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contextual-advertising

Role of Contextual Advertising in the USA Ad Landscape

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability, USA /

The fascinating world of advertising is witnessing the rise of contextual advertising. Now, advertisers are reaching out to a more relevant audience with precise targeting and ad contextual relevancy. Relevant ad placement reaches the audience interested and views similar types of content. Let’s explore how the contextual ad landscape in the USA Contextual advertising in the USA ad Market The United States is the largest contextual advertising market worldwide. According to Statista, in 2023, contextual advertising spending was estimated at $227.38 billion on the global level. The ad spends are expected to further beyond two folds rise by 2030 approximately $562.1 billion. The use of AI and machine learning algorithms has led to wider acceptance of contextual advertising that improves targeting and upgrades ad placements. Huge amounts of data including content-based context, and user behavior are monitored to provide custom-made and relevant advertisements. Contextual advertising is witnessing a rise in demand for privacy-focused targeting solutions due to increased concerns over data privacy and regulatory scrutiny. Instead, depending on invasive data-collecting techniques, and a cookie-less ad ecosystem, advertisers are investigating alternate approaches to audience targeting. Benefits of Contextual Advertising Navigating the evolving landscape requires contextual ad targeting. Here are some perks of contextual advertising: Data Privacy Compliance Contextual ads are an alternative to behavioral ads that need to comply with laws regarding data privacy, including the CCPA and GDPR. Moreover, contextual ads don’t entirely depend on cookies or user-specific data, it is easier to deal with privacy requirements. It respects the privacy of users’ data and ensures your ad reaches a genuine and relevant audience. Targeting Desired Audience Another advantage is that it accurately targets the audience based on their interaction with the desired content. Depending on the interests and needs of the users, contextual ads help marketers by monitoring the context of a webpage, app, or other digital platforms to regulate their advertisements. Enhanced User Experiences The user experience is highly influenced by contextual advertising, rather than providing consumers with generic advertisements. They deliver ads that perfectly blend with the surrounding context, which results in a seamless experience. Impact of Contextual Advertising Contextually relevant ad placement ensures more engagement and efficient ad performance with better returns on investments. Market Expansion and Economic Effects The increasing dependency on digital content and the developments in AI and machine learning which improve the efficiency of contextual ad placements push forward the growth in the US market which has a major impact on the US. digital advertising business, which is among the biggest in the world. Improved Interaction with Customers Contextual advertising increases consumer engagement by displaying appropriate advertisements based on the content that customers are viewing. Based on the relevancy, it enables the rise in click-through and conversion rates. For instance, instead of a makeup brand ad, a protein shake advertisement on a fitness blog is more likely to attract readers’ attention and increase engagement. ROI and Cost-Efficiency In comparison to other digital advertising formats that entirely depend on user data, contextual advertising is more affordable. Advertisers can gain a higher return on investment (ROI) and accurate targeting at a much lesser cost by concentrating on context rather than custom-made user profiles. Brand safety and relevancy in Contextual advertising Contextual Brand Safety refers to strategies and technologies used to ensure that advertisements appear in appropriate and relevant content environments, thereby protecting the brand reputation. This approach focuses on analyzing the context of web pages and digital content to avoid placing ads next to harmful, controversial, or inappropriate material. Contextual Brand Relevancy enables AI-based contextual level targeting that focuses on elements, logos, faces, keywords, objects, sentiments, and more for brands to choose the right ads at the right place. We provide custom targeting and exclusion themes and accurate detection of unsafe content across a comprehensive set of brand safety categories as per the GARM guidelines. For Instance, your ad campaign is about a man’s fashion brand featuring offers, promotion, and image of celebrity actor Ranveer Singh. This sort of ad needs to feature videos that talk about fashion or feature the same celebrity. Identifying such relevant videos will help reach an audience with similar interests. By using PACE Brand Relevancy, you can identify the text, logo, element, and keyword using AI-ML tech and keyword search & analysis capabilities to fetch URLs of contextually relevant videos for ad placement. Conclusion Contextual advertising is not just a trend but a fundamental shift. It ensures that ad creative and placements align with the brand’s vision and help reach its target audiences in meaningful and effective ways. Brand relevancy solution empowered with advanced AI-based contextual level targeting identifies elements, logos, faces, keywords, objects, sentiments, and more for brands to choose the relevant content for ad placement across advertising platforms. Get in Touch with us to learn more about contextual ads.

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programmatic advertising

Combatting Programmatic Ad Fraud: Traffic Validation with Integrated Brand Safety

Leave a Comment / Blog, Programmatic /

Programmatic advertising offers unparalleled efficiency and reach. However, programmatic ad fraud is a growing problem that has dented the efficiency and return on investment (ROI). It not only leads to a massive loss in advertising Ad spend but also causes reputational damage. Programmatic ad fraud mainly includes generating fake clicks and impressions using bots and automated systems. Inflated ad spending, depleted ROI, and eroded trust caused by programmatic fraud are significant consequences. Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning-driven tech with monitoring, analysis, and real-time actionable insights is needed to optimize programmatic ad campaigns. Optimizing Programmatic ads – Ad Traffic Validation with integrated Brand safety Detection of Bot traffic is the major challenge in programmatic advertising. Automated blocking of ads such as invalid traffic in all branding campaigns across all programmatic platforms is critical for the success of the ad campaign. mFiliter enables advertisers to validate branding campaign traffic with integrated brand safety. It provides media verification across the programmatic ecosystem or any other campaigns that have CPM payouts. The integrated brand safety helps identify safe, unsafe, or irrelevant ad placement. A step that empowers advertisers beyond ad traffic validation. Optimizing Programmatic ad campaigns requires the following: Weeding out General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) Identify ad placements on Made-for-Ad Sites (MFA) Check for Frequency Cap Violations on OTT or video streaming media platforms. Ad Placements Monitoring as per the GARM safety standards and Brand Guidelines Advanced AI and ML tech capabilities and behavior analytics are used to protect programmatic advertising from ad fraud and ensure brand safety. It must cover all advertising programmatic advertising channels such as DV360, a demand-side platform (DSP) that enables the purchase of a diverse spectrum of online media programmatically, CTV streaming services, and platforms like Roku, OTT Platforms, or any other platforms that support programmatic ads. How does ad fraud affect programmatic advertising? Automated, data-driven buying and selling of digital ad inventory occurs at programmatic ad channels. Leveraging AI-ML-driven tech can help optimize ad placement and reach the desired targeted audience more efficiently. Programmatic ad campaigns can have fraud rates as high as 15-20% in the worst cases. Ad fraud prevention in programming is required to cut down wastage of ad spend and get better returns on campaign investments. In addition to financial losses, ad fraud can negatively impact brands in several other ways including: Damage Brand Reputation When ads appear on MFA sites, low-quality or inappropriate sites can harm the brand reputation, as consumers may associate the brand with these negative contexts, leading to trust erosion. Skew campaign metrics and performance Ad fraud skews analytics and data, leading to misleading campaign performance metrics. This results in ineffective marketing strategies, as decisions are based on inaccurate data. Lose customer trust Consumers’ trust in a brand gets reduced if they perceive its ads as pervasive or intrusive in case of Frequency capping violations or programmatic ads appearing in unsuitable online environments. Decreased campaign ROI The return on investment (ROI) for advertising campaigns diminishes significantly due to fraudulent activities, as a portion of the ad spend is diverted to non-genuine interactions Emerging tech to combat programmatic ad fraud Awareness is the first step! Move beyond the myths such as no Fraud on Walled Gardens, no fraud on performance-driven campaigns or publisher reports give a clear picture of where the brand has spent its marketing budgets or brand safety has nothing to do with ROI and is an unnecessary cost. In the fight against programmatic ad fraud, the journey goes well beyond simply knowing about it. The estimated average ad fraud is around 15% Fraud on OTT, 20% Fraud on CTV, and 18% Fraud on YouTube. Surprising numbers? Not really. Ignorance is not bliss in this case, Advertisers need advanced tech to combat programmatic ad fraud in real-time, ensure the safety of ad place, and safeguard brand repute. Contrary to what many believe, advertisers are not helpless against such instances of fraud and it is up to the advertisers to protect their interests. The simplest, most surefire way to protect your interests is to use ad fraud detection tools. Such a tool uses AI and ML algorithms to continually and intelligently monitor the user activity on your ad campaigns. Since the algorithms work round the clock and without the influence of human bias, you can rest assured that your campaigns are protected the way they should be. Final Thought – Optimize the efficiency of Programmatic ad campaigns Programmatic advertising is a superb way to reach your customers. The insights advertisers can draw from their programmatic campaigns can help them consistently improve the returns they make on their programmatic ad spend. With programmatic ad traffic validation, brands require full funnel coverage across various digital channels along with enhanced ad visibility pre-bid & post-bid for impressions on programmatic, OTTs, and CTV platforms. However, ad fraud stands in the way of advertisers looking to maximize their investment in programmatic advertising. This is where programmatic ad fraud protection can come in handy, helping advertisers protect their campaigns and maximize their gains. Get in touch to learn more about the programmatic ad fraud.

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influencer-monitoring

Influencer Monitoring: Are Your Influencers Reaching Genuine Audiences or Bots?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

In a survey of marketing professionals conducted in 2022, 25% of respondents said that they leverage influencer marketing. Out of these, 89% of the respondents said they would maintain or increase their investment in influencer marketing in the coming years. By 2024 Influencers are everywhere promoting brands, endorsing products, participating in global events, and selling products via social commerce. As brands invest so much in influencer marketing, they also need Influencer monitoring to ensure their investment reaps the desired results. What is Influencer Marketing? Influencer marketing means collaborating with an influencer or group of influencers for marketing activity like product endorsement and promotion. Influencer marketing has made a big enough impact on the overall marketing landscape. Influencers are people who can ‘influence’ the purchase decisions of their audience. This is where their power lies. An influencer can be anyone with a sizable online following. The most well-known celebrities and sports personalities have also started taking up influencer deals, a large percentage of influencers are regular people that have managed to grow their digital following with the help of content creation. According to a study, 50% of millennial audiences trust product recommendations from influencers. The trust and high engagement that influencers enjoy are the reasons they are sought for brand partnerships. Brands collaborate with influencers due to their relatability with the audience. Since most influencers come from regular families and are regular people turned successful content creators, their content resonates with their audience. Moreover, since this audience is gained by consistently producing engaging content, the engagement levels are incredibly high. Identifying the Right Influencers for Your Brand Success with influencer marketing is significantly dependent on choosing the right influencers. Follow these steps to identify the right influencers for your brand. Authenticate – Research and evaluate potential influencers With your goals and audience clearly defined, it is time to start evaluating relevant influencers. Based on your audience, you can start shortlisting potential influencers whose audience displays similar qualities. Once you have a list of potential influencers that you want to partner with, it is time to start researching. This will entail going through their social media profiles to see the kind of content they produce and the kind of engagement they attract. Here are some influencer authenticity checks: Google Analytics Referral Data – For influencers with websites or blogs, analyze their website traffic using Google Analytics to identify suspicious referral sources that might be bots. Brand Alignment – An authentic influencer partners with brands and promotes products that align with their values and interests, rather than promoting anything for monetary gain. Account Activity Patterns – Bots often exhibit specific patterns, such as posting at consistent intervals or engaging only with specific types of content. Analyze the behavior of an influencer’s followers to identify any suspicious patterns. Bot Traffic Analysis – Tools that can help detect bot accounts and spam activities on social media platforms. This can analyze account behavior, activity patterns, and follower characteristics. Spike in Follower Growth – Genuine influencers may experience organic growth due to viral content or media exposure, massive and rapid follower increases are often indicative of bot activity. Engagement Rate Anomalies – Extremely high engagement rates combined with low follower counts might indicate bot activity artificially inflating engagement. Engagement to Follower Ratio – Calculating the average engagement rate (likes, comments, shares) per post relative to the number of followers can help identify if the influencer’s engagement is proportionate to their audience size. Followers Quality Analysis – Evaluate the likelihood of fake or bot accounts based on factors such as profile completion, posting activity, and follower-to-following ratio. Influencer Performance Tracking – Consider relevant metrics and factors for influencer selection With the data you get from your research and your goal in mind, it should be easy to determine the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) on which you should evaluate potential influencers. For instance, if your goal is to improve brand recognition, you may want to focus on metrics like number of followers and engagement on posts. On the other hand, if your objective is to drive more sales, you may be interested in metrics like click-through rate and past sales driven. Here are some metrics that can be tracked with the Influencer monitoring tool: – Influencer Insights: Key insights on highest reach, most popular, most active, verified status, influencer category, account size, etc. need to be identified and monitored. – Activity Monitoring:  The performance of the influencer can be tracked by identifying the reach trend likes trend, and comments trend. – Audience Analysis:  Track the kind of followers the influencer has with country-wise analysis, city, age, and gender analysis. – Content Analysis: Track what kind of content the user creates and identify the content type, most liked most commented content, the highest and lowest engagement rate on the type of content, top hashtags, and languages. – Sponsored Content Analysis: Monitor influencer-sponsored activity such as sponsored audience insights, sponsored influencers insights, engagement rate, posts performance, cost efficiencies, and audience quality analysis – Sentiment Analysis: Monitor positive, neutral, and negative comments on posts and the most positive & negative comments received. Brand Safety – Follow ASCI Guidelines With influencer marketing brands must also be proactive in brand safety measures. Brands often associate with micro and nano influencers which have a lesser number of followers but can help the brand reach the desired set of relevant audiences. However, these influencers are either unaware or not professional and miss out on ASCI requirements like mention of ads or collaboration in videos. Brands need an automated system to identify ASCI violations and ensure compliance with brand guidelines to avoid legal implications and brand reputation damage. Measuring and Analyzing Influencer Campaigns A major Indian conglomerate in the FMCG sector is ensuring transparency in influencer marketing campaigns through influencer monitoring. The FMCG brand detected that an Instagram influencer with 310K followers had a high engagement rate, but 39.17% of their followers were bots! Such insights help brands make informed decisions before collaborations. Most of the influencers nowadays are pumping up their number with Bots.

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digital-commerce-intelligence

Why eCommerce Brands Need Digital Commerce Intelligence

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

“Let’s BlinkIt”, or “Look it up on Amazon” These phrases have become common in our everyday lives. This reflects how online shopping; and digital commerce intelligence are getting ingrained in our habits and their convenience has become an integral part of any shopper’s routine. To match the changing and ever-evolving customer behavior and needs shopping platforms are also expanding their inventory across categories covering every aspect of shopper’s needs from food and beverages, groceries, fashion & accessories, and home decor to last-minute needs with quick commerce. enhancing UI/UX to connect with the audience, penetrating beyond tier-1, and tier-2 cities. The eCommerce is expanding, enhancing customer experience, and even coming up with new exclusive niche categories. These are exciting times for brands and shoppers. However, as the eCommerce game is moving into the next level brands also need digital commerce intelligence to stay ahead of the competition. Intelligence across platforms and geographies helps effortlessly elevate business by strategically refining every touchpoint with data-driven decisions to optimize your customer journey across digital commerce marketplaces and product categories. Why Do e-commerce Brands need Digital Commerce Intelligence? For instance, with digital commerce intelligence – Availability analysis for a popular noodle brand, we discovered it has the lowest availability amongst the competitors, among quick commerce platforms on Blinkit it has the lowest availability of 25%. In Delhi, 61% of the listings are out of stock! Availability is almost 0% on the pin codes 110017, and 122001. Actionable insights such as these on various KPIs help brands identify gaps, track platforms, and geography with customized scheduled ed platform scans, monitoring on monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly on certain KPIs such as stock availability, product page content, delivery turnaround time and keyword share, etc. can help a brand grow in fiercely competitive eCommerce and quick commerce landscape. Optimize Customer Journey with Digital Commerce Intelligence Every step on the e-commerce platform can be elevated to boost sales, get new shoppers, have more visibility on the digital shelf, and enhance customer experience. The biggest impact of eCommerce intelligence is that it helps optimize your customer journey to stay ahead of the competition. Phase 1: Generate Interest and Awareness In the first phase generating eCommerce competitive analysis helps generate awareness & Interest by optimizing discoverability, keyword share, and viewability of the own, competition, and other products in the market across multiple platforms. Lists out the keywords that the client should start bidding on and also the keywords where the client can stop their bidding by comparing the parameters like traffic, CTR, CPC, organic, and sponsored discoverability. Also covers discoverability and placement rank on category pages (commonly known as Browse Share). Enhance PDP page content (images, text), as per ASCII guidelines, platform guidelines, and best practices. Review, edit, and rebuild the content to meet the specified benchmarks to improve your content. Also, keep track of the Banner Visibility of own and competition brands. Analyses the eCommerce Ad banner position, content, and themes/ cohorts of advertising content such as offers, discounts, branding banners, etc. Phase 2: Optimize Consideration & Evaluation Process To ace the race, you need to be on the shelf! Availability and pricing are the keys to winning across the e-commerce marketplaces. Key track of your stock availability across sb-brand, categories, sub-categories, and product variants against the competitors’ own products. Analyze the market via competitive pricing analysis, tracker, and monitoring of pricing trends. Be vigilant for MAP violations norms and discount threshold violations. Keep track of delivery turnaround time on eCommerce platforms. Analyze the customer feedback, ratings, reviews, and Q&As on various parameters of the products of own and competition. Phase 3: Monitor Purchase & Sales Monitor the purchase phase with sales analysis. Comprehensive sales tracking and analysis that covers “What” the sales are, “Why” is the sale, ‘What’ it is, and “How” to improve the sale. Case Study – Digital Commerce A global leader in the beverage industry, in optimizing their performance across platforms and geographies with a digital shelf tracker to monitor their products across multiple KPIs like Availability, Keyword Share, Pricing & Promotion, Product Page Content, and Ratings & Reviews across the Middle East & North Africa region. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) region they mainly focused on enhancing its market presence by monitoring availability and optimizing content pages. Concentrating on the beverage category, this case study delves into the challenges faced by leading beverage brands in ensuring product availability across various platforms in September, October, and November. Additionally, it explores the efforts to optimize product page content on key platforms, with a spotlight on Carrefour and Nana. Stock availability gives the brand an added edge over the competition across platforms. Intelligence on stock availability helped the brand re-stock on time and identify the demand across locations. With a comprehensive global dashboard, they were able to identify and plug the availability gaps, optimize performance, and ensure that their products were consistently accessible to consumers. Brand Availability Trends Availability share versus competition City-Wise Availability Trends – monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly Platform-wise & geography-wise analysis Heat map to identify geography to be a target Track Bottlers (Sellers) performance Out-of-Stock product lists & alerts Maximize the impact of product pages to ensure that the product content resonates effectively with diverse audiences. Content analysis enabled brands to refine and tailor product descriptions, images, and other elements to align seamlessly with the unique requirements of each platform. By leveraging data-driven insights, the brand was able to identify and rectify any inconsistencies on PDP, ensuring cohesive and compelling brand content across platforms. This holistic optimization not only enhances user experience but also boosts visibility. Image analysis of product images Comprehensive Perfect Page Analysis (Title, content, and product reviews) High-traffic keyword and content theme recommendations Final Thought – Optimize Your Brand Performance Digital commerce intelligence helps brands explore new possibilities in expanding e-commerce, Quick commerce, and D2C marketplaces. It can monitor product performance across different platforms and geo-locations. It doesn’t matter if you are a small brand or multinational conglomerate, actionable insight, and analysis can catapult

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affiliate-fraud

Essential Signs to Detect Affiliate Fraud 

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

Affiliate marketing presents a lucrative opportunity for brands and publishers alike. That’s perhaps why the industry has grown at such an incredible pace, being valued at $17 billion, according to an affiliate marketing survey. In a survey, 20% of marketers reported sales through their affiliate programs as their biggest source of revenue. The story of publishers and content creators is a similar one, with 31% reporting affiliate income as their biggest source of income. Considering how valuable affiliate marketing is for all involved parties, it is no surprise that the space is now infested with scammers and fraudsters. Affiliate marketing fraud is one of the most prevalent forms of ad fraud. Some experts estimate that nearly 17% of all clicks on affiliate offers are fraudulent. This number translates to billions of advertising dollars lost to affiliate marketing scams. This also means that marketers who use affiliate programs to make sales must fend for themselves and employ affiliate monitoring methods to ensure they are not losing their marketing budget to fraud. However, before you can effectively monitor affiliates and be sure that you have prevented yourself from falling victim to fraud, you must first understand affiliate fraud in depth. That’s exactly where this article will help. In the upcoming section, you will learn everything you need to, to protect yourself and your affiliate programs from fraud. Let’s start with the necessary basics. What is Affiliate Fraud? Affiliate fraud is the practice of abusing affiliate programs to earn affiliate commissions fraudulently. Fraudsters scam advertisers by generating fake leads and getting affiliate commissions for said leads. Some may even employ tactics that allow them to claim credit for sales facilitated by genuine affiliates. This form of ad fraud hurts every genuine party involved in an affiliate marketing program. Scammers make money for sales that either never happened or those that had nothing to do with them. The genuine affiliates work hard to make sales suffer because their commissions are stolen by the scammers. Brands also suffer because they end up paying for sales that never take place. Brands also suffer when they pay the scammer instead of a genuine affiliate. The genuine content creator, who may have the potential to drive thousands of dollars in sales, may opt out of working with a brand thinking they have been subjected to unfair behavior. In such cases, the brand’s image may also suffer, especially if the content creator calls the company out in front of their followers. The most common reason behind the occurrence of such fraud (besides the greed of fraudsters) is a lenient evaluation process for affiliates. From the point of view of growing an affiliate program, this is a great move. However, a lenient evaluation process also unfortunately presents a great opportunity for fraudsters to sign up as an affiliate and defraud the brand. A strict evaluation process should be a part of your brand safety advertising process. It may slow down the growth of your affiliate program, but it will go a long way in ensuring your advertising budgets are safe from fraudsters. Despite that, you cannot expect complete protection from affiliate fraud by simply having a stringent evaluation process. This is true for two reasons. One, a strict evaluation process does not guarantee that any fraudsters will not be able to clear it. Secondly, upgrading your evaluation process does nothing about the fraudsters who may already be siphoning off funds from your affiliate program. What can you do about them? Let us find out. Signs to Identify Affiliate Fraud Fraudulent affiliates work hard to cover their tracks. They employ proxies, resort to hijacking devices of genuine users, and use IP addresses to mask their locations. It is thanks to these measures that detecting fraudulent activity in your affiliate dashboard is next to impossible. Fret not, you are not powerless against fraudulent affiliates. Look for these signs to detect fraudulent activity in your affiliate programs: Usage Patterns Associated with In-App Activity One of the best ways to detect fraudulent activity associated with affiliates is to check the in-app activity of their referrals. Consider it a red flag if there are set usage patterns that can be commonly observed among several users. For instance, if all the users associated with an affiliated stop using your app after a set amount of time, then there’s a good chance that these ‘users’ may be bots programmed to behave in a specific way. Suspiciously Stellar Performance If an affiliate consistently and continuously outperforms everyone else in your program, there’s a good chance that they are not authentic. If, for instance, your affiliates’ average conversion rate is 15%, and an affiliate consistently delivers 50%-60% conversions, they deserve to be investigated. Disconnect Between Traffic and Purchase Numbers This one is a no-brainer. If an affiliate is consistently sending you traffic but the traffic itself is not converting, consider it a red flag and conduct a deeper investigation. Metrics like clicks and installs can be easily faked using Bots but these bots cannot purchase anything. Unresponsive Leads If your affiliate campaigns are generating a high number of leads but these leads seem to be unaware of your company when you contact them, something is wrong. It is easy for fraudsters to fill out lead forms with fake or stolen contact details and get commissions. Unusual Number of Chargebacks Some fraudsters may even make purchases on your website using stolen card details, just to get the commissions for these sales. Once the commission has been paid, however, you may receive a chargeback request from the credit card company, since the credit card used for the transaction may have been stolen. All Campaign Goals Are Met (Regardless of What They Are) Fraudulent affiliates, as mentioned earlier, usually outperform genuine affiliates. This becomes clearly evident when you choose a very niche audience and repeatedly change your campaign objectives. If you do this and notice that certain affiliates are meeting all the different objectives you set, you will be right to be suspicious of

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Share-of-Voice

How to Effectively Monitor Search Engine Share of Voice for Organic Keywords?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

Information is widely available on the World Wide Web; however, finding relatable info has become convenient through search engines like Google, Microsoft, Bing, Yahoo, etc. The biggest benefactor in this circle of search engines is Google, with expected aggregate revenue of $256.74 billion by the end of 2022. Moreover, 92% of the global organic searches happen through Google, including 96% of the mobile organic searches. Traffic generated through organic search results is important to evaluate as it detects whether the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts are paying off or not? It also evaluates whether the brand is easily discoverable, types of content mediums increasing brand visibility or awareness, percentage of competitor results versus your brand, etc. Monitoring and measuring the content medium aiding your brand’s visibility shows the Share of Voice of your brand vis-a-vis the competition. Organic search results often include blogs, news articles, videos, eCommerce platforms, etc., as content mediums. The biggest advantage of outranking competitors on organic keywords is that it reduces the ‘keyword to bid’ for an organization, which supplements the advertising efforts. Therefore, dominating search engines on organic results gives an edge over the competition. Organic keywords are of two major forms, namely long-tail and short-tail. Higher the search ranking on such keywords, the higher the traffic you generate on the content mediums. Consumers often use organic keywords to find the desired product. Moreover, the top ten page results and the top three results matter the most to brands for any keyword, as they have a higher chance of generating a click-through rate. Through organic searches, users visiting brand domains often have a higher chance of becoming prospects, increasing brand engagements, and enhancing brand credibility. Monitoring and measuring the Share of Voice for organic keywords on search engines is possible using eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a. mScanIt. Monitor Share-of-Voice of Organic Searches through mScanIt Evaluate the Change in Monthly Progress The first and foremost step to evaluating the Share of Voice of organic results on search engines is to carefully review the monthly progress of the eCommerce platforms, brand website, and competitor website. Monitoring the search result analysis every month predicts the change in SOV of the three aspects, which can either show progress or regress. Brands can review and analyze results based on keyword subsets, sub-categories, and other filters using mScanIt’s Search Analytics dashboard. By doing so, you can evaluate the performance of the organic keywords at a much deeper level and use the knowledge to your advantage. Dive Deeper with Device-Based Insights According to a source, 87% of rural people in India prefer mobile internet, whereas 13% rely on widescreen devices like tablets, desktops, and laptops. On the other hand, 73% of urban people prefer mobile internet, whereas 27% search through widescreen devices (Source: Statista). Our solution monitors the Share of Voice of organic searches on all such devices every month. Brands can use the Search Result Analysis of the devices to determine the SOV of eCommerce platforms, brand websites, and competitor websites based on devices. In addition, analyzing the progress helps brands check whether they have higher or lower brand awareness/visibility versus their competition on the type of devices. The Share of Voice analysis also informs brands about the SEO needs, maps organic keyword performance, detects the most influencing content mediums, etc., based on devices. Analyzing SOV brands can find areas of improvement, top eCommerce platforms, keywords that offer the highest visibility to your brand, and more. Organic Search Result on Generic Keywords Knowing the share of organic search results for generic keywords helps a brand learn about its visibility on the commonly used phrases or keywords. Brands with the highest organic search result share have acquired more brand awareness through their website and eCommerce platform listings without paying a dime. Comparing the generic keyword results between the organic and paid search results would detect whether the brand is acquiring a higher share through their SEO efforts or bidding on the right keywords. Moreover, it compares the share of eCommerce marketplaces across its own categories. So, it detects the type of search results that offer the highest/lowest visibility of the online shopping store of your brand and that of the competitors. Conclusion Monitoring the search engine Share of Voice for organic keywords can become challenging unless you use eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a. mScanIt. The solution provides in-depth insights for the search analytics at brand, sub-category, website, keyword, and other levels. Moreover, mScanIt eases your journey while monitoring the competition’s progress in the same time frame for the same keywords. It detects insights that are not readily available with search engines and gives your brand an edge over the competition. Find out more about the advantages of mScanIt’s search analytics for your brand by scheduling a demo with us.

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brand safety protect your brand integrity in the digital ecosystem

Brand Safety: Protect Your Brand Integrity in The Digital Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability /

Imagine working countless hours to perfect your brand identity and persona, only to have it decimated in the mind of a potential customer in a matter of seconds. This isn’t a hypothetical horror story. Most brand owners and teams spend considerable time and even more effort building their brand. It’s a harsh reality for many brands in the recent past. The culprit? Lack of vigilance to ensure brand safety. What Is Brand Safety? Brand safety, in simple words, refers to the practice of ensuring branded content does not appear next to unsavory explicit, or offensive content. While most advertisers are painfully aware of their limited control over the placement of their ads, their consumers are not as discerning as them. A few years ago, a media buying agency pulled its advertising budgets from YouTube and Google Display advertising platforms because of an article highlighting the appearance of ads next to neo-nazi and other forms of extremist content. Just like the placement of ads next to ‘wrong’ content is bad for the brand’s perception, placement of the same ads next to complementary content can potentially drive better results. Ensuring the same is known as ensuring brand relevancy in digital advertising. Both brand safety and relevancy are closely related topics and thus, may be confused with each other. However, in the high-stakes game of branding and advertising, there is no space for such confusion. Difference between Brand Safety and Brand Suitability Brand safety is all about ensuring your branded content does not appear next to anything that can be deemed offensive or extremist, or any type of content that your brand does not support. Common examples of such content include hateful content, violence, content that is offensive to a certain section of society, or content being used to spread misinformation. In some cases, scandals involving influencers that are associated with a brand also qualify as brand safety concerns. Imagine a scenario where a health food ad running on video that contains violence or an ad made for adults featuring in Kid’s videos. On the other hand, brand suitability refers to ensuring your brand’s content or ads appear next to positive and possibly relevant content. Brand suitability considerations take into account the context, meaning, and potential impact of a publisher’s content concerning the brand’s needs and audience. In other words, brand suitability goes beyond the scope of brand safety (preventing brand content from appearing next to offensive content) and ensures that the brand’s content appears in a positive environment. For instance, a ‘positive’ environment for an automotive ad would be very different from a positive environment for an ad for dog food. If the ad for dog food appears next to content about rescuing animals, it will probably perform better than the same ad appearing next to content about cars. Impact of association of a brand with negative content So what do the consumers feel when they see their favorite brand’s ad appearing next to an article talking about violence in Ukraine? When a consumer views a brand’s ad placed next to the ‘wrong’ type of content, they may think that the brand supports the adjacent content. This isn’t an empty claim. According to a brand safety study, 49% of consumers say that they start perceiving a brand negatively when they see that brand’s content appearing next to offensive content. What happens next? They screenshot the page and share it with their network. In the blink of an eye, the brand has a reputation crisis on its hands. Once again, this claim is supported by research that showed 75% of surveyed brands had been exposed to brand safety concerns in 2022. Why is Brand Safety and Suitability non-negotiable? Concerning digital advertising, both brand safety and suitability are non-negotiable concerns in 2024, but for different reasons. With so much content being published on the web every day, brand safety concerns are growing by the day. There are millions of pieces of content that can potentially ruin a brand’s image, should its ads appear next to them. And this effect can unfortunately be long-lasting. In extreme cases, brand safety concerns can cause permanent and irreversible damage to a brand’s image. Consider the investment of time, effort, and money that goes into establishing a brand. All of that can go down the drain in a single moment, just because one active internet user viewed the brand’s ad appearing next to something they find offensive. In other words, when it comes to brand safety, the stakes are high and the margin for error is alarmingly slim. On the other hand, brand suitability is non-negotiable because it allows brands to tap into the full potential of their advertising efforts. Sure, clickbait and controversies are still grabbing a lot of attention, but conversions are happening in positive environments. Research conducted by Pinterest shows that 60% of consumers are more likely to remember brands that they encounter when they are feeling positive. In the digital context, content is a great influencer of emotions. This means that ads appearing next to positive content are likely to perform better than the same ads appearing next to neutral or worse, negative content. In the same survey, two out of three respondents said that it is the brand’s responsibility to ensure their ads appear next to relevant and positive content and not adjacent to negative content. Need for Brand Safety Monitoring and Brand Relevancy for Targeting Until recently, brands and advertisers had little to no control over where their ads appear. With hundreds of new publishers being added to advertising platforms every day, the risk of brand safety and the gaps in brand suitability are growing exponentially. mFilterIt helps brands navigate the murky waters of the digital advertising world by offering real-time online brand protection for their ad campaigns. Our brand protection solution are powered by AI and ML technologies and they continuously ‘learn’ what kind of environment is right for your digital advertisements. This means, that with our solutions in your advertising arsenal, you can rest assured

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click-farms

Beyond the Click: The Impact of Click Farms on Advertising

Leave a Comment / Ad Fraud, Blog /

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

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click fraud protect your ad campaign

Click Fraud: Protect Your Ad Campaign

Leave a Comment / Ad Fraud, Blog /

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

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Brand Risk Safeguard Your Brand in the Digital Ecosystem

Brand Risk: Safeguard Your Brand in the Digital Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability /

Building a brand is a challenging undertaking. Besides offering something unique, one has to put significant effort towards creating a unique identity that audiences like and relate to. Protecting a brand’s reputation may well be one of the most important aspects of an effective and holistic marketing strategy. Fortunately, modern marketers are becoming increasingly aware that modern brand reputations face threats online. In a survey of brand marketers, advertising agencies, tech companies, and media providers, conducted in the last quarter of 2022, 40% expected their brand safety concerns to rise. Identifying Threats to Digital Advertising Campaigns and the Need for Brand Risk Monitoring Unfortunately, maintaining a brand reputation can sometimes be more difficult than building it. Simply being aware that there are threats out there isn’t nearly enough. Marketers must understand the ever-evolving threats to digital advertising campaigns across app, web, and programmatic ad platforms and stay proactive to protect their advertising budget and brand reputation. This article will help you do exactly that. In the upcoming sections, we will discuss the most significant risks to brand reputation today. We will also cover actionable steps to implement brand safety advertising that enables safe and sustainable growth for your brand. 3 Major Brand Risk Many factors threaten a brand’s reputation online. While some are directly influenced by the brand’s actions, there are others that most brands don’t directly control. In this section, we will discuss three of the biggest, most prevalent threats from the advertising and brand safety point of view. Ad Fraud Ad fraud can take many forms, but the basic premise remains the same- faking clicks, impressions, or downloads to drain a brand’s marketing budget. Fraudsters take credit for these fake clicks or downloads and unsuspecting advertisers end up paying for them. Estimates say that advertisers collectively lose several billion dollars to ad fraud every year. While the connection between ad fraud and the monetary damage it causes is easy to make, one may wrongly believe that ad fraud does not pose a threat to a brand’s reputation. In fact, it influences a brand’s reputation in two different ways. Adult websites and MFA (Made-for-advertising) sites are some of the biggest sources of click spamming and impression fraud. While most brands actively avoid adult websites, fraudulent publishers can fake website information and get ads published on adult websites or MFAs. This drains ad budgets with fake clicks, shows the brand’s ad to a completely irrelevant and disinterested audience, and most importantly, hurts the brand’s image by showing its ads next to adult content (more on this in the next section) or on low-quality content sites. One of the most common methods of ad fraud is exploiting rewards offered by brands to boost their app downloads. Fraudsters create thousands of fake accounts to claim said rewards and drain the advertiser’s budget. Another way this hurts the brand is by depriving real and interested users of the rewards meant for them. When this kind of fraud happens on a large scale, many users don’t get what they are promised. This can deeply hurt the brand’s image and reputation and even turn away some users for good. Unsafe Ad Placement Most everyday users on the web don’t realize that brands have little direct control over where their ads are being displayed. That’s why, when a brand’s ads appear next to objectionable or extremist content, it can cause serious damage to its reputation. One of the most famous real-world examples of the same is the Applebee’s ad controversy. CNN played Applebee’s Dancing Cowboy campaign ad in the middle of a report on the Russia-Ukraine war. The viewers did not find this acceptable, and both brands faced serious backlash. Similar situations have played out online for several brands. Infringement Attacks Infringement attacks by fraudsters pretending to be representatives of a legitimate brand are also a growing threat to modern brands’ safety. While impersonation on social media is one of the most common instances of infringement attacks, fraudsters use more sophisticated ways to commit fraud while pretending to be a brand that thousands trust. Phishing attacks and domain spoofing are just a couple of the many such tactics employed by fraudsters to scam users who trust a brand. This can cause permanent damage to a brand’s reputation. This damage isn’t just limited to those who have fallen victim to these fraudulent activities. If news breaks out, it can negatively influence the trust of thousands of existing and potential customers. How To Create a Strategy for Growth and Safety? As mentioned earlier, there are actionable steps that marketers can take to protect their brand’s reputation. Let’s look at some of them: Validate Your Ad Traffic Ad traffic validation, as the name suggests, is the process of ensuring that your ads are not falling victim to fraud. It also ensures that your ads’ clicks or impressions come from real human users, not bots or click farms. Ad traffic validation can ensure ad fraud activities do not threaten your brand’s safety. Keep A Check on Your Ad Placements Advertisers must also make efforts to ensure their ads are not being displayed next to questionable or extremist content. By placing validation tags within the ad markup, advertisers can analyze the content of the websites where their ads are being displayed. This enables the blacklisting of problematic websites and allows advertisers to maximize the impact of their campaigns without putting their brand reputation in jeopardy. Conclusion Threats to brand safety are becoming increasingly evident and there are growing concerns amid advertisers. Such threats have become so prevalent that simply building awareness of them and how to combat them can provide advertisers with a competitive advantage against unsuspecting competitors. By taking simple steps such as validating ad traffic, tracking ad placements, and instances of infringement with mFilterIt, marketers can ensure their brand reputation remains protected during its growth journey. Get in Touch to know more about the Brand Risk.

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