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Why do brands need a Pricing Tracker and Pricing Analysis across e-commerce platforms

Why do brands need a Pricing Tracker and Pricing Analysis across e-commerce platforms?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

An Indian conglomerate with pricing analysis cracked the code to excel on the online marketplaces for its natural and healthy agro-products. What are you waiting for? ‘Price’ is probably the most important factor that influences the shopper’s decision. Setting the right price on different online marketplaces and geographies is the key to becoming the top pick of shoppers. Data-driven pricing and promotion strategies enable brands to identify new opportunities and maintain top-notch performance on online shopping platforms. It makes monitoring competition prices and discounts across online marketplaces, and geographies extremely crucial. Let’s explore how an efficient pricing tracker and pricing analysis can help your brand propel on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms. Stay alert on product pricing with the pricing tracker Setting the right price on e-commerce platforms is quite a challenge and the role of sellers on e-commerce platforms becomes critical to stay ahead in the discount war. Here is the case of the popular brand n for Beauty and healthcare products, which also ventured into agro-products in 2010, but now wants to expand their presence on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms and face some steep challenges in Pricing across platforms to stay ahead of the competition and build their brand presence. The brand has an extensive presence in physical marketplaces across tier-1 and tier-2 cities making it space in competitive digital marketplaces. The special focus is on healthy cooking oil versus competition across digital commerce platforms. Challenges in Price monitoring on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms Include: Need time-sensitive data and actionable insights on pricing and discount trends to stay ahead of the competition. The city-level monitoring across platforms weekly and hourly to capture fluctuations in prices and discounts. Detecting and flagging pricing and discount violations by sellers, along with accurately ensuring compliance with pricing policies. Identifying new geographies to target e-commerce and q-commerce landscapes, and competitor presence at a granular level. Maintaining performance and reliability is crucial to sustaining competitiveness in the long term. They started competitive pricing analysis along with optimizing discoverability and availability with quick commerce solution. The results were quite evident in a short time as they started monitoring the performance of their products across platforms and geographies. They identified gaps in pricing versus competition, kept track of trends, and identified MAP or Pricing Violations by sellers at pin-code level. Monitoring Pricing and Discount trends vs competition across platforms Keep track of pricing & discount violations by sellers Monitoring products across platforms at the City Level, weekly and hourly. Identify new geographies to target on the E-commerce and Q-commerce landscape   Fig. 01: A screen grab from mScanIt – Digital Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Tracker/Pricing Analysis | Category: Oils | Sub-category: Mustard Oil | Variant: KGMO (Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil) Mild | City: Delhi The impact of Price Tracking on e-commerce marketplaces One of the major impacts of in-depth product pricing monitoring is that it enables the brand to optimize the product performance of different product categories, sub-categories, and product variants at various levels. Data-driven decision-making with actionable insights on pricing and discount empowers brands to shape strategies considering competition’s moves on different platforms, and geographies. It also enables them to monitor sellers’ performance and keep track of pricing and discount violations. The competitive intelligence on multiple KPIs helps brands identify gaps in strategy at platform level and at the tier-wise city level and explore new opportunities. Final Thought on the Need for Pricing Analysis and Pricing Tracker The Pricing Analysis across platforms ensures that the brand stays consistent in pricing versus competition. The strategies on quick commerce and e-commerce platforms may vary based on the demand for products on certain platforms and pin codes. If the brand is selling products via/ sellers or resellers monitoring what price they are selling your product helps maintain your brand integrity and reputation. A comprehensive digital shelf monitoring solution empowers brands with intelligence that can drive their business growth. It could boost their monitoring capabilities and optimize performance with the multi-facet approach which includes perfect page analysis, product page content optimization, availability monitoring, delivery TAT optimization (for e-commerce), and a lot more with customizable solutions that cater needs of your brand. So, stay ahead of the curve with a competitive edge to score big on the digital commerce landscape. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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click integrity monitoring a shield against click fraud

Click Integrity Monitoring- A Shield Against Click Fraud

Leave a Comment / Ad Fraud, Blog /

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

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Unlock the Power of Data Transparency in 2024 

Unlock the Power of Data Transparency in 2024 

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog /

Digital advertising, being a relatively new channel, is still evolving. As digital ads become more and more popular, new concerns are being identified. One such concern that has been in the limelight recently is data transparency. Users are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy. They want to (rightfully) control who obtains their information, how they obtain it, and how they use said information. In other words, digital users expect brands to build trust through transparency. However, such concerns are not limited to users. Transparency matters also concern advertisers. As third-party cookies are being phased out and the focus on privacy becomes sharper, brands must also demand transparency from advertising platforms and providers. Recent privacy regulations and concerns surrounding consumer trust have made things more difficult for brands. In such times, access to reliable data and transparency have become critical to success. Still wondering why? Here are three solid reasons: Reasons Brands Need Data Transparency to Thrive in 2024 1. Mitigate The Risks Bad data negatively impacts digital efficiency. This means that bad data prevents brands from making the most of their advertising and marketing efforts. This is because bad data usually stems from invalid traffic or anomalies found in ad traffic reporting. Such instances can impact the marketing of brands in a variety of ways. The most obvious impact is the wasted ad spend. If you are paying for a click or an impression, and if it doesn’t come from a real user, then your ad budget for said click or impression is wasted. Fraudsters may use bots or click farms to direct invalid traffic to an advertiser’s website and steal their advertising dollars. A less obvious impact of invalid traffic is on organic rankings and traffic of websites. Too much invalid traffic may lead to a website losing precious rankings and traffic on search engines. On the contrary, if brands have access to reliable data, they can effectively mitigate these risks. Access to accurate data will enable brands to accurately pinpoint their most valuable traffic sources and nurture them. It will also give them clarity on their effective channels and best-performing campaigns in which they can invest for greater returns. 2. Targeted Reach One area of digital advertising where there is a serious lack of transparency is ad placements. Advertising networks and platforms let brands exercise some control over who sees their ads. By targeting the right audience, brands can ensure that their ads are being displayed on websites frequented by their target audience. However, this is usually only true in theory. In most cases, brands have little control over or information about the websites that publish their advertisements. As a result, many brands remain unaware that their ads are being displayed next to irrelevant content or on completely irrelevant websites. The obvious impact of this is, once again, wasted ad spend. If the ads are being served to users who may not find them relevant, the conversion rates suffer, diminishing the returns for the brand. The less obvious impact of the same can be observed in extreme cases. In such cases, brands become victims of unsafe ad placements. This means that without the knowledge of the brand/advertisers, their ads are displayed next to questionable or extremist content. It isn’t difficult to imagine the impact on a brand if its ad is displayed next to, say, homophobic content. While the brands have little control over this, most users who view these ads are unaware of the same. As a result, when such unfortunate ad placements come to light, the advertising brand’s image suffers the most damage. If, however, brands have the power to verify and control where their ads are displayed, they get access to targeted reach. This means that brands can target users who are most likely to respond to their offer and convert into paying customers. 3. Improve Efficiency One of the biggest yet most overlooked effects of bad data on advertising is skewed metrics. The most lucrative aspect of digital advertising is the access to ad reporting data that enables optimization decisions. However, due to the lack of transparency, bad actors in the advertising supply chain may tamper with their traffic reports in the hopes of making a quick buck. Similarly, invalid traffic can make campaign reports inaccurate. It may compel advertisers to give credit to bot traffic sources and overlook legitimate ones. Alarmingly, this effect isn’t limited to traffic sources. Bad data may lead advertisers to invest in the wrong ad variations, audience variations, and even ad platforms. In the long run, this can have a compounding effect on wasted ad spending. On the flip side, if brands can validate their traffic, execute data optimization, and get access to accurate reporting, optimization decisions will be easier and more accurate. This can result in substantial improvements in the ROI a brand can expect from its digital advertising efforts. Your Partner for Trust and Transparency The good news is that brands and advertisers are not powerless about transparency. By validating traffic and publishers and carefully selecting advertising platforms and vendors, advertisers can ensure access to transparent and reliable data. Manually validating traffic and its sources can prove to be inefficient. It is time-consuming, and there exists a margin for human error. This is where a solution like mFilterIt becomes relevant. Using AI and ML algorithms, mFilterIt’s ad fraud solution and brand safety tools validate traffic and publishers in real-time along with tracking the unsafe ad placements. Our solution ensures continuous monitoring of traffic and traffic sources, eliminating all margins of error or overlooked incidents. It also enables brands to stay clear of objectionable ad placements and reduces the risk of brand risks. It is designed to enable informed business decisions based on reliable, verified data. Way forward A transparent internet is better for users and brands alike. As we progress toward a more privacy-focused future for the web, advertisers’ reliance on transparent data will only become more prominent. It will enable advertisers to continue being productive contributors to a better internet and

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The Real Impact of Brand Infringement

The Real Impact of Brand Infringement

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

Every brand in the digital ecosystem is in the rat race to expand its presence, build brand reputation, and gain customer trust. But to excel in this race brands need to make sure they safeguard their efforts from threats like Brand infringement. The major brand challenge is identifying infringement cases and building an automated takedown, reporting, or blacklisting mechanism to protect their brand reputation and maintain brand integrity. Fake Apps, Websites, Social Media Handles, Customer Care, Job Posts, or any fake Brand Communications must be identified to protect brand image along with the detection of counterfeit products and sellers. Let’s dig deeper to unveil what it takes to detect brand infringement cases and mitigate the risk and adverse impact of brand infringement. Why do brands need Brand Safety monitoring and Infringement Protection? Brands in the digital ecosystem need to protect brand reputation by safeguarding their assets from high-risk digital content for both apps and the web. This includes Unsafe & Non-Contextual Media Placement Relevancy of Media Campaigns Web Brand Safety Keyword Bidding Fraud Coupon & Incent fraud Another key aspect for brands in e-commerce business on online marketplaces is needed to safeguard from brand abuse by identifying and eliminating digital infringements and counterfeits. This includes Identifying and blacklisting fake sites and social media handles Listing of Fake Customer Care Contact numbers Malicious and fraudulent Brand Communication Monitoring APK Copycat Apps Protection from Account Overs – credential sharing With solutions utilizing the open-source intelligence brands can protect their reputation, build customer trust, and prevent revenue losses. The risk assessment across the brand’s digital activity helps protect the brand from brand infringement threats. Case Study – How a leading construction and real-estate brand identified and prevented brand infringement cases. The brand prevented Intellectual Property Infringement – Any violation or breach of protected intellectual property rights in logo/design infringement and domain infringement or Cybersquatting. With mFilterIt, they conducted scans for similar URLs, Pages, and Websites about similar keywords, content, or visuals in the global web horizon. The solution flagged off any fraudulent activity to the advertiser to take corrective action. Brand acted on the shared data with corrective action. Fake Websites impersonating the construction company and using the brand names of Prestige Constructions in the domain name were identified. Fake social media handles impersonating Construction firms are identified on Instagram and Facebook. Unauthorized Facebook Ads using construction firm Logo/IP detected For Another multinational food manufacturing company job promotions propagated on social media platforms to mislead or defraud job seekers were detected. How to mitigate the risk of brand infringement The brand must monitor the use of its intellectual property in the digital ecosystem. A comprehensive detection and prevention mechanism in place can enable brands to protect themselves from infringement across apps, web, social media, e-commerce, and other media platforms. Brands must implement robust monitoring systems that monitor unauthorized use of brand assets, or any counterfeit product sold online. Proactive measures to protect intellectual property rights with prompt takedown action. A mechanism to detect and measure the risk associated with brand infringement Identify any guidelines or pricing violations by authorized sellers/distributors or retailers. Enable best practices to combat brand infringements effectively. Be adaptive and vigilant against the sophisticated and evolving threats to brand integrity in the digital ecosystem. Stay informed on emerging trends and technologies for brand protection Final Thought To safeguard your brand from infringement, you must be aware of the far-reaching impact it can have on your brand reputation and revenue. Loss of Revenue, brand reputation damage, customer trust erosion, regulatory compliance risks, and long-term business impact can be prevented with a proactive approach and brand infringement protection solutions. Get in touch to learn more about brand infringement and brand infringement solution

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Build Strategies for E-commerce Marketplaces

Build Strategies for E-commerce Marketplaces

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

Horses for courses – What sells more on Blinkit, might not get the same response on Zepto. On the same pin code, three different dark stores may have different product availability and more orders of particular brands as compared to others. Pricing and bundling of products also vary from one quick commerce platform as compared to others. Therefore, building a strategy for e-commerce and quick commerce marketplaces demands insights and analysis covering different platforms, geographies, dark stores, and trends versus competition. Let’s explore what it takes to build a strategy for e-commerce marketplaces and what brands need to stay competitive in a fast-paced evolving digital commerce ecosystem. Matching the pace of evolving needs of E-commerce marketplaces Gone are the days when e-commerce marketplaces were limited to metros. The e-commerce horizons are expanding to tier-2, tier-3 cities, and beyond. Ease of payment and swift internet has led to a new revolution. This scenario is not limited to a single country, but global e-commerce is picking up pace with Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia (AMESA) region leading the charge. The global eCommerce online sales reached $5.8 Trillion in 2023 and are expected to grow to $6.3 trillion globally in 2024 The astronomical rise in e-commerce sales and competitive landscape spicing up has opened multiple sales avenues from e-commerce brands in the digital commerce landscape which include E-commerce, Q-com marketplaces, D2C platforms, and social commerce with massive role of influencers driving sales. Building strategy with marketplace intelligence and insights can help scale business, identify market gaps, target new unexplored geographies, and target demographics. Data Driven Intelligence for e-com growth E-commerce growth requires strategies that can leverage data and insights to boost brand presence at pin-code levels across multiple marketplaces. Monitoring brand performance versus competition in the digital space is the key to staying ahead and staying competitive. Big brands with massive SKUs venturing into multiple categories, sub-categories, and product variants need comprehensive insights along with monitoring their sellers versus competition. Optimizing delivery turn-around time and identifying pricing violations are the key challenges. For Quick commerce, availability becomes a key factor. To identify gaps in strategies, tracking market trends along with varying requirements of different platforms requires high-quality digital shelf monitoring. Comparatively smaller brands looking to go head-on with established well-known global brands require insights into what set them apart and identify the market gaps and opportunities at the micro-level. ecommerce competitive analysis and actionable insights can help them identify their audience and white spaces in the market. This could enable say, a local indigenous toothpaste brand in Southeast Asia to compete with brands like Pepsodent or Colgate. May be not at all sub-categories but on say, 100gm pack at some region on Lazada or Shopee. Every brand has different needs that require a solution that can be customized to suit their needs on different e-commerce platforms. Protecting Your Brand Integrity on E-commerce Marketplaces The e-commerce strategies for brands on digital marketplaces should not be limited to just digital commerce intelligence. Both on and off-platform activities must be in sync to boost brand reputation on the platform. Therefore, here are some things brands need to elevate performance on e-commerce platforms. E-commerce perfect page analysis: On every platform and geography brands’ products may have different competition. To make this battle more interesting all platforms require a different strategy. Therefore, platform-level analysis or perfect page analysis across platforms is required to ensure consistency and brand presence across the digital commerce landscape. Analytics for its Sellers: Sellers on e-commerce platforms also need to upswing their process with Digital Shelf monitoring, Marketing Automation, and Automated Cataloguing. This can help simplify the process, and boost sales with more buy box wins. Platform-Level Intelligence: The rise of digital commerce has revolutionized the customer behavior. Options are plenty for shoppers to pick the shopping platforms and products, this makes the online shopping ecosystem more competitive. Monitoring, identifying white spaces and real-time actionable insights are strategic intelligence required to optimize performance across platforms. Final Thought Intelligence drives performance on e-commerce platforms. E-commerce strategy must cover platform-level intelligence, seller analysis, and competitive insights on KPIs like pricing, availability, keyword share, product page content, delivery turnaround time, and more. Every brand faces its own set of challenges on different e-commerce platforms and geographies, identifying the gaps, exploring new opportunities, and enabling a brand to optimize performance across categories, sub-categories, and product variants requires a data-driven strategy. Get in touch to learn more about leveraging digital commerce intelligence to build e-commerce strategies.

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E-commerce Shelf Monitoring – A Competitive Advantage in the Digital Commerce Ecosystem

E-commerce Shelf Monitoring – A Competitive Advantage in the Digital Commerce Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

The e-commerce landscape has expanded across India beyond anyone could have expected 5 years ago. New startups are challenging the big brands in the digital commerce ecosystem. Big names venturing in on digital marketplaces expanding revenues and catering to the need for convenience for their buyers. The digital native brands have carved their niche with an expanding customer base, targeting shoppers looking for a healthy and organic lifestyle and products driven by innovation. The Indian e-commerce landscape caters to the ever-expanding shopper base with an estimated 230-350 million online shoppers in 2023. (Source: Bain & Co.) Such expansion and multi-platform sales avenues generate the need for e-commerce shelf monitoring to stay ahead of the competition and optimize the customer journey. How can e-commerce Shelf Monitoring optimize brands’ performance across platforms? A Shelf Monitoring framework in place could simplify the process with seamless optimization across e-commerce platforms and geographies. Here are some steps that can help streamline e-commerce Shelf Monitoring. 1. Discover Performance Gaps Identify if you’re underperforming on key measures. Set a checklist to illustrate – How is it measured? Set targets and notification process on where you stand on core KPIs like availability, share of search, primary and secondary PDP content, rating and reviews, seller performance (authorized and unauthorized), price parity, and more. 2. Assess Performance After identifying the areas with performance gaps, assess and analyze to establish what has caused such performance gaps. Identify where you stand versus competition across categories, sub-categories, and product variants across geographies. 3. Chart a path to remediation with the Shelf Monitoring Report Disseminate the findings work towards a correction mechanism and define a detailed action plan with timelines and accountability assigned. 4. Set Reassessment timelines Do not just limit to a one-time shelf monitoring as the digital commerce ecosystem keeps on evolving. Identify key parameters and Shelf Monitoring your progress versus competition every 3 months at least. Tweak and correct the measuring standards where and when required to improve performance standards. 5. Comprehensive Lat-long Analysis Monitoring product performance at the pin-code level enables brands to scale up the performance versus competition at the granular level. Such detailed comprehensive digital shelf monitoring can upswing brand presence across the cities on multiple platforms. The digital shelf monitoring solution, mScanIt offers such unique detailed monitoring to boost your brand presence. Benefits of e-commerce Shelf Monitoring in the digital commerce ecosystem Knowing how your product performs on a platform versus competition sometimes may not be enough – The monitoring should have a wider perspective covering different needs of different platforms and what they need to excel on various quick-commerce, and e-commerce platforms. Here are some of the key perks of e-commerce shelf monitoring: 1. Performance Enhancement By Identifying performance gaps on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as availability, share of search, content quality, ratings, reviews, and seller performance, etc. brands can enhance their overall performance on e-commerce platforms and geographies. This requires continuous monitoring across platforms, setting and updating thresholds regularly. 2. Optimized Customer Journey Enhancing customer experience is the top priority for every brand in the competitive e-commerce landscape. A thorough Shelf Monitoring allows brands to identify areas of improvement in the customer journey. This includes analyzing product detail pages and tracking customer sentiments via feedback ratings and reviews. Every step of the customer journey from interest and awareness, discoverability to the purchase phase. Optimizing these aspects contributes to a seamless and satisfying customer experience. 3. Actionable Competitive Insights Do you know where you stand versus the competition? Tracking SKUs across categories, sub-categories, and product variants on multiple platforms and geographies helps in strategic decision-making. The insights help build an understanding of the root causes behind performance gaps. It enables brands to take targeted actions with data-driven insights and build strategies with a detailed action plan, timelines, and accountability. E-commerce Shelf Monitoring enables brands to capitalize on strengths, identify weaknesses, and stay competitive in the market. 4. Maximized Revenue Potential By optimizing various aspects of e-commerce operations, brands can maximize their revenue potential. This includes improving search visibility, pricing strategies, and overall customer satisfaction. It can help boost market share and sales. 5. Adaptability to Market Trends With the ever-changing e-commerce landscape, staying proactive is crucial. An e-commerce Shelf Monitoring enables brands to adapt quickly to market changes, ensuring they remain relevant and responsive to shifting consumer demands. 6. Enhanced Brand Reputation Addressing performance gaps positively impacts the brand’s reputation. Consistently delivering a high-quality experience builds trust among consumers, leading to increased loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Final Thoughts E-commerce Shelf Monitoring can prove to be a solution to multi-faceted enabling performance optimization and upswing growth. In a competitive landscape, every quick commerce and e-commerce marketplace has a different set of challenges, with expanding business in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. For brands venturing on multiple platforms and multiple geographies tracking and monitoring competitive trends and positioning of own brands versus competition is to optimize brand performance. E-commerce Shelf Monitoring can prove to be your perfect companion for market growth, enabling competitive intelligence to drive monitor, and optimize your product performance vis-a-vis competition along with extensive E-commerce Shelf Monitoring for platform-level optimization. Take your e-commerce effort to the next level with data-driven decisions and in-depth analysis and intelligence with E-commerce Shelf Monitoring. Get in touch to learn more about shelf monitoring.

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VAS Ecosystem

Roadmap to Drive Efficiency in VAS Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog /

Creating a cleaner ecosystem necessitates addressing complex challenges like VAS subscription validation and lack of transparency. The evolving digital ecosystem is driving innovation, technology, and enhanced efficiency across the digital ecosystem. But the challenges that plague the digital ecosystem are evolving as well, invalid traffic, bots driving clicks and impressions, replicating human behavior, and opening doors for sophisticated fraud across app, web, and digital transactions. Safeguarding your ad campaigns, placements, and digital subscriptions has become a priority for enterprises and advertisers. Why Validation and monitoring of Value-Added Service (VAS) subscriptions are essential? Protect Your Consumers Ensuring that VAS subscriptions are validated helps protect consumers from unauthorized or fraudulent subscriptions. It prevents users from being charged for services they did not knowingly or unwillingly subscribe to, reducing the risk of financial loss and enhancing consumer trust. Follow the Regulatory Compliance Every country’s regulatory body has defined guidelines and procedures to protect consumers from unfair practices related to telecommunications services, including VAS. Subscription validation and monitoring help service providers comply with these regulations and avoid legal issues or penalties. Enhance Customer Experience Monitoring VAS subscriptions contributes to a positive customer experience. It helps prevent the occurrence of unexpected charges, reduces the likelihood of customer complaints, prevents fraud from affecting the subscription flow, enhances overall customer satisfaction, and makes it easy for the user to activate the services. Stringent Fraud Detection and Prevention. Subscription validation is crucial in preventing fraudulent activities related to VAS. Unauthorized subscriptions can be identified and addressed promptly, protecting both consumers and service providers. Build Subscriber Trust and Ensure Retention A transparent and well-monitored VAS subscription process builds trust with subscribers. When users feel confident that they are in control of their subscriptions and are not being subjected to unfair practices, they are more likely to remain loyal customers and it will lead to more activation of services. Fraud prevention in VAS ecosystem VAS services in the digital ecosystem require protection from fraudulent activities to boost revenue with clean traffic and validated subscriptions. Prevention from duplicate IPs or Proxies Reduce the risk of fraudulent activities by preventing multiple activations or transactions from the same IP address or proxy. Also, safeguard from iFraming/Overlay on the subscription button or page and use of server or device farms for fraudulent activations. Use of BOT devices or fake activations. Bots are automated programs that can simulate human behavior. Fraudsters may use Sophisticated bots to generate fake activations or interactions with VAS services. Implementing measures to detect and prevent Bot activities is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the system. Automated clicks by bots for activation Bots may generate automated clicks to activate VAS services, leading to false transactions. Implementing anti-bot measures, such as Enforcement Challenges, Behavioral analytics, and Heuristic checks working in tandem can help in distinguishing between genuine user interactions and automated bot clicks. Transactions from non-targeted regions Fraudsters may attempt to make transactions from regions that are not part of the targeted audience for the VAS services. Implementing geolocation checks as one of the parameters would help in differentiating between genuine and fake requests. It can also help in identifying and preventing transactions from unauthorized or unexpected regions. Device Signature Mismatch Each device has a unique signature based on its characteristics and configurations. Fraudulent activities may involve manipulating or mimicking device signatures. Monitoring and validating device signatures can help in detecting and preventing transactions with mismatched or suspicious device information. Fig. 1: Frauds plaguing the digital ecosystem Creating a cleaner ecosystem necessitates addressing the complex challenges associated with monitoring both Media Spends and VAS Subscriptions comprehensively. Validating the VAS Subscriptionsin real-time is one of the major challenges in the digital landscape. Another key issue is the Lack of transparency. Thus, ad traffic validation across the VAS ecosystem is crucial along with monitoring spending. The Blueprint for a Cleaner VAS Ecosystem Embark on a journey into a comprehensive solution that not only bridges the existing gaps but transforms the monitoring VAS Subscriptions into boost efficiency: The adoption of integrated analytics platforms that seamlessly amalgamate data from Media Spends and VAS Subscriptions paves the way for a unified, comprehensive analysis, dissolving the barriers between siloed data. Transparency and security stand as a formidable deterrent against fraud and discrepancies. Decentralizing transactions ensures accountability and traceability. Infusing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) Identify patterns that might otherwise remain obscured. Predictive analytics, and AI/ML tech will empower and enhance automated validation processes and checks. Final Thought Validating, Optimizing, and Protecting subscriptions of Value-Added Services (VAS) over the Carrier Billing platform reflects a commitment to building an Effective, Secure, Seamless, and Transparent ecosystem. Building a clean DCB VAS ecosystem suggests a focus on ethical and transparent practices that contribute to Positive Adoption, Reduce Churn, Enhance User Experience, and a Cleaner and more reliable channel for enabling services to esteemed users. Taking a transformative path, envisioning a forward-looking perspective, and adopting innovative technologies and strategies will not only enhance revenue but also contribute to sustainability and growth in the long term. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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Share of Search

Share of Search: Tap the Power of Keywords and Reach Your Ideal Audience

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics /

In today’s world where every piece of information is just a fingertip away, shoppers have become smart and aware. Accordingly, the brands have to be on their toes to understand what’s on the consumer’s mind. Along with it, it’s also essential for brands to keep track of their competitor’s moves. While the traditional approaches have their own space, the universal metric of Share of Search is set to open a door of effective business insights and therefore more opportunities. 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. Learn how Share of Search can change your digital commerce game and help you compete with utmost transparency and efficiency in the ever-evolving digital landscape. What is Share of Search? The simplest way to explain Share of Search is, that it is the percentage of search results on a particular keyword for which a brand appears. An SOS can be measured for general search queries on search engines and eCommerce marketplaces. Share of search is a powerful metric for eCommerce marketers to understand and predict their market share and growth. In terms of digital shelf analytics, the share of search enables brand owners to get transparency of how their brands are performing online in comparison to their competition, get an insight into their brand performance and also revamp their search strategies. Is Share of Search a substitute for Share of Voice? There is an existing misconception that Share of Voice (SOV) can be substituted by Share of Search as both are derived from the same concept. Share of Voice determines the market share success by comparing the brand’s advertising spend with total media expenditure within the industry. Whereas the share of search is determined based on how many times a brand’s keyword is organically typed rather than how much is spent to capture the market share. Share of search gives a fair idea of a brand’s organic reach in digital platforms. By leveraging advanced intelligence solutions, one can better understand the search behaviour of a shopper – like if people are comparing products or trying to learn how to use the products based on keyword searches. Therefore, it will not be a substitute but a collaboratively used metric to understand the pulse of the market, make crucial business decisions based on market position, and create effective strategies to stay relevant. How Search Drives a Shopper’s Behaviour? Today’s shoppers are smart and fast unlike earlier. And to tap the interest of these fast consumers, search plays a crucial role. Your product is just a quick search away. From discovering new and trending products, researching via reviews and ratings or even exploring other options, comparing prices and checking quality, they leverage the internet for everything before buying. Therefore, it has become essential for brands to stay on top of their search game to ensure they don’t get overshadowed by competitors. How does Share of Search Help to Stay Ahead of the Game? According to a study conducted by James Hankins, the share of search entails 83% of a brand’s market share. When used ideally, this metric not only provides the brand’s market position but also enables marketers to accumulate search insights based on geography and product category, thereby understanding consumer preferences. Share of search can help brands to: – Appear In The Front Shelf Stats say there are up to 60% higher chances of adding to a cart if a brand’s product appears within the first four search results. Imagine, your loyal customer is at the shampoo aisle looking for their favourite brand. But when searching your competitor’s product overshadows your product by taking the prime position in the aisle. This similar happens in online shopping when your competitors appear above you in the search results when looking for “shampoo”. If your share of search is weak, there will be a higher chance of discovery for your competitor’s product until it goes out of stock. By understanding the competing brand’s share of search, you can identify the hidden tactics in the product detail pages (PDPs) and optimize them to appear on top of the digital shelf. – Be Known for What You Do Best Improve your brand’s positioning by covering not just branded but also non-branded keywords. According to an experiment done by HP in 2022, they found that there was a rapid rise in generic search terms like “best laptops”. This experiment increased to 8.2% of customers shifting from consideration to purchase decision. The metric provides a wide coverage to the brand across both branded and non-branded keywords leaving a deeper impact on the customer’s mind. – Stay ahead of competitor’s move The product display pages [PDPs] require frequent updates to stay relevant in the dynamic environment of eCommerce businesses. 76% of the shoppers prioritise detailed product descriptions as a significant attribute when shopping. By keeping track of the share of search, marketers can effectively improve the product descriptions, outdated images and missing sections along with incorporating the best-performing keywords. This means that if you own a homemade product brand, the metric must be able to help showcase your product even when a person searches “homemade”. Stay Ahead of Competitors with Insight-driven Analytics The behaviour of a consumer’s search behaviour is dynamic and monitoring it is an ongoing process. It differs according to the stage in which a customer stands. Whether they are looking for a solution, or comparing the products with competitor’s products. All these lead to making the final decision. To keep track of these dynamic changes, the brands require a holistic and advanced eCommerce analytics solution. mScanIt is a ecommerce competitive analysis that helps to fulfil these requirements and more with a comprehensive dashboard that enables one to keep track of search rankings and provides a transparent overview of the brand’s visibility. Get in touch with our experts to solve your eCommerce woes!

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Protect Impression Integrity

Safeguard Your ads in the Digital Landscape: Protect Impression Integrity

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

Heavy payouts and unrealistic numbers are the real face of ad campaign impressions. The inflated numbers from invalid sources do not lead to conversions. In the app ecosystem, invalid clicks and impressions are a major concern as they question the ad’s effectiveness and result in a waste of ad spend. Every step of the ad campaign that led to app installs and events gets plagued by malicious activities that dampen your return on investment. Let’s dig up the dirt on the issue and shed some light on how invalid impressions can ruin your return on investments. Myth Behind Impressions Is a genuine audience viewing your ad? Heavy payout on invalid impressions costs brands massive wastage of ad spending. The validation of impressions can help a brand not just reduce ad spend. Most advertisers presume that fraud does not happen at the impression level but it’s a grey zone where fraudulent activities take place unnoticed. It’s a deceptive practice in the digital advertising ecosystem where advertisers are charged for ad impressions that are not viewed by real human users or are otherwise misrepresented. Apart from wastage of ad spend they can negatively impact the effectiveness of ad campaigns and return on investment (ROI). Here are some keys sources that generate invalid impressions: Impressions from MFA (Made-for-Adverising site). MFA sites are tailored for advertising purposes, ensuring a more intentional and engaged audience that does not result in conversions. Impressions from Low-quality content sites. The low-quality content site poses challenges in terms of the relevance and effectiveness of ad impressions. Multiple impressions served on the same device with Frequency capping (F-cap) violations. It can lead to overexposure and decreased impact, as the audience may become desensitized to the ads. Impressions from Ad Stacking. Multiple ads are layered on top of each other within a single ad placement. While only the top ad is visible, impressions for all stacked ads are counted, leading to inflated metrics. Domain Spoofing. Fraudsters misrepresent the website or app where the ad is displayed, making it seem like it is being shown on a premium site when it’s on a lower-quality or fraudulent one. Pixel Stuffing. Ads are hidden within small, transparent pixels on a webpage. These ads are technically “viewed” even though they are not visible to the user, resulting in fraudulent impressions. Cookie Stuffing. Cookies are forcibly placed on a user’s device without their knowledge or consent, allowing fraudsters to claim credit for ad impressions or actions across multiple sites. Proxy Traffic. Fraudsters use proxies to make it appear as though ad impressions are coming from different locations or devices, creating a false sense of diversity in the audience. What do the advertisers need to do? Impression validation Let’s start with where advertisers need to be vigilant before it’s too late. It’s the post-delivery of impression to Minimize wastage when payouts are on CPM. Impression Data collected from MMP must be validated and invalid impressions blocked. Not as simple but effective if you have the right solution in place to safeguard your ad spending. The process ensures Clean Traffic with Safe Placements Optimized Campaign Performance Restrict payouts for Invalid Impressions Improve ROAS The validation processes ensure that you payout on only verified impressions and maintain your impression integrity. To make it clear let’s clarify what’s the problem with click credibility. Fraud Clicks have a direct Impact on Revenue. The ad network ends up paying for fraud clicks to its sub-publishers, especially when the advertiser is equipped with fraud detection. Reconciliation Issues on both sides. The ad networks or agencies face major reconciliation issues with their suppliers as well as clients since fraud clicks always create discrepancies. Build up an untrustworthy Market Environment. Due to fraud and traffic inconsistencies, the trust level of each player in the market remains low, thus impacting the overall market environment. Higher Dependency on Advertisers Reports. In the absence of a fraud detection mechanism, the Networks are dependent upon advertiser reports to ascertain the validity of a click. Need for transparency and clarity for Advertisers Advertisers need both pre-MMP checks, post-MMP checks, and basic time-sensitive checks. These checks should be advanced time-insensitive checks to ensure transparency and clarity that ensure click and impression integrity. Basic checks are needed to prevent invalid clicks and getting blocked before entering MMP. This validation process should be done with minimum latency to ensure that it does not hinder the user experience and integrations. For post-MMP Checks, Advertisers need advanced time Insensitive Checks which include pattern mapping. The advanced pattern checks require grouping of data to look for patterns. Also, pre-MMP checks should work in tandem with the pre-attribution checks to ensure overall traffic validation. Advanced ad fraud detection tool provides multilayer defense with pre and post-MMP checks along with the capability to block and blacklist specific sub-publishers and traffic sources. Final Thought The advertisers often ensure that impressions are the cleanest matric for making payout for ad campaigns but when it comes to conversions there are stark differences. For an effective and successful ad campaign and to build a clean ecosystem advertisers need a comprehensive solution that provides multi-level defense across the funnel. Valid8 provides full-funnel protection of your campaigns from Invalid Traffic on the web and app to gain ROAS throughout the customer acquisition journey. It includes Branding Campaigns i.e. Programmatic Campaigns covering Frequency Cap Violations and exclusion lists for Made Ads (MFA) Sites with integrated Brand Safety. Optimize performance campaigns by identifying frauds in CPC, CPV, and CPL web campaigns and search keyword fraud. It also provides Visit-Lead Validation with visit analysis based on Visit Intent with Invalid Traffic Validation to ensure validated leads are integrated into CRM. Connect with our experts to explore the possibilities and prevent drainage of your ad budget to optimize your marketing efforts.

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Ad Budget

Made for advertising Websites are Burning 15% of Your Ad Budget

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

“Know how these Harry Potter characters are doing now? The 3rd one is a shocking revelation!” These headlines are very difficult to resist and where it leads to is another surprise. Often these websites are like a carnival of ads covering every possible space. From flashy ads to pop-up ads, there is an ad at every step of your click. And what about the Harry Potter characters? Well, you will find out only after you make dozens of clicks and pass through multiple pop-up ads. And these digital carnival spaces also have a name. These are called “Made for advertising” websites. According to a recent study by ANA, 21% of the impressions come from the MFA websites. This means that an average of 15% of the ad spends are wasted due to these clickbait websites. Know in detail the impact of MFA websites on the advertiser’s campaign and how advertisers can take the right action to reduce the wastage of ad spend and ensure brand suitability. What are Made for Advertising Websites? Made-for advertising websites are smartly concealed modes for ad arbitrage. These websites as the name suggests are created to show ads. Not one or two but many. The purpose of these websites is to generate traffic to their websites, leveraging search engines and social media platforms at a low cost. These websites are often overloaded with filler and irrelevant content, clickbait headlines, multiple interlinked websites and multi-page articles. This increases the chances of showing display and video ads that can attract more eyes. What do Advertisers think? They are getting a high volume of traffic. The Reality is, The sole purpose of the MFA websites is to bring maximum numbers of ad impressions. However, the truth is not as shiny as it looks. The content and user experience on these websites are way lower than what an advertiser can expect for an ad placement. Users are navigated to non-relatable ads, providing a confusing user experience and in the majority of cases they are also directed to false navigation buttons, to increase page views per session. Some MFA sites also deploy fraudulent techniques like pixel stuffing or ad stacking which enables to loading of ads multiple times delivering maximum views. The thin line of reality of this is it is not seen by the human eye. The Attractive Bait Made-for-advertising websites are an attractive deal for advertisers. Reason? They deliver greater than-average results. According to Ebiquity, the MFA websites deliver a viewability rate of 77% which is way above the media benchmark of 63% as stated by the World Federation of Advertisers. Another selling point for the MFA websites is they have 30-40% lower CPM than other websites. However, the irony is these benefits are a matter of loss for the advertisers. Even though the viewability will be above average, the low-intent clicks will not bring returns. Instead, it is simply a waste of money. Why should Advertisers need to take action against MFA websites? Technically, MFA websites are real websites indexed on search engines. So why should advertisers care if their ads are placed on these websites? Well, every shiny thing is not a diamond. Similarly, these MFA websites might bring a high volume of impressions and show ads to real people but it will not create any brand awareness or bring performance that an advertiser is expecting from an ad placement. What are the risks associated with advertising on MFA websites? Made for advertising is technically not ad fraud, but its impact on a brand is no less than that. If your advertisement is showing up on a made-for-advertising website, then it can have the following impact: Low-quality ad placements: MFA websites are overloaded with ads than content on any of its given pages, which reduces the impact of an ad placement. As a result, an advertiser is paying for a placement that has no engagement. Spike in invalid traffic: Advertisers need to keep a check on the quality of traffic diverting to their website from digital ads. If there is an unusual spike in the traffic but it has a high bounce rate or no end action, then this share of traffic might be attributed to these MFA websites. Damaged brand reputation: MFA websites often use clickbait headlines, emotion-driven stories, fake news, objectionable photos, and other illicit content that advertisers object to being associated with. Appearing beside this content hampers the brand image and leads to a loss of customer trust. Low conversion rate, Poor ROI: Advertising on MFA websites means that your advertising budgets are getting spent on bot clicks. A focused analysis of the funnel performance will help to get transparency of the real quality of ad traffic. How can Advertisers dodge MFA websites during media planning? Stopping MFA websites can be inevitable, but taking the right prevention method will enable advertisers to curb its impact. There are a lot of blame games and finger-pointing happening in the industry about who is accountable for this problem. The SSPs (supply-side platforms) have set policies to forbid publishers from employing MFA site tactics. However, these regulations are not enough to vet the efficacy of the placements in a programmatic setup. Apart from looking at the SSPs and DSPs, advertisers can take the responsibility into their own hands by doing simple maths. If you think that with low CPM, generating a huge number of impressions with little to no action as a result. Or you can spend the same amount and get few impressions but better performance and action from quality traffic. How Advertisers can Maximize their Safety Net? The goal of an MFA website is to make money. Whether it is by showing numerous ads on a single screen, ad inventory that auto-refreshes adding at an abnormal frequency, or numerous links redirecting to further web pages, in some cases unsafe web pages. To avoid being placed on these websites, advertisers need to work with trusted tech partners like mFilterIt. With the transparency of where the ads appear, brands can adhere to the brand safety protocols

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