inconvenience, sometimes they also end up spreading negative word-of-mouth which is a nightmare for the brands and tarnishes their brand reputation. Loss in revenue: Due to false-positive cases, not just the genuine consumers get impacted but also the brands. The brands lose the real customers and the potential revenue from genuine sales. In this case, the credit card companies have to bear the cost as they don’t get their fees. Questions to Ask your Ad Fraud Vendor to Reduce False Positives Do they analyze the entire lifecycle to ensure comprehensive protection? Do they look at all the possible types of fraud attacks? Do they identify and take preventive actions for new & emerging threats? Do they differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent activity in real-time? How mFilterIt ensure to reduce false positives? When detecting fraudulent sources in the ad campaigns, we expect an average of 4-5% false-positive cases. However, to ensure that the brand doesn’t have to lose genuine customers to protect its ad campaigns from fraudsters, our ad traffic validation suite ensures to focus on various parameters like: Deeper Fraud checks​ Evaluation for every data set to make a decision on​ Prioritization for sources that will convert ​ Able to detect sophisticated BOTS and emerging threats Analysis based on Behavioural and Deterministic data Conclusion A true ad fraud detection and prevention solution must be effective enough to help the brand in different parameters. A successful fraud detection will happen for a brand when it enhances the customer experience and nurtures them while keeping

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Ad Fraud Detection

Domain Spoofing Not Just Impact Advertisers, But Also Publishers. Know-How?

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Imagine someone impersonating you and stealing all your money. In the digital advertising ecosystem, fraudsters are sitting behind the cloak to do the same with your ad spending with domain spoofing. It is one of the common forms of scams committed by fraudsters. However, it not only manipulates your digital ad campaign data and drains an advertiser’s ad budget. It also leaves a deep impact on the reputation and revenue of a publisher. If you don’t want to be in this stage, learn how domain spoofing may impact your brand and what the are possibilities to curb it. What is Domain Spoofing? This is a type of phishing scam where a fraud publisher disguises itself as a premium publisher in a programmatic marketplace. By spoofing a premium publisher, the ad impressions generated are more valuable and the demand is also high. On one hand, the advertiser is under the impression that their ads are shown on premium websites. However, the advertiser’s ads are shown on low-quality websites for the bots. Usually, the fraudsters create a domain that closely resembles the URL of a genuine publisher. They not only create fake domains but also make a duplicate copy of a website’s content. Impact of Domain Spoofing Domain spoofing heavily impacts both advertisers and publishers. Not just monetarily, but it also has many other long-term consequences. On Advertisers Invalid Traffic: When the advertiser’s ad is shown on illegitimate and spoofed websites, they attract invalid traffic coming to these websites. This not only leads to wastage of ad spending but also impacts the campaign’s SEO. Damaged Reputation: Brand reputation is one of the most valuable assets for any company. In the case of domain spoofing, the customers are often unaware of the counterfeit products being sold by fraudulent websites. And when the quality deters which happens quite often in the case of fake products, the customers often blame the original brand. They lose their trust in the brand and often write bad reviews online which directly impacts the brand’s reputation. Not just this, counterfeit products can also impact the health and safety of the end consumers. This can be especially dangerous in the case of FMCG and Beauty products. As the product and packaging are identical, the consumer may not be able to differentiate. And if in any case, the products can cause any skin infection or other health problems it can be havoc and can cause serious repercussions on the brand’s reputation. On Publishers Loss of Revenue: Due to domain spoofing, the publishers lose the revenue coming from ads as the website running on the programmatic platforms is not theirs. Stolen Identity: Not just the revenue, domain spoofing also impacts the brand reputation of the publisher. Like identity fraud, the spoofed domain of a publisher must face the consequences of brand safety and unexpected abysmal conversion rates of the fraudulent sites that are using its name. High chances of getting blacklisted/blocked: As the buyers are not able to analyze the RTB data, they inadvertently block the high-quality publishers seeing their domains flagged due to brand safety or illegal content. Due to domain masking, the reputation of the publisher and their credit score is impacted which further impacts the revenue. How does Ads.txt help to reduce Domain Spoofing by up to 10%? In 2017, IAB introduced ads.txt to bring a certain level of transparency to the programmatic advertising ecosystem. It is a simple text file that publishers insert into their root domains. With Ads.txt, the publishers can inform the companies that they are authorized to sell their ad inventory. Every publisher’s ads.txt file works like a public ledger that buyers can use to cross-reference and ensure that the inventory they are investing will redirect to the claimed domain. Though the websites with Ads.txt have a low rate of IVT (Invalid traffic), they are not 100% fraud-free. How Fraudsters Manipulate the Ads.txt? Blank Ads.txt Files: When the ad exchanges declared that they would not allow any websites without Ads.txt files to continue selling, the fraudsters found a different route. To crack this, they started adding fake or blank ads.txt files to their domains to continue making money. They were able to do this because the exchanges only focused on checking the existence of ads.txt files on the domains and not the actual content of the ads.txt file. Ads.txt Files with Errors: It is not possible to make errors in the Ads.txt file unintentionally. These are deliberate acts committed by fraudsters. For instance, publisher “A” works with deceitful “supply-side platforms” (SSP) to sell ad inventory using the same seller ID that is used by other mainstream sites to sell from the same SSP. This very easily launders the impressions because the ad exchange cannot see “Publisher A” making any payment to the SSP. Ads.txt Syndication: This one is the latest in the list where fraudsters rent an ads.txt file from an established seller. In this case, the fraudulent sites make a deal with the owner of the vetted ads.txt. file to run inventory through them. These sellers even take payment from the ad exchanges. And on the other hand, they make under-the-table payments to the sub-sites that don’t have their seller IDs. This way, the sub-sites never show up as paid for the ad exchange because they have never paid to these Seller IDs of strange sites. The only thing the ad exchanges see is the increase in volume which comes through the suppliers who have been in business with them for years. How Does mFilterIt Protect Your Brand from Domain Spoofing? Our Ad Traffic Validation suite can ensure that your digital ad campaigns don’t have to become a victim of domain spoofing in the future. We at mFilterIt use the capabilities of AI, ML, and Data Science to detect spoofed domains by reviewing your webpage. Once detected, for prevention, we ensure to blacklist these domains to avoid further ad spending on irrelevant traffic and protect your digital ad campaigns. Conclusion Along with the rise of digital advertising, fraudsters are also becoming smart to

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Bots

Bots Are Evolving with Time. Is Your Brand Ready to Combat?

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According to Statista, in 2021 the number of mobile users has increased to 7.1 billion and it’s estimated to reach 7.26 billion by the end of 2022. With the growing numbers of mobile users, fraudsters are also evolving their bot attacks on mobile apps.   Bot traffic is non-human automated traffic that visits a website and mobile app. While there are good bots like search engines and AI-based assistants that are required to make the work smoother. However, there is also a wide range of bad bots that are malicious and are used to commit frauds like data scraping and account takeover.   With time, there has been an evolution in bots and fraudsters are making sure that they cannot be detected easily. In this blog, we are covering the signs to detect bot traffic on apps and what are the new trends observed in bot activity.   Global share of human and bot web traffic 2020, by industry – Statista Basic vs Sophisticated BOTs The first generation of malicious bots operated according to quite evident strategic rules. The basic bot traffic used to come from sources like data centers and IP addresses that behaved predictably. For instance, a basic bot performs an app install innumerable times using one IP address for a consistent duration. In simple terms, their actions were not like humans, and it was easy to predict once the bot pattern was identified.   However, in the last few years, cybercriminals have developed and created more sophisticated programs of bots. The sophisticated bots can replicate human activity and compromise the walls of safety on the internet. To make the bot activity look human-like, the cybercriminals use different residential IPs instead of single data centers.   This is an example of a sophisticated bot pattern. In this graph, there are multiple abnormal data patterns detected. About the above graph – In the case of A, there is a sudden spike in the percentage of installs, and then it disappears. Later in the case of B, there is a constant peak for a while which disappears in a few seconds. In the case of C, there is a regular peak for a continuous window. Signs to Identify Bot Traffic 1. Compare Conversion make & model Bot activity can be detected in installs by observing the incorrect conversion make and model. In the below example, there is a discrepancy in the devices from where the conversion is made and the actual model. As visible in the data, it is possible to indicate fake devices with conversion make & model. 2. High Volume of Installs Normal traffic is spread over, which means that the conversion time is not normally in the publisher’s control. However, in the case of bot traffic, the click-to-install rate is very high and quite streamlined. Below is an example of the high volume of installs due to bots:   Publisher M – Click to Install Trend 3. Detecting Old Android Versions In major cases, the malicious bots are found running heavily on old OS versions which are normally very small in percentage distribution.     Publisher M – OS concentration   Emerging Trends Captured in Bot Traffic 1. Abnormal is the new Normal According to the observation, almost all publishers generate on average 70% of installs within the first 2 minutes.     2. No Traffic is 100% Clean Traffic Since OEM inventory is blindly whitelisted by the attribution platform, the advertisers also end up paying for fraudulent traffic for OEM.     3. Similar Bots Across Multiple Domains Identical traffic patterns were observed for various clients for different domains from one source indicating BOT-generated traffic.     How mFilterIt Detects Bot Traffic Every day new bots are emerging and MMPs are not able to differentiate between clean traffic and sophisticated bot traffic. In this case, partnering with an app fraud detection and prevention solution like mFilterIt can protect your ad campaigns from bot traffic.   Our Ad Traffic Validation suite ensures to evaluation of the bot traffic based on different parameters. When analyzing the installation source, we have observed downloads from devices with older Android versions, a high volume of installs at small intervals, a discrepancy in the devices from where conversion is made, and the device model.   The different bot patterns were detected by us, and appropriate measures were taken to ensure clean traffic for the brands and save their money from getting wasted in invalid traffic.   Conclusion As advertisers are increasing their digital spending, fraudsters are also evolving with new types of ad fraud techniques to scam the brands. Fraudsters are using sophisticated bots to pass through the ad fraud detection systems in apps. Therefore, a full-funnel ad fraud detection and prevention solution like mFilterit is required to detect data anomalies and eradicate them at the earliest stage. Eliminating bot traffic will protect your app campaigns and help you focus on reaching a relevant set of audiences without wasting any ad spend. Get in touch to learn more about the bot traffic.

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Geotargeted Ads

Are Your Geotargeted Ads Reaching the Right Audience?

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Whether you have an online business or an offline store, if you don’t get the targeted audience to connect with your brand, all efforts go in vain. Just imagine, you’re running a campaign to attract traffic from India, and people from South-East Asia are engaging with your ads. This will not only attract people from outside the targeted market but also result in the wastage of your advertising budget on irrelevant results. Imagine as a marketer what kind of a digital advertising disaster it is. With the ever-evolving digital ecosystem, the solution to reach the right type of audience at the right time is now a reality. Geo-targeted advertising helps marketers show up at places where their ideal audience is browsing. But just like every coin has a flip side, there is a second side to this. But before we go ahead, let’s understand the meaning of Geotargeted advertising. What is Geotargeted Advertising? This is a type of advertising where the location data is used to reach consumers. In geo-targeted ads, the messaging is appropriate to the location and behavior of the customer. With the help of this advertising, marketers can connect with user-appropriate content based on the information acquired from the consumers’ location. When consumers allow the location-tracking option in the apps on their phones, geotargeting advertising will help to show ads based on their actual location. This can be a very effective advertising method for QSR businesses. They can target their ads to customers who live in proximity and encourage them to visit. In conclusion, geo-targeted ads help advertisers plan and execute more targeted and relevant promotions, resulting in increased engagement. Every Shiny Thing is Not a Diamond Geotargeted ads sound like the best solution for every advertiser. It ensures to reach the targeted audience and give good engagement. What else is required? Sadly, there is a flip side to geotargeted advertising. Below are a few stats that explain better why geotargeting is not just all good things”. According to a data verification firm Location Sciences, approximately two-thirds (65%) of media spending on location-based ads goes down to waste because of misdirected targeting. Almost 29% of the media spending on geo-targeted ads resulted in delivering impressions outside the geotargeted area. Whereas 36% was wasted because of poor-quality location signals. 36% of the top GPS-enabled apps were found to display location fraud. The geo-targeted ads are less optimal because of the simple inaccuracies in the geodata. In the case of GPS, the location data is estimated based on the proximity of the public WIFI hotspots when a GPS signal is not present, or a user has not given consent to use location data. These inaccuracies can show a difference ranging between 1 km to 1,000 km. On the other hand, IP addresses are only accurate enough to identify a user in a state, city, or neighborhood. But it may not be efficient to locate a user within a range of meters or feet. The IP addresses are often dependent on the Internet Service Providers located in a neighborhood or are dependent on the type of connection like a cable modem or cellular connection. Fraud In Geotargeted Programmatic Ads Ad fraud in geotargeted programmatic media buying is a huge problem that costs billions of dollars. And it is estimated to get bigger with time as the ad spend increases in the digital ecosystem, especially in the media targeting local audiences. As compared to direct media buying, there are different levels of risk involved for marketers when using geotargeted programmatic media. In programmatic advertising, geotargeting refers to the targeting of users based on the approximation of their geolocation. This is usually analyzed by estimating their location according to the respective IP address. However, in the case of direct media buying the local media outlets put ads on the websites of local publishers. And in the case of direct media buying the audience is usually the people residing in the city, region, or designated market area. In geotargeted programmatic ads, the fraudsters commit ad fraud by making their bots appear from different geolocations through a variety of techniques. One of the common ways to manipulate the geodata is by using proxy IP addresses to appear in specific geolocations. Further, the advertisers running ads in programmatic will be tricked into paying for ads that are shown to bot traffic pretending to be in the geographies targeted. To make the activity look real, the fraudsters also activate activities like page views, clicks, downloads, and other parameters. This makes the engagement look believable and further gives encouraging but false reports of the campaign. Are Google Ads also targeted by fraudsters? Some advertisers often face the issue where their ads show in areas that haven’t been selected as geo-targeted areas. Does this mean that even on Google ads geotargeted fraud can happen? Maybe no. Just like everything, there are some exceptions. For instance, you have a local pastry shop in Paris so your geo-targeted area in Adwords is in Paris. However, when looking at the IP list in Adwords you notice that the clicks have come from all parts of the country and sometimes even outside. Some of the few possible reasons can be: Case 1: Mismatch in IP Address and User Location This is one of the common cases in geo-targeting that confuses. The IP addresses are assigned by the Internet Service Provider to analyze the user’s location. Google uses the location of the IP addresses and ISPs to decide where to show the ads. However, Google also admits that the IP locations may not be the same as the actual location of the user. According to research conducted by Search Engine Land, two errors manipulate the location data within Google. One is a false positive where it appears that the user is in Paris when they are not. Another is a false negative where the user might be in Paris, but according to the search engine, they are not. Case 2: Mobile Device Problem

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