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

Blog, Mobile Ad Fraud / mFilterIt Experts

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

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how to detect and prevent ppc fraud in app campaigns

What Advertisers Need to Know When Addressing PPC Ad Fraud?

Blog, Ad Fraud / mFilterIt Experts

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

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Building Trust in Affiliate Marketing: Emerging Fraud Challenges & Solutions for 2025

Blog, Affiliate / Anisha Gupta

Affiliate marketing, as a concept, is revolutionary. It enables businesses to make money by using the influence of popular online publishers. When the right affiliates are involved, affiliate marketing not only drives more sales, but also boosts long-term brand performance metrics like brand recall value and trustworthiness of the brand. At the same time, by design, affiliate marketing ensures the publishers bring their A-game in getting brands maximum visibility and ensuring their audiences view them in a positive light. After all, more sales also translate to better affiliate payouts for the publishers. Thanks to this symbiotic nature of affiliate marketing, it is nearly the perfect marketing activity. Nearly. Instances of affiliate marketing fraud can quickly impact the fantastic results of even the most carefully executed campaigns. Fraud associated with affiliate marketing can drain ad budgets and bring low-intent users to interact with brand’s ad campaigns. Thankfully, advertisers are not powerless in the face of affiliate marketing fraud. In fact, by employing affiliate monitoring and brand safety best practices, advertisers can completely eliminate the threat of affiliate marketing fraud. However, before we begin discussing how affiliate fraud prevention works, let’s quickly size up the threat that is affiliate marketing fraud. The Rising Threat of Affiliate Fraud in 2025 In the next two years, the affiliate marketing market is expected to grow to a whopping $27.78 billion. While this might seem like great news, it also means that fraudsters have that much more incentive to come up with sophisticated ways to commit fraud and dupe advertisers. According to mFilterIt analysis, 43% of the fraudulent traffic is coming from affiliate networks in India. Where there is money, the instances of fraud also rise. Similarly, in the space of affiliate marketing, Affiliate fraud has existed almost since the inception of this marketing channel . As digital technologies became more accessible, affiliate fraud practices evolved in tandem with the evolution of affiliate marketing itself and alarmingly, the trend continues. Today, fraudsters have access to sophisticated artificial intelligence models and automation technologies, enabling them to commit fraud in complex and hard to detect ways. At the same time, such technologies also enable bad actors to commit fraud on an expansive scale, targeting both web and app ecosystems. For brands, these activities translate to a damaged brand reputation, inflated customer acquisition costs, and poor user retention. How are such fraudulent schemes implemented? Which are the most common ones? Knowledge is the first step to prevention. Let’s peek behind the curtains of affiliate marketing fraud: Common Affiliate Fraud Techniques & Their Impact Fraudsters have found various methods to corrupt the affiliate schemes to use to their advantage. While there are some common methods, with evolving technology fraudsters have found new and advanced ways to commit fraud. Some of them are here: – Incent Fraud Running incent campaigns is perhaps one of the oldest forms of affiliate fraud and yet, it is exceptionally difficult to detect before the fraud has made a significant dent in your marketing budget. Simply put, affiliates incentivize their audience with a reward in exchange for completing a specific action, such as downloading an app and completing an action once the download is complete. Incentives can include small rewards such as loyalty points or even a small share of the affiliate payout. Since the users complete these actions because of the lure of the reward offered by the affiliate they seldom have any genuine interest in interacting with the advertiser’s app or website. As a result, the advertiser ends up paying for the interactions with these uninterested users while gaining nothing of significance in exchange. This further leads to a high uninstall rate and the advertiser has to pay more to acquire more customers. – Brand Bidding This is especially problematic for brand bidding as it drains their marketing budget twice as fast. By bidding for the same keywords as the brand, fraudsters increase the competition around those keywords, leading to an inflated cost-per-click (CPC) paid by the brand. Additionally, the brand still ends up paying much more than the CPC for the traffic it loses in the ads as it is redirected to their website as affiliate traffic by the fraudsters. – Trademark Misuse Another common yet clever form of affiliate fraud is impersonation. Fraudulent publishers create fake websites that share striking similarities with an advertiser’s website. Using these, fraudsters may impersonate the brand to attract high-intent traffic and then use affiliate links from the real brand on their fake websites to get affiliate rewards. – Cookie Stuffing & Attribution Fraud With cookie stuffing, fraudulent affiliates drop a cookie in the user’s browser when they visit a brand’s website. This way, even if the user visits the brand’s website directly, the attribution of the sale is allocated to the fraudster, enabling them to get affiliate commission for a sale they did not enable. This not only results in the brand paying affiliate commission on an organic sale, it also manipulates the sales metrics, making data unreliable. – Fake Lead Generation & Form Spamming One of the most common tools employed for committing click fraud is a bot. Fraudsters use a network of bots with varying sophistication to complete tasks that get them affiliate revenue. Bots are programmed to act like real human users and generate clicks and fill out lead generation forms with fake information. If an advertiser pays affiliate commissions for lead generation actions, they may easily fall victim to a fake lead generation and form spamming fraud. This can not only lead to wasted marketing spending and poor conversion rate, but it can also have a long-lasting impact on the advertiser’s overall marketing efforts because it dilutes and skews their marketing performance and CRM data. – Misuse of Advertiser’s Brand Assets In some cases, fraudsters may stoop down to directly scam the users. While this usually does not lead to wastage of marketing budgets, it can hurt advertisers and brands in other equally significant ways. Fraudsters may create fake

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

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

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

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YouTube Video to DV360 Demand Gen: Essential Guide for Marketers

Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability / Kirti Palwar

If you’re currently managing YouTube Video Action Campaigns within Display & Video 360 (DV360), there’s a significant update on the horizon that you’ll need to prepare for. Started in October 2024, Demand Gen campaigns will become a core feature of DV360. This transition will expand your campaign capabilities, offering enhanced reach, new creative formats, and advanced audience targeting In this article, we’ll break down what this shift means, how it impacts your current campaigns, and the steps you can take to get ready for the change. What is Demand Gen in DV360? Demand Gen is a versatile campaign format designed to drive conversions through dynamic multi-format creative storytelling. With Demand Gen, you can now run both video and image ads within the same campaign line item. This brings more flexibility to your advertising efforts, enabling you to streamline workflows and craft more cohesive brand narratives. Key Advantages of Demand Gen: -Broader Reach: Engage with up to 3 billion monthly active users across Google’s vast ecosystem, including YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and other Google platforms. Unlike traditional YouTube Video Action Campaigns, you won’t be restricted to just YouTube for video placements. -Multi-Format Creativity: Demand Gen allows you to combine video and image creatives in a single campaign, simplifying management while ensuring that all your assets work seamlessly together to convey a unified brand story. -Advanced Audience Targeting: Leverage lookalike audiences to reach users who exhibit behaviors and interests similar to your existing customers. This feature is perfect for finding new potential customers who are most likely to engage with your brand. These capabilities make Demand Gen a powerful tool for marketers seeking to amplify their reach and drive higher conversion rates. In fact, according to internal Google data, campaigns that utilized both video and image assets experienced a 20% boost in conversions at the same cost per action when compared to campaigns that used video alone. The Transition from YouTube Video Action Campaigns Currently, many advertisers use YouTube Video Action Campaigns (VACs) to drive conversions within YouTube and its partner platforms. However, starting in 2025, YouTube Video Action Campaigns will transition into Demand Gen line items. Here’s what you need to know about the shift: Key Changes: -New Campaign Types: From March 2025 onwards, new YouTube Video Action Campaigns will no longer be supported in DV360. Instead, you will need to create Demand Gen campaigns. -Existing Campaigns: While your existing YouTube Video Action Campaigns will continue to run, transitioning to Demand Gen should be a priority. Familiarizing yourself with Demand Gen now will ensure a smooth transition and allow you to take full advantage of the new features before the change is mandatory. Though many of the functionalities from YouTube Video Action Campaigns, such as Floodlight optimization and third-party brand safety verification, will be preserved, it’s crucial to adapt to the new Demand Gen setup sooner rather than later. The earlier you start, the easier the transition will be. Maximizing the Impact of Demand Gen Campaigns in DV360: How mFilterIt can help advertisers The shift to Demand Gen campaigns within DV360 offers a significant opportunity for mFilterIt to enhance its pitch to advertisers, especially in terms of driving performance while ensuring brand safety solution . Here’s how mFilterIt can help brand capitalize on the new features of Demand Gen campaigns to offer valuable benefits to advertisers: -Enhanced Brand Safety & Ad Verification: With the expanded reach of Demand Gen campaigns, ensure that your ads are placed in safe, brand-compliant environments across YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and more, using mFilterIt’s robust ad verification and brand safety solution. -Advanced Audience Targeting and Optimization: Leverage mFilterIt’s audience optimization features alongside Demand Gen’s lookalike audience capabilities, ensuring you’re reaching the most relevant customers with the highest likelihood of conversion. -Cross-Platform and Multi-Format Campaigns: Simplify your cross-platform, multi-format campaigns with mFilterIt’s real-time reporting and optimization tools, ensuring both video and image creatives perform to their fullest potential. -Conversion Tracking and Floodlight Integration : Use mFilterIt’s integration with Floodlight to gain deeper insights into your Demand Gen campaign performance, ensuring you’re driving more conversions and optimizing your ROI. -Transparency & Reporting : Get complete transparency into the performance of your Demand Gen campaigns across all formats and platforms with mFilterIt’s comprehensive reporting tools, empowering you to make informed decisions. -Improved Efficiency with Automated Brand Safety Checks : Streamline your workflow and ensure continuous brand safety across all your multi-format Demand Gen campaigns with mFilterIt’s automated monitoring and real-time protection. Conclusion: With the introduction of Demand Gen campaigns in DV360, advertisers have a unique opportunity to expand their reach and connect with the right target audience. Clubbing this new feature mFilterIt has a unique opportunity to position itself as a crucial partner for advertisers. By offering robust brand safety, performance optimization, advanced audience targeting, and transparent reporting, mFilterIt can help advertisers navigate the complexities of multi-format campaigns and make the most of their expanded reach across Google’s ecosystem. This comprehensive approach can boost both the effectiveness and security of Demand Gen campaigns, ultimately driving better results for advertisers. Want to get a demo of how we do it? Contact our team today

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Marketing Team vs. Call Center Team: Who’s to Blame When Leads Don’t Convert?

Blog, Ad Fraud / Jyoti Kalra

Picture this: The marketing team proudly delivers a new batch of leads, convinced that these prospects are primed for conversion. Meanwhile, the call center team rolls its eyes once again, they’re fielding complaints from uninterested or unqualified contacts. Frustration rises, fingers are pointed, and the age-old question resurfaces: Who’s responsible when leads don’t convert—marketing or the call center? This debate often boils down to one critical issue: junk leads. While the marketing team may generate impressive volumes of leads, not all are created equal. Junk leads—those unqualified, uninterested, or even fraudulent frequently sneak into the funnel, wasting time, resources, and ultimately, opportunities for both teams. In this article, we explore the “real reason” behind this endless marketing vs. call center debate, emphasizing how a continuous filtering system can align both teams, save time, and improve results. The Junk Lead Challenge: Why Leads Aren’t Always What They Seem On the surface, a lead might appear promising. It might tick the right boxes in terms of basic demographics or initial engagement. However, a closer look reveals that not all leads are created equal. Junk leads are often generated through non-intent-driven clicks impertinent, low-quality traffic sources, or unverified information. These leads lack genuine interest and intent to buy, leading to a series of issues that drive the marketing and call center divide: Marketing’s Perspective: “We Hit Our Numbers” Marketing’s goal is often centered on generating high lead volumes. Performance is measured by metrics like click-through rates, form submissions, and lead counts, creating pressure to hit targets. However, these numbers can sometimes reflect quantity over quality, as invalid clicks and junk leads skew results. Call Center’s Perspective: “We’re Wasting Our Time” The call center team deals with these leads firsthand, engaging in time-consuming follow-ups only to find disinterested, unreachable, or unqualified contacts. For call center agents, these engagements lead to burnout and frustration, impacting their morale and effectiveness. This disconnects between the two teams not only impacts productivity but also consumes valuable resources. For a business focused on conversion and growth, the junk lead issue becomes a costly barrier, resulting in wasted time, reduced efficiency, and strained internal relationships across departments. The Hidden Impact of Junk Leads Junk leads are more than just data in the CRM; they create a cycle of wasted efforts for both teams: -Lost Time on Unproductive Calls: Call center agents spend precious time on leads that lack any genuine interest in the product, draining their morale and productivity. It’s frustrating for agents to encounter frequent rejections, impacting their motivation and performance. -Strain on Marketing Resources: For marketing, the push for high numbers of leads can come at the expense of quality. Campaigns are evaluated on how many leads they generate, even if many are unlikely to convert. This can lead to a misplaced focus on quantity over quality, which ultimately fails both teams. -Unmet Conversion Goals: For both marketing and the call center, junk leads directly affect the bottom line. Marketing sees low ROI on its campaigns, and the call center fails to hit conversion targets. In the end, this hurts the business by diverting resources from potential sales opportunities to unqualified leads. Focus on Lead Quality Over Lead Quantity To resolve the marketing-call center debate, it’s essential to shift the focus from sheer lead volume to lead quality. By implementing more rigorous lead qualification and filtering practices, companies can prevent junk leads from clogging the sales pipeline. Here’s how: –Establish Clear Lead Qualification Criteria The first step in aligning both teams is to set clear standards for what defines a “qualified lead.” This could include factors like purchase intent, behavior on the site, engagement with marketing content, and demographic relevance. By standardizing these criteria, marketing can better identify high-potential leads before they’re sent to the call center, ensuring agents aren’t left cold-calling uninterested contacts. -Leverage Behavioral Data for Better Lead Insights With digital tools, marketing can capture and analyze data on each lead’s behavior—such as time spent on key pages, interaction with offers, and responses to email campaigns. Leads showing high levels of engagement signal a stronger interest and are more likely to convert. Sharing this behavioral data with the call center gives agents deeper context, helping them prioritize leads more effectively. -Segment and Score Leads Before Hand-Off Segmentation and lead scoring can transform a CRM from a dumping ground of all leads into a well-organized system that prioritizes quality over quantity. With segmentation, marketing can assign different levels of interest to leads, grouping them by their likelihood to convert based on factors like recent interactions, browsing patterns, and demographic fit. Lead scoring, on the other hand, uses these criteria to rate each lead’s conversion potential, making it clear which leads warrant follow-up. –Optimize Follow-Up Process for Different Lead Types Once leads have been segmented, the call center can adjust its follow-up process based on each group’s engagement level. For instance, leads with high engagement scores can be prioritized for immediate, frequent follow-ups, while lower-scoring leads might benefit from a more gradual approach or even additional nurturing from marketing before being passed to sales. This ensures that agents are spending their time where it’s most likely to yield results. -Implement Continuous Feedback Loops To maintain alignment, marketing and the call center need open lines of communication. A continuous feedback loop allows the call center to provide insights on lead quality back to marketing, helping refine future campaigns. Over time, this feedback can guide marketing’s strategies to target more qualified leads, improving the overall quality of leads entering the funnel. How mFilterIt can help marketers remove junk leads? mFilterIt’s Ad fraud solution empowers advertisers by collecting and analyzing crucial data—such as website behavior, CRM inputs, and conversion metrics—through advanced AI & ML algorithms. The system’s proprietary rule engine scores lead based on user intent (high, moderate, or low), helping advertisers swiftly identify and filter out junk leads. This enables sales teams to focus on quality prospects, improving efficiency and conversion rates. With mFilterIt’s analytics-driven approach, advertisers gain actionable

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Debunking the Myth: Re-Engagement Campaigns Aren’t Always Fraud-Free, Know Why

Blog, Ad Fraud / Jagmeet Singh

Imagine launching a re-engagement campaign with the confidence that you’re targeting existing, familiar users—an audience that’s supposed to be fraud-proof. It seems logical, doesn’t it? After all, why would fraudsters bother with users who are already in your database? Unfortunately, this assumption couldn’t be more misleading. Re-engagement campaigns are not only impacted by fraud but are also increasingly targeted by sophisticated fraudulent techniques. Fraudsters see these campaigns as low-hanging fruit, exploiting weak attribution systems and leveraging the widespread myth that re-engagement is safer than acquisition of new customers. Re-engagement campaigns are undeniably valuable. They help brands reconnect with dormant users, boost retention, and drive long-term growth. But failing to recognize the lurking threat of mobile ad fraud can turn these campaigns into a costly trap. In this article, we’ll uncover the hidden risks, types of digital ad fraud affecting re-engagement efforts, and how brands can protect themselves. It’s time to rethink what you know about re-engagement campaigns and ad fraud. Common Misconceptions About Fraud in Re-Engagement Campaigns Belief that targeting existing users reduces the likelihood of fraud: Marketers often assume that fraud is less of a threat in re-engagement campaigns because the target audience consists of users already familiar with the brand. Perception that fraudulent activities are more prevalent in acquisition campaigns: While acquisition campaigns are a common target for fraud, re-engagement campaigns are equally at risk due to their high-value budgets and relaxed monitoring. Types of Fraud in Re-Engagement Campaigns – Organic Poaching Organic poaching occurs when fraudsters manipulate attribution systems to take credit for users who would have naturally re-engaged with the brand. These are genuine users who, due to their liking for the brand, were likely to return on their own. Fraudsters intercept their activity by inserting click be, before the user’s click making it look organic. This artificially inflates the campaign’s performance metrics, and the attribution platform marks this as an organic activity. – Acquisition Poaching In acquisition poaching, fraudulent reengagement partners take advantage of attribution windows to falsely categorize newly acquired users as re-engaged ones. For instance, they may manipulate data to claim credit for a user who has just downloaded an app or made a first purchase, even though the individual was not part of the re-engagement audience. This not only wastes the re-engagement campaign budget but also blurs the distinction between acquisition and re-engagement efforts, leaving marketers with misleading insights. – Event Spoofing Event spoofing involves fraudsters simulating user actions after a re-engagement campaign, such as fake logins, purchases, or app interactions. These fabricated events create the illusion that the campaign successfully drove meaningful engagement. However, these activities lack any real user intent or value, resulting in wasted ad spend and unreliable performance data. Event spoofing is particularly harmful because it often goes undetected until a deeper analysis reveals discrepancies between reported metrics and actual user behavior. Impact of Fraud on Re-Engagement Campaigns Financial Losses and Wasted Ad Spend: Re-engagement campaigns are designed to maximize ROI by targeting users who are already familiar with the brand. However, when fraudsters interfere, ad budgets are wasted on fake actions that provide no real value. For example, event spoofing may create the illusion of reactivated users completing high-value actions, such as purchases or logins, while in reality, no such engagement has occurred. This not only drains resources but also diverts funds from genuine opportunities to re-engage actual users. Misleading Campaign Performance Data: Fraudulent activities in re-engagement campaigns can significantly distort performance metrics. Organic poaching and acquisition poaching, for instance, lead to inflated figures, making campaigns appear more successful than they truly are. When marketers rely on these skewed insights, they risk misallocating budgets, overestimating campaign effectiveness, and losing the ability to optimize future strategies effectively. Inefficiency in Targeting Actual Users: Fraud doesn’t just waste money; it also undermines the core objective of re-engagement campaigns—reconnecting with dormant users. Fraudulent actions skew targeting systems, making it harder to identify and reach genuine inactive users who could bring long-term value to the brand. Instead, marketers end up chasing fake interactions, missing out on real opportunities to reignite meaningful customer relationships. Why You Need to Invest in an Ad Traffic Validation Solution: Real Cases Case 1: Abnormal Click to App Open Rate In normal case, most users get reattributed immediately after opening the app. In the above case, about 60% of the clicks made by users on retargeting ads did not result in the app being opened immediately and it is done after 06th Hour, which clearly indicates large amount of click spamming to capture users opening the app organically. Case 2: Repetitive Orders from Same GAID Repetitive orders are getting placed from same GAID on the same time frame and same store also, all order is on Cash on Delivery. Refer below sample for the same, there are 212 such orders placed. This is a clear case of spoofed events. Takeaway Re-engagement campaigns are important for marketers to reengage their past users and be present in their minds. However, to increase the potential of these retargeting campaigns, marketers must also address the hidden risks of fraud to increase the potential of the campaign and reach maximum users. By implementing robust ad fraud solution like Valid8 by mFilterIt, monitoring campaign data meticulously, and staying informed about the emerging fraud patterns can help to safeguard the re-engagement efforts and ensure that your ads reach the right audience. Want to get a demo of how we do it? Contact our team today

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Brand Bidding Monitoring: Improve Campaigns & Reduce CPC by 21%

Blog, Brand Protection / Durgesh Rathore

Marketers spend heavily on building a brand presence both organically and with paid search campaigns. However, despite creating a holistic approach with well-crafted ads, optimized landing pages and targeted brand keywords, their efforts are giving desired results, and they see a high a cost-per-click (CPC). One of the causes can be bidding on branded keywords by competitors or even worse your affiliates or ad networks. And the surprising fact is that this scenario is quite a common practice. A well-known skincare brand recently faced similar challenges when they saw their CPCs skyrocket due to their ad networks partners outbidding them on their own branded keywords, impacting their profitability and scalability. In this blog, we’ll dive deep into the consequences of affiliate brand bidding and offer key takeaways for performance marketing managers running search campaigns on branded keywords. The Problem: Rising CPCs and Decreasing ROAS When you’re running a branded search campaign, you expect to see a high return on investment. After all, these are the keywords that directly relate to your brand name, so the traffic is highly relevant. But in many cases, what you don’t expect is for ad networks and fraudulent affiliates to target your branded keywords, pushing up the cost of each click and impacting the efficiency of your campaigns. This was the case for a leading skincare brand that faced inflated CPCs due to their partnered ad networks bidding on their branded keywords. As ad networks began competing for these highly intended branded keywords, the price of their own brand keywords became highly competitive, resulting in a 25-30% increase in CPCs, especially during high-demand periods like sales events. This not only eroded the brand’s profitability but also made it more difficult to scale their search efforts. The Impact of Brand Bidding on Ad Campaigns When ad networks or affiliates bid on your branded keywords, they effectively raise the bid price, driving up the cost of your own ads. Here’s why these matters: -Increased CPCs: Higher CPCs can eat into your budget, especially during high-demand sales periods when competition intensifies. A rise of 25-30% can drastically reduce the number of clicks you can afford and negatively affect your ad spend -Decreased ROAS: With higher CPCs, your ROAS takes a hit. You’re paying more for each click but not seeing the same level of return, making your campaigns less profitable and harder to scale. -Loss of Control: As ad networks and affiliates continuously bid on branded terms, brands lose control over their own brand’s visibility in search results. Their ads become buried beneath competitors, decreasing the chances of appearing at the top of search results and gaining quality traffic. -Sustainability Issues: Without addressing brand bidding, you may face challenges in scaling your search efforts. The higher your CPCs are, the more you spend to maintain performance, limiting your ability to expand your campaigns or reach new audiences. The Solution: Brand Protection and Proactive Monitoring In the case of this skincare brand, the solution lay in leveraging a holistic brand safety solution for affiliate campaigns that could monitor and restrict unauthorized bids on branded keywords. By partnering with mFilterIt, they were able to implement a comprehensive strategy to reclaim control over their search campaigns. Here’s how the solution worked: -Real-Time Detection: The brand protection solution identified competitor bids on branded keywords in real time, enabling the brand to take immediate action before their ad spend was impacted further. -Detailed Reporting: Regular, detailed reports provided the brand with visibility into where and when competitors were bidding on their keywords, giving them the opportunity to restrict such bids and prevent escalating CPCs. -Proactive Action: Armed with real-time data, the brand was able to act swiftly, limiting unnecessary costs and optimizing their campaigns to ensure maximum ROI. Key Results and Benefits: -Cost Reduction: After implementing the brand protection solution, the brand saw a 21% reduction in CPCs within just a month. During a peak sales period, the brand was able to optimize its search campaign and reduce unnecessary ad spend. – Enhanced ROAS: With the cost of clicks under control, the brand saw an increase in their ROAS, regaining profitability and improving their overall performance metrics. – Significant Savings: The brand saved close to ₹40,000 per day by preventing competitors from bidding on their branded keywords. These savings could then be reallocated to other marketing efforts, contributing to more sustainable growth. Takeaways for Performance Marketing Managers Running Branded Search Campaigns – Monitor Brand Keyword Bidding Regularly: You need to stay vigilant and constantly monitor your branded keywords. If you’re not tracking who is bidding on your brand keywords, you could be unknowingly inflating your costs. Regular monitoring ensures that you remain in control of your search budget. – Take Immediate Action Against Unauthorized Bidding: As soon as you detect that competitors or affiliates/ad networks are bidding on your branded keywords, take immediate action to restrict them. A proactive approach can help you minimize additional spending and protect your brand’s search visibility. – Leverage Brand Protection Tools: A brand protection solution provides the real-time insights and detailed reports necessary to effectively manage brand keyword bidding. These tools can help you act quickly, prevent unnecessary costs, and optimize your campaigns for better efficiency. – Understand the Impact of Rising CPCs on Scalability: As CPCs rise, your ability to scale campaigns becomes limited. If your search campaigns become too expensive, you may find it difficult to maintain the same level of growth. By managing brand bidding, you can keep CPCs in check and scale your campaigns more effectively. – Prioritize Sustainable Growth: High CPCs are not only a short-term issue—they can affect your long-term campaign sustainability. Addressing brand bidding issues early on allows you to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that your campaigns remain profitable over time. Way Forward Brand bidding is a silent campaign killer, but it doesn’t have to drain your ad spend or ruin your ROAS. By understanding the impact of competitor bids on your branded keywords and implementing proactive brand protection

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

Blog, Ad Fraud / mFilterIt Experts

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

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Reflections and Roadmap: A Year of Building Trust, Transparency, and Innovation

Blog, Leadership Voice / Amit Relan

As we approach the end of another remarkable year, I would like to reflect on our journey and the milestones we’ve achieved together. This year, our efforts to address critical challenges in the digital ecosystem have borne fruit, and the trust we’ve built in the industry has been our greatest reward. Helping Brands Thrive with the “VOP” Framework At the heart of our mission lies our “VOP [Verify, Optimize, Protect]” framework—a cornerstone of our approach to empowering brands in the digital ecosystem. This framework has been instrumental in enabling brands to achieve true data visibility, optimize their strategies, and safeguard their digital assets, ultimately driving better business outcomes. We have: Forged impactful partnerships with leading brands: Working closely with the largest car manufacturer, prominent FMCG companies, and the leading electronics brand, our brand and ad traffic validation (BAV) solutions have gone beyond protecting brand reputation and offering transparency to the brands to take effective decisions Driven exceptional growth through our performance solutions: Our performance suite has enabled some of the largest telecom, eCommerce, and quick commerce providers to optimize their campaigns, conduct precise incrementality tests, and achieve unparalleled ROI—turning ambitious goals into tangible results. Elevated eCommerce media optimization: The integration of our eCommerce media optimization suite with the Digital Shelf monitoring solution has introduced automated actions that transform campaign performance, ensuring seamless and measurable success. Fortified the BFSI ecosystem: Our brand protection suite has actively dismantled threats by removing bad actors, thereby reinforcing the integrity and security of the BFSI sector. Building Trust Through Collaboration Trust is the treasure in this digital age, and this year, we’ve taken significant steps to build it. By collaborating with brands, agencies, Big 4 firms, and trade bodies, we’ve worked to establish and uphold industry standards. Major OTT players have adopted our tagging capabilities to deliver measurable outcomes. These partnerships are essential for creating a future where transparency and innovation thrive. Earning Recognition Through Meaningful Conversations This year, we focused on fostering meaningful connections with the media and industry stakeholders. We’re deeply honored that our insights on key issues in the digital ecosystem resonated with leading media outlets like Economic Times, The Hindu and Financial Express. These recognitions serve as humbling reminders of the importance and impact of our work, and we’re truly grateful for the trust placed in us. Beyond media recognition, our leadership in fostering trust and transparency was acknowledged by esteemed industry bodies such as the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA). This validation is a testament to the consistent efforts and unwavering dedication of our team and the trust our clients and partners put on us for creating a secure and transparent digital environment. Looking Ahead As I reflect on this incredible journey this year, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our clients, partners, and everyone who has supported us along the way. Your trust, collaboration, and belief in our mission have been the cornerstone of our growth and success. Thank you for being an integral part of our story—we look forward to continuing this journey with you in 2025 and many more years to come. As we enter a new year, our focus remains clear—to continue driving innovation, enhancing trust, and delivering measurable value to our clients. With the momentum we’ve gained, I’m confident that we’ll continue to make strides in shaping a secure, transparent future for digital. Stay ahead, to know more contact us.

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