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The Power of Perception: Navigating Brand Safety in the Era of Fake News

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection / Expert Opinion

Fake news is no less than a plague in the online ecosystem. The list of people and organizations suffering from fake news seems to be growing indefinitely. However, digital advertisers have been a part of this list for some time now. That’s right. Even if your brand has nothing to do with politics or the ongoing current events, if you are engaged in digital advertising, your brand may suffer harm because of fake news. More specifically, fake news can lead to long-term reputation harm for brands. If that sounds alarming, it is because this is an alarming matter, and in this article, we will be diving deep into the details. Let’s start with the basics: What is Fake News? While there’s no fixed definition for fake news, the term refers to any piece of misleading information. When you search for the term on Google, the first result comes from a Wikipedia article dedicated to the subject. The article mentions that making ad revenue is one of the top reasons to use fake news. Here’s the extract, verbatim: “Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity or making money through advertising revenue.” So now we know that fake news can hurt a brand reputation and has something to do with advertising. Let’s dig deeper. How can fake news impact the brand’s reputation? If a brand’s advertising/messaging appears on a website that peddles fake news, the reputation of that brand may diminish in the minds of its consumers and prospects. Not surprisingly, this sentiment is not limited to fake news. If your ads are appearing on websites that publish hate speech content, conspiracy theories, and other forms of skewed information, you may be unknowingly causing damage to your brand reputation. This trend is not just limited to sentiments. It is causing real and serious damage to brand reputations, which is hurting the bottom line of advertisers. Over 80% of UK consumers surveyed say the ‘responsibility of ad placement lies equally across the supply chain.’ These consumers have also stated that they will stop buying from brands with ads next to hate speech, fake news, violent content, and even controversial political views, among other similar topics. Alarmingly, less than half of digital advertiser have clear guidelines to avoid advertising next to misinformation or hate speech. How might you be funding fake news/misinformation? Consumers hold brands responsible for vetting where their ads are appearing. This is because many consumers (correctly) believe that the ad budgets allocated to these websites keep them alive, enabling them to continue spreading false information. This means that if your ad appears on a website that publishes fake news, you may unknowingly fund its efforts to spread the said fake news. Global Disinformation Index (GDI), in 2019, estimated that around $235 million of ad budget is given to websites that publish and spread fake news every year. Considering that nearly 500,000 new websites are popping up on the internet every single day, the above number has undoubtedly inflated exponentially in the past three years. Nearly a year ago, GDI published another report about how ad tech giants are serving ads to (and thereby funding) websites that spread misinformation regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The same companies were also named in a more recent report about ad tech companies funding websites that spread misogynistic disinformation. While GDI does not name advertisers in their reports, most consumers on the web aren’t aware of how digital advertising works and blame advertisers for funding the spread of misinformation and fake news. There is a gap between consumers’ expectations and what is being achieved with brand safety best practices. How to Combat the Impact of Fake News? Every entity involved in the digital advertising supply chain has the social responsibility to ensure they do not knowingly or unknowingly support the spread of fake news. So what can advertisers do? For starters, advertisers using platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing can manually check where their advertisements appear. All these platforms allow advertisers to customize their placement lists, so you can simply remove the problematic websites from your placement lists. You can also add known publishers of fake news to a blacklist. It is also a good idea to start working on company-wide guidelines designed to avoid ad placements on fake news websites. However, if you are using third-party ad platforms, then manually vetting every publisher can be unrealistically time-consuming. This is where brand safety can come in handy. mFilterIt’s digital brand protection solutions help advertisers advertise in safe ad placements. The solution uses the capabilities of AI and ML to validate the content beside which the ad is placed and ensure it is GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) compliant and contextually relevant. Conclusion While fake news may seem like a problem that has nothing to do with brands, the case is quite the contrary. As brands continue to spend their advertising dollars without vetting publishers, the monetary incentive for publishers to publish fake news and hate speech is only going to grow. Brands must take a stand against the spread of fake news, realize their role and responsibility regarding the same, and employ relevant solutions that enable holistic brand protection. Get in Touch to learn more about the Brand Safety

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Augmented Reality in eCommerce: The Future of Online Shopping

Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Praveen Dhama

Augmented Reality is taking the customer experience to the next level with eCom platform optimization Leap imagination and turn it into reality. It might be a tough task in life but now possible with product previews on eCommerce platforms. Need not imagine how a lamp would look on the bedside table or wonder will this lipstick shade suits my lips. All you need to do is click a picture or video upload on the eCom platform and see how that product fills the blank space with Augmented Reality. The lack of a full sensory product experience is a major obstacle in online shopping. Physical stores allow you to try on clothes, feel fabrics, or visually assess the size of a couch in a space. However, with augmented reality (AR) applications, customers can gain more comprehensive product information without leaving their homes. Let’s dig deeper to understand how Augmented reality is paving new ways to optimize customer experience and eCom platforms as well. Augmented Reality in eCommerce By using Augmented Reality for product display eCommerce marketplaces and brands are steadily moving towards providing customers with a more inclusive and immersive experience. A real-world-like environment with an interactive enhanced experience via digital elements, visuals, sounds, etc. Allowing shoppers to watch products in 3D or preview in their environment virtually like placing the item say a sofa in the space in your living room. In simple terms, Augmented Reality (AR) simply augments an existing world. Augmented Reality (AR) provides previews by placing items in a real-world scenario. For example, try out frames on Lenskart after uploading your headshot video, ‘Amazon view’ which enables shoppers to try on lipsticks by uploading pictures or live video, and an AR-powered ‘view in my room’ feature. Think back to Pokémon Go, one of the most well-known applications of augmented reality. Users would be playing the game while walking down the street, looking at the real environment through their phones, which overlaid digital characters in specific places. Augmented reality is taking off rapidly. More & more advertisers and brands are deploying it to enhance customer experience. A report by eMarketer stated that over 43 million people in the United States, which is approximately 21% of social network users, were expected to use social network AR monthly. The same report indicated that 35% of U.S. respondents had used AR to customize furniture or vehicles. This is not just relevant for the U.S. but quite evident in the global digital commerce landscape, especially in India where shoppers from tier-2 and tier-3 cities are warming up to online shopping with massive buying potential. With the increase in 5G availability and improved bandwidth, retailers are expected to show more interest in AR and VR experimentation. As a result, more brands are adopting AR product previews, such as “Amazon View” and Flipkart’s “View in My Room”. AR is particularly popular in the Beauty & Personal care segment for try-on purposes and in Home Décor & Furniture placement in a room. How are eCom businesses using AR? AR previews of products help customers make a purchase decision and make the shopping experience more personalized. – Virtual Try-On: It’s just like in a brick-and-mortar shop where you see a product on a mannequin, it looks great. But trying it helps make a more accurate purchase decision. Similarly, the virtual try-on uses the shopper’s photo or video to preview how the product looks. This also helps buyers understand what they are buying and if the item works for them. – Preview placement: For the Home décor and furniture segment preview placement is the perfect tool to attract shoppers. It helps place items in your room at your desired place. Shoppers can see how a 55’ inch TV would look on the wall or will that color and design bed will suit their bedroom. The real-time preview placement of products in Shoppers’ environment will help shoppers decide whether the product suits their needs or not. – Interactive user manuals: This is the more extensive use of AR-creating manuals as a response to user actions by scanning product indicating buttons or using graphical arrows, animation, etc. – Social media filters: Generally used for fun. Filters can also be used for try-ons. That can help boost social commerce sales. It can be used to showcase a new product by enabling people to test out how it’ll look on them. According to a survey conducted by Google on AR usage among consumers, 66% of the participants expressed their interest in utilizing augmented reality technology to aid them while shopping. How Augmented Reality can help eCommerce brands? The challenge of representing a physical product in a virtual environment is one of the biggest obstacles to eCommerce. AR technology has the potential to help overcome this obstacle by providing a more accurate representation of the product and helping customers understand what they are buying. Some benefits of using AR technology in eCommerce are as follows: Increase customer engagement: By offering an interactive experience, AR technology can encourage customers to stay on your website longer, increasing the chances of a purchase. Even if they do not buy it immediately. Engagement with the brand and product can lead to better recall in the future. Reach new customers: To stand out in a crowded market, you need to create a buzz. A well-executed AR campaign can help capture attention and attract new customers. Reduce returns: AR technology can provide customers with a more comprehensive view of the product than static images or videos. By showing how a product would look in a consumer’s space, AR technology can help reduce the likelihood of returns due to unmet expectations. According to recently published data by Shopify, an eCommerce platform, products that featured VR/AR content in their advertisements experienced a 94% increase in conversion rates compared to products that did not have such content. Final Thoughts – What’s Next? Augmented Reality is interactive and helps during the product evaluation and consideration phase of the customer journey which leads to purchase decisions,

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Advertise Fearlessly: Best Practices for Brand Safety in the Digital Ecosystem

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection / Shradha Aggarwal

The CNN-Applebee controversy that happened in February 2022 brought a serious problem faced by digital advertisers to light. The TV news channel ran a “squeeze back” ad for Applebee’s, which was displayed right next to their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This attracted a lot of backlash from the public. The problem of advertising adjacency issues is even more serious in the digital world. While TV advertisers know exactly what content will be shown along with their ads, this isn’t true for most online advertisers. While the Applebee incident might have been the result of oversight, the truth is that with TV ads, advertisers have the freedom to make decisions in the interest of their brand safety best practices. Brands using programmatic advertising have little to no control over where their ad is published. Even in the cases where the brand can exercise control over who publishes their ads, vetting individual publishers can prove to be a complex and time-consuming task. A Times UK article sheds more light on this issue by naming several well-known brands whose ads are being displayed on extremist websites publishing violent and political views. Brands need to start thinking about this emerging threat and update their brand protection protocols to avoid it, and this starts with awareness. Brand Safety Risks The risks to brands’ reputations are not just limited to extremist websites. In this section, we will explore the biggest threats to brand reputation. Let’s get started: 1. M algorithms “Malgorithms” is the term used to describe instances where there is a contextual misalignment between the content of a page and the ad being displayed on it. Here’s an example of the same: The advertisement for the Hollywood film “2012” was displayed right on top of a news story about the devastating Chile earthquake. While some viewers may find this particular example funny, there are much darker ones that may lead to damage to the advertising brand’s reputation. 2. Fake News Fake news is a problem that plagues multiple areas of our lives. For marketers, this problem also poses threats to their brand’s online reputation. Consumers say that they will outright stop purchasing from brands that have ads appearing on websites peddling fake news. In a 2021 survey, respondents from the UK said they would boycott their favorite brands if their ads appeared on websites publishing COVID-19 conspiracy theories. This is primarily because the advertising budgets allocated to publishing on these websites are what keep them alive and kicking. Even if a brand is not aware that its ad is being displayed on a fake news website, the harm to its reputation is going to be very real. 3. Extremist Sites We have already briefly discussed an example of advertisements appearing on extremist websites. This problem is quite prevalent, with ads of some of the biggest brands on the planet appearing on websites discussing extremist religious, sexist, racist, and fundamentalist views. The problem with this is quite similar to the problem with fake news websites. A portion of the ad budget is paid to these publishers, which enables them to continue peddling their hurtful views on the web. Consumers have made this connection and are actively voicing their concerns against brands whose ads appear next to extremist content. 4. Unsafe YouTube Ad Placements These problems are not just limited to third-party websites that work with advertising networks such as Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Some brands have faced serious backlash because their ads have appeared on extremist YouTube videos. Here’s an example: Nissan’s ad is being played right before a video discussing racist views. Well-known brands like Netflix, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Amazon, and Adidas (among many others) have had their ads appear on videos published by extremist channels on YouTube. Such instances pose a serious threat to the online brand protection efforts of these brands. Best Brand Safety Practices to Incorporate Thankfully, brands that depend on digital advertising aren’t completely helpless. There are a number of brand safety best practices that you can employ to protect the reputation of your brand: 1. Define safety standards for your brand This is the most basic yet important step that any organization can take in this matter. Brands must have safety standards that clearly define the following: A list of ad publishers that are to be avoided What content is off-limits for ads, and How these websites and content pieces should be vetted and avoided For instance, you can decide to advertise exclusively with publishers that are transparent about their inventory and publish GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) compliant content. 2. Get A Transparent Overview The advertisers must be aware of where their ads are served and where the ad spends are invested in the ad supply. This will help the advertisers optimize their campaigns better and ensure their ads are not vulnerable to fraud. 3. Hire A Trustworthy Programmatic Platform The programmatic ad platform you use has perhaps the biggest influence on where your ad will end up. That’s why it is important to work with highly reputable publisher partners. The single most important quality to look for in a trustworthy programmatic publisher is transparency. Make sure you work with programmatic publishers that offer unrestricted access to their inventory, so you can see where your ad may end up and make an informed decision. 4. Run Ads On A Premium Inventory Many brands avoid premium inventory and stick to blind bidding, citing budget constraints. While access to a premium inventory may be a little expensive, it is a small price to pay to protect the online reputation of your brand. 5. Go Beyond Keyword-Blocking Keyword blocking is widely considered an effective way to avoid questionable publishers. However, the generic nature of this strategy deprives brands of access to many premium websites that publish great, contextually relevant content. 6. Rely on Context Than Content Instead of relying on crude methods like keyword blocking, brands pay attention to the context of the content on websites where their ads may be displayed. Contextual targeting doesn’t

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Know the Difference Series: Click Spamming and Click Injection Explained

Leave a Comment / Ad Fraud, Blog / Labhit Agarwal

Digital ad fraud is growing at breakneck speed. This year, marketers are expected to lose over $114 billion to ad fraud collectively. The situation is scary, and the future seems bleak. However, many marketers and brands still successfully turn a blind eye to ad fraud, and they do it because of a lack of awareness. Awareness of the different types of ad fraud can help you be more vigilant and cautious towards the rising threats and help you save your ad budgets from getting wasted. With this blog, we hope to help you bring this awareness. As part of the “Know the Difference series”, first, we will discuss two of the most common types of mobile ad fraud prevalent in the industry. These are click spamming and click injection. While both terms may seem similar, they follow different procedures to carry out ad fraud and steal your marketing budget. Let’s look at them in more detail: Know the difference: Click Spamming and Click Injection What is Click Spamming? Click spamming is a relatively primitive way to commit ad fraud. As the name suggests, click spamming is the act of generating a large number of fake clicks on an ad. This type of fraud mostly takes place on mobile apps but isn’t limited to them. In some cases, click spamming can also be observed on websites accessed through mobile devices. In most cases, an unsuspecting user downloads an app laced with malware. In others, the websites visited by the users are operated by fraudsters. The malware allows fraudsters to click on ads without the user’s knowledge. This kind of fraud can take many forms. Some examples are: The user never sees the ads, but they are live in the background, and the fraudsters are clicking on them. This is also known as click flooding. Apps running in the background can generate clicks anytime or throughout the day (and night). Common examples of such apps include launchers, battery-saving apps, and memory-cleaner apps. Some fraudsters mask views as engagement by the user and get paid for that engagement. And in some cases, fraudsters may also send clicks from the device to different vendors to collect a payout. While Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store have security measures to detect and ban apps loaded with malware, fraudsters have found innovative ways to bypass them. For instance, some apps download malware after the app has been downloaded on a user’s device by disguising it as an update for the app. Impact of Click Spamming The most apparent impact of click spamming is the wasted advertising budget. However, click spamming has a deeper, much more dangerous impact on advertisers- skewed advertising data. Because of click spamming, certain advertising platforms and apps (publishers) may deliver an impressive number of clicks on your ad. When this is reflected in the reporting of your campaigns, it may make said ad platforms and publishers appear more impactful than they are. This keeps the advertisers in the dark and they make business decisions based on these skewed metrics which eventually impacts the performance of the digital ad campaigns. Moreover, the advertisers also keep spending on these platforms under the impression that it is providing them with performance. What is Click Injection? Click injection is an ad fraud technique similar to click spamming but more sophisticated. For advertisers, that means that detecting and avoiding instances of click injection is exponentially more difficult than detecting click spamming. Instead of frantically clicking on an ad, click injection uses a single click to conduct organic traffic poaching. This is done by ‘injecting’ a click right at the point of download. Fraudsters make use of Android apps to listen to “download broadcasts”. Simply put, these broadcasts are sent by Android apps whenever a user downloads a malicious app that has an Android broadcaster that notifies the fraudsters about a new install. When the fraudsters are notified of an app install, they ‘inject’ a click right before the installation is complete. When this happens, the fraudulent app gets access to the user’s unique device tracking code. Using this code, the fraudsters can make their click appear authentic. By doing this, the fraudsters receive the credit (and the payout) for the app install, even though the app install is usually organic. Impact of Click Injection This sophisticated fraud technique not only leads to the wastage of ad spending but also hampers the organic traffic of the advertiser. Not just the advertisers, but the genuine publishers are also victims of click injection. Due to organic traffic stealing, they lose payout to a fraudulent install. Furthermore, click injections attribute organic downloads to fraudulent websites and apps. This can mess with the ad reporting data advertisers use to make decisions about their future campaigns. Using this skewed data, advertisers may continue spending their budgets on ineffective platforms, resulting in more wasted ad spend. This also costs advertisers in the form of lost opportunities by diverting their attention from other effective platforms that may deliver better results. How can advertisers protect their ad spends? As mentioned earlier, protection begins with awareness. Now that you know about click spamming and click injection, you can look at ways to detect these activities and take corrective actions. While click spamming can be detected manually, click injection is a sophisticated form of mobile ad fraud that is hard to detect by humans. These sophisticated fraud techniques are discreet, and human-like which makes it difficult to detect with general ad fraud detection practices. For these reasons, marketers valuing holistic protection must look beyond basic ad fraud tracking techniques to prevent mobile ad fraud. mFilterIt’s advanced ad fraud detection tool helps eliminate invalid traffic across the funnel using AI/ML and data science capabilities. The solution identifies sophisticated fraud patterns based on device, behavioral, and heuristic checks and ensures that the fraudulent traffic doesn’t seep through the funnel. It is an effective PPC click fraud prevention solution that helps marketers secure their ad budgets. Conclusion Click fraud and click injection both affect marketers at multiple

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The Blind Spot: Advertisers’ Limited Visibility into Contributing Publishers

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / Anisha Gupta

With the rapid growth in the mobile app ecosystem, the number of fraudulent activities is also increasing at the speed of lightning. From the installs to events, the fraudsters have become smart enough to tamper with these metrics and steal the advertiser’s money. One of the common and sophisticated types of mobile ad fraud is Click Injection. Click Injection is a technique that not only impacts the advertisers but also the genuine publishers who are generating real traffic. Here is a handy guide to know how click injection impacts your app and how the click injection rule can help combat this threat. What is Click Injection? Click injection is a sophisticated form of mobile ad fraud that is used to manipulate app installs. It is a technique where a malicious app or a spoofed SDK in a user’s device fires an ad click between the duration of a genuine app download till it’s first open. The genuine publisher loses their payout as the last click is attributed to a fraudulent install. How does Click Injection happen? How mFilterIt Protect Against Click Injection? Due to the last click attribution, the install is attributed to the publisher who has fired the last click on the advertisement. However, the fraudulent publishers steal the last click attribution by firing a click just before the app install completes. To detect this anomaly, we apply our click injection rule which analyses the concentration of clicks by contributing publishers for a specific publisher in a day. And if the clicks by contributing publishers exceed 40%, then we analyze the time difference between the clicks (the time when the first click on the ad happened and the time when the contributor click happened) If the click happens within a certain timeframe, then we mark it as fraud. To simplify this further, this pattern happens when the publisher is involved in a click-injection activity. Otherwise, the chances of this happening are minuscule. These checks are conducted on three levels to get a deep-dive understanding of the anomalies in the installs and give transparency to the advertisers to evaluate their ad traffic quality. Real Case To explain this better, we have taken an example of a publisher who was actively involved in these kinds of activities. We observed the installs from this particular publisher for a period of 15 days in which he gave 11,917 installs out of which 6,434 installs were contributed by other publishers or came organically. This consisted of 54% of the total traffic. According to the click injection rule, we marked all the records as a fraud whose difference was within a certain timeframe. It’s Not All Black There is a grey zone in the digital ecosystem. Not all contributing publishers are participants in mobile ad fraud. Some of them are unaware of the fraudulent activities that happen within the app they publish or distribute. While there are some contributing publishers who are misled by fraudulent app developers or ad networks. This led to financial losses for not just the advertisers but the genuine contributing publishers as the fraudulent publishers steal their share of revenue by capturing the last-click attribution. Way Forward The fraudulent techniques in the digital ecosystem are becoming sophisticated and discreet with every passing day. Due to this, marketers are in a constant dilemma of choosing the right media partner to advertise with confidence. Therefore, validating the ad traffic from publishers and sub-publishers has become a necessity to ensure that there is transparency and trust among all parties. With the right ad traffic validation solution, marketers can get clarity on their ad traffic, and decide which channels they need to focus on to get greater returns. Marketers, it’s time to leave the old ways and advertise fearlessly with a media partner you can trust!

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BRAND SENTIMENT: Do You Know Who Is Saying What, Where & Why?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Anukirti Jain

Listen To Everything Said About Brands and Products Across social media eCom Platform “Kuch toh log kahege, logo ka kaam hai kehna!” (People will always have opinions, this is what they do) but the voice of an eCom shopper cannot be left unheard or dismissed as useless chatter. Opinions and experiences of shoppers matter when it comes to the digital commerce ecosystem. Brands must be aware of every single word said about them be it customer reviews, shoppers queries, lashing-out tweets, gentle words of appreciation, or simple suggestions. Every sentiment needs to be monitored and analyzed as it deeply affects brand reputation. But why? The answer to this why” is a little complicated but here we are going to simplify the brand sentiment what it means and its impact on the brand. Building brand reputation is a continuous extensive process that comprises multiple factors. Brand messaging is one such factor that drives brand sentiment. So, Let’s dig deeper and find out why it matters so much. According to a survey, 76% of customers claim they would quit a business that fails to respond to a negative social media post while 82% of customers expect brands to respond to their social media posts within 24 hours. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Brands must be aware of every kind of sentiment about their products and brands. Evaluating Brand sentiment is critical for brand health and the reputation of the business. Let’s presume a case where a customer got a wrong color item or some part or accessory is missing, leaves a negative review, marks for return or replacement along with venting out on social media. Just imagine what an unresolved tweet can do to a brand’s reputation. This makes social listening and quick follow-up critical to brand reputation. The digital commerce landscape is cut-throat and competitive It’s not just about social media conversation and customer sentiment about brands but even cross-platform conversation also needs to be monitored. Brand sentiment also covers understanding and analyzing what people feel about their interactions. Brands must carefully monitor this dynamic and enhance those aspects that leave a positive impact and enhance customer experience! How people feel about your business or product can have a huge impact on product sales, brand loyalty, and customer retention. Lend Your Ears Are You Listening? The most powerful element in building a brand reputation is word of mouth the experience leads to voices, and voices turn into opinions. These opinions shape the buzz about the brand. For example, let’s consider the case of TATA Nano, a pocket-friendly car with a budget of the middle class that faced a major bump in the market as it got labeled as a cheap car. It is important to ensure what the brand wants to convey about the product matches the target audience’s interpretation. Brands need to pay attention to what people are saying. Being aware of how the brands are responding is crucial to product performance in the market. Brands need to stay alert in real time to track sentiments across the digital ecosystem. This includes understanding. Context and tone of sentiment Subjectivity of sentiment Change in sentiment over time Source of sentiment Understanding sentiments will help brands categorize sentiments and grade them accordingly. Brands need to keep track of word-of-mouth mentions and respond accordingly. Perks Of Tracking Brand Sentiments Tracking brand sentiment is like social listening crisis management under one roof. According to a survey, 88% of people look for opinions online before making a purchase. Finding your brand mentions and making your presence felt is an important step toward upswinging brand digital efficiency. Turn the insights into action by monitoring and analyzing brand sentiments across the digital ecosystem. Here are some core benefits of being aware of brand sentiments: Improved Customer Satisfaction Respond swiftly to Customer feedback Ensure customer retention making customer opinion/experience feel valued Understand the target customer and what makes customers happy Understand your industry segment Identify threats or opportunities Improve marketing strategies Data Driven decision making What Brands Should Do To Improve Brand Sentiment? The reputation built by positive words about the brand or product is what propels sales and helps acquire new customers most organically. The way brand sentiment shapes up decides the fate of the product. The challenge lies in identifying sentiments and responding to them swiftly as the more time negative feedback is spent in the digital landscape the more damage it does to brand reputation. So, what can the brands do about it? Relentless Monitoring The digital space keeps on evolving at a rapid pace. The monitoring and analysis process should be relentless and continuous to keep up it. A comprehensive system should be in place for automated sentiment monitoring with actionable insights to support data-driven decisions. Swift Response Make sure customers feel valued. Personalized responses to negative feedback will go a long way in building brand trust and loyalty. This will help the brand handle the problem before it turns into a crisis. Make strategies more adaptable The strategies that can turn a crisis into opportunities. Understand customer sentiment and respond accordingly. Never miss a conversation about your brand monitor Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, News, Blogs, and the entire world wide Web including the eCommerce marketplace customer feedback reviews and QAs. Track every social channel Join conversations about your brand Keep an eye on the competition Manage your reputation online Final Thoughts Be Sensitive to Sentiments ‘Whats in a name? In the digital commerce landscape everything. As any mention of brand or product name matters. Brand sentiment plays a pivotal role in building brand reputation and value across the digital ecosystem and beyond. Social Listening, digital commerce intelligence with sentiment analysis, and optimizing customer experience are the core digital efficiencies that every brand should strive for in the digital landscape. Omnichannel Shopping including Live Social commerce and expanding geographical outreach of digital commerce retail is opening up new avenues for shoppers. Now shopping has become more interactive where shoppers can directly engage with the sellers or brands. Knowing

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Guard Your Wicket: Why Digital Advertisers Need to Be Vigilant Amidst The Cricket Fever?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Advertising / Expert Opinion

The Cricket Fever is Unstoppable! From IPL to the World Cup, the audience goes all gaga to see their favorite teams playing. The advertising world also goes into a frenzy during this time and wants to capture the attention of the “Cricket Heads”. The pitch might be clear on the ground, but the pitch in the advertising world has hurdles at every step. While the advertiser spends meticulously, the fraudsters also look forward to stealing their money and having a gala time. Over the years, these scamsters have evolved and adapted more advanced techniques to steal the advertiser’s money. In this blog, we have covered some of the advanced techniques of ad fraud and brand safety threats happening across the gaming and betting industry which is most impacted during the major sports events. Digital Threats During Sports Events 1. Rise in Fake Accounts The IPL and World Cup season is much awaited in the advertising world as gaming/betting advertisers spend heavily to ensure they are part of the game. However, the advertisers are hardly able to make a sixer during this time as the scamsters are also ready to make them go clean bowled. They are the most active during this time and look for all the best opportunities to steal the ad spends of the advertisers. And one of their easy-to-execute techniques is using disposal email addresses and phone numbers to create fake accounts. Here is an insight from an analysis done for a leading gaming app: Based on the data extracted, mFilterIt detected sign-ups occurring from similar-looking email addresses in less than a minute interval. This activity was suspicious, and we detected the patterns to identify bot activity which was eventually impacting the performance of the gaming advertiser. These disposable email addresses and numbers are also used by fraudsters to commit referral or coupon fraud which eventually hurts the brand’s image among loyal consumers. The brands run referral programs to bring in new users and retain loyal users. However, due to fraudsters’ involvement, these programs are often manipulated, and genuine users cannot use these benefits further blaming the brands. 2. Event Spoofing Beyond the misuse of disposable email addresses and phone numbers, the fraudsters have another winning move that can help them win the cup (in this case advertisers’ ad spends). They use advanced fraud techniques like SDK spoofing to commit event spoofing. In this case, the scamsters often manipulate the events like sign-ups to get their payout. The advertisers are under the impression that their apps are being downloaded by genuine users, but the reality tampers. The publisher receives their payout, but the advertiser neither gets the genuine audience nor the growth. 3. Use of Misleading Ads The last season of IPL saw a massive surge in misleading and manipulated ads run by fraudulent affiliates/influencers to lure innocent users. ASCI flagged 285 real-money gaming ads on social media on the account of violation of the ASCI guidelines of March’22. Furthermore, 14 ads were found as violating ASCI during the IPL on both Television and OTT. This year, the government has become more stringent about the ads run by gaming and betting platforms. There has been a rise in cases where these platforms leverage news content or eCommerce promotions as a disguise for betting-related advertisements. The game season is the best time for fraudsters to leverage the brand’s name to commit fraud and enjoy the benefits. Whereas the brands have to pay the price in the form of wasted ad budget and tarnished brand image resulting in loss of consumer trust. 4. Brand Reputation at Risk Misleading ads by fraudulent affiliates are a real problem. Another behind-curtain fraudulent practice is where the brand’s ads run on illicit or adult websites. An ad of a legitimate brand appearing beside obscene content is a brand safety nightmare. In this situation, often the consumers assume that the brands have placed their ad beside illicit content consciously and they are not concerned about their consumer’s safety. This leaves a deep impact on the brand’s reputation as the consumer questions the reliability of the brand. 5. Organic Traffic Stealing Apart from misusing digital brand assets, these Sports events are also the “hattrick season” for fraudulent affiliates/publishers. During this time, usually, the brands put money on search advertisements introducing “exciting offers”. The fraudsters use this moment as an opportunity. They bid on the brand’s keywords to appear above the “legitimate brand” in the search results and divert their organic traffic to their website resulting in organic traffic stealing. This also increases the bid prices of the brand keywords and the bhas have to pay more for their branded keywords. Don’t Be ‘Clean Bowled’ this Season Sporting events have been the “festival of joy” for fraudsters as advertisers spend heavily during this time. To safeguard the ad budgets and protect the brand reputation, the advertisers need an advanced solution to validate ad traffic and ensure that the ad is placed in a safe environment. mFilterIt provides advertisers with this transparency to make efficient business decisions. With cutting-edge and innovative media validation solutions, advertisers can validate their ad traffic and eliminate invalid traffic to target only the audience that matters. It also helps the advertisers to ensure their ads are placed in a GARM-compliant environment and are protected from brand safety threats. Take quick action to make the best out of these sporting events in 2023!

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Amazon Buy Box: 5 Ways to Win It

Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Praveen Dhama

Buy Box is the fiercely contested prized possession of sellers in the eCommerce arena. The battle is for the shoppers’ attention as sellers’ success and growth on the eCommerce platform mostly depend on it. According to a research report, approximately 82% of all sales get converted due to the Buy Box. The fact clearly, reflects why every seller seeks Buy Box on the eCommerce platform. Amazon Buy Box is the most coveted need of every seller on Amazon, the world-leading e-commerce Marketplace. So, take a closer look and find out how to win an Amazon Buy Box. What is Amazon Buy Box? Simply put, it’s a CTA that takes a shopper directly to the purchase page and leads to a swift purchase. But not every seller has it. Let’s first understand why it’s so valuable and what makes sellers eligible for a chance to win the buy box. Amazon has mainly 5 types of sellers – Manufacturer & Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) Brands, which Produce and sell their products under their brand names, Private Label Brands, which Sell products manufactured by a third party under a different brand name, Factory Brands, sourced from often overseas factories and go direct to global consumers with more often at comparatively lower prices, Resellers, who buy products in bulk and often sell them at a higher price to make a profit and Aggregators, Companies that purchase multiple Amazon brands to consolidate and grow them. Broadly they can be put into two selling methods Amazon itself, 1st party sellers sell wholesale to Amazon and Amazon acts as the retailer selling to customers, and 3rd party sellers sell directly to customers via the Amazon Marketplace. Buy Box quickly takes shoppers directly to the purchase page, avoiding spending time considering whom they are buying from Amazon or 3rd third-party seller. Only businesses with excellent seller metrics can win an Amazon Buy Box. Not every seller is eligible to win a Buy Box. Why it is important? Nearly 80% of all Amazon’s sales come via the Buy Box. In 2021, $389 billion worth of sales among net revenue of over $469 billion came from Buy Box purchases. This clearly, reflects Amazon Buy Box Win boosts sales. Sellers must meet the following metrics* to win the Buy Box: Key Matrices Requirement Order Defect Rate (ODR) < 1 % Cancellation Rate (CR) < 2.5 % Late Dispatch Rate (LDR) < 4 % Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) > 95 % On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR) > 97 % Invoice Defect Rate (IDR) < 5 % *Subject to changes as Amazon keeps raising the bar on eligibility to win Buy Box. 5 Ways to Win Amazon Buy Box Sellers having significant order volume and quality products can strive for Buy Box. Here the quality of products is measured via Seller Controllable Return Rate (returned or refunded due to product-related issues) and Customer feedback & ratings. Amazon keeps on raising the bar, The digital e-commerce Seller needs to ace the performance matrices to boost their chances of achieving more Amazon Buy Box wins. Here are a few ways sellers can boost Amazon Buy Box win percentage. High-quality products: A genuine and high-quality product can delight the shoppers reduce return requests, curb defects and enhance customer ratings which lead to higher chances of Buy Box wins. Optimize Products Listings: Product listings are like the physical storefront, where shoppers get attracted by the looks, title, and description. Create product pages accurately with high-performing keywords, bullets in descriptions with product features, and high-quality product images. Cataloging and categorizing products are also crucial to avoid customer confusion. Offer competitive pricing: According to Amazon, you can automatically increase your chances of winning the Buy Box by listing your product within 5% of the current Buy Box price. Optimize Delivery Turn Around Time: Amazon customers expect to receive their orders by the estimated delivery dates and delivery leads to a higher win box %. Respond to negative feedback: High rating & review leads to a higher boy box win percentage. Amazon always strives for a high customer satisfaction level. 92% of customers say they will buy again from a brand if the returns process is easy. That’s exactly what you need to focus on by offering hassle-free returns and exchanges, leading to a positive return experience. Final Thoughts – Keep Your Eye on The Digital Commerce Landscape The bottom line is performance optimization is key to upswing Buy Box win percentage. The massive product range and variants on Amazon means cut-throat competition. A pinch of slip-up by brands and sellers can lead to a loss of sales and customer drop-off. To prevent such fallacies and boost chances to Buy Box wins brands and sellers must plug in e-commerce analysis. Keep an eye on multiple product performance matrices like product share of Shelf, visibility share, the content of product page, product stock availability, pricing, delivery turn-around-time, etc. The actionable insights and dynamic dashboard of mScanIt, an e-commerce competitive analysis can help brands optimize their customer journey on multiple touchpoints. It keeps track of sellers’ performance and Buy Box wins across geographies and digital commerce platforms. The Buy Now button on the product page is the ladder that takes your product to the top amidst the vipers of competition waiting for you to slip up. eCom is not a game of snakes & ladders it is a place where data-driven decisions thrive and earn multi-fold sales with Buy Box wins. Get in Touch for more information about Amazon buy box.

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eCom Platform Marketing Service: “Everything Everywhere All At Once”

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Anukirti Jain

Yes, you read it right. But we are not going to talk about an Oscar-winning movie. It is about a complete Marketing console in one place, eCommerce Platform Marketing Services like what Amazon provides for its sellers. The eCommerce giant Amazon has expanded and enhanced the services for its shoppers and sellers alike. The integrated comprehensive marketing console, Amazon Marketing Service (AMS), helps Seller control and monitor how the product does on the platform and organize what it needs to boost performance. The collection for several Amazon services for sellers, AMS has tools for Amazon Sponsored Brands, Amazon Sponsored product management, and Amazon Display Ads. But the question is – Is it enough for the brands and sellers?1 Let’s take a deeper look at the platform marketing services and highlight ways to optimize services like AMS. What does AMS do? Why does it need optimization? While all other eCommerce platforms are evolving in terms of Advertising Services provided, Amazon is leading or could say dominating in it. The massive presence of Amazon in the eCommerce Retail domain led to the rise of a fiercely ecommerce competitive landscape. As a brand, business, or seller here you are running against thousands of others running a race against every evolving algorithm. To stand apart and reap high profits, brands need to advertise with a clear understanding of segments and competition. Platform Marketing Services like AMS Provides Complete Amazon Advertising Console Support for Amazon Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brand Ads, and Amazon Sponsored Displays. The competition is fierce in a global marketplace like Amazon. Most online advertising platforms allow you to pay for impressions and clicks but Amazon takes a different approach. As it provides an option to choose how much you want to pay when a shopper clicks on the ads. This provides hands-on control over the ad budget. This also impacts the conversion rates based on the strong purchasing intent of the audience. They also streamline it to provide advertising reports. They may not be the best ones to get deeper insights into customers’ search patterns, but they are extremely useful to understand what works for you and what doesn’t. This created the need for optimization of marketing services provided by the platform to save time and money along with enhancing brand recognition. Challenges for Sellers using Amazon Marketing Service – No Visibility of High-Performing Keywords: Identifying high-performing keywords plays an essential role in making effective campaigns and efficient product display pages. Building a comprehensive keyword bidding strategy is key to the upscale product. Brands or Sellers must be aware of high-performing keywords that work or don’t work. – Time-consuming and prone to manual errors: The need for an auto-generated response is key to reducing the time consumed and mitigating errors caused by manual entries. Tracking performance and managing optimizations can lead to greater achievements. – No Standardized Automated Process: Standardized processes are needed to avoid hit & trail elements like keywords bidding. High returns are expected if the standard processes and data-driven decisions are used for AMS. – Missed Opportunities with Uncertain Returns: Ambiguous returns of advertising campaigns need to be consolidated and sustained with a clear process in place to boost advertising performance. Perks Of Platform Marketing Service Optimization Optimize Ad Campaign- Reduce Ad Spend Optimization of Platform Marketing Services empowers eCommerce Platform Advertising Campaigns. Full-fledged coverage is provided from setting up your different Ad Campaigns (Own, Competition, Generic) and managing your budget in Ad Groups via AI-based Automated System. Advanced Automated Solution raises your advertising game Crystal Clear Data for better understanding to drive overall sales Business decisions driven via actionable insights lead to sustained growth Saves hours of manual work by bypassing Amazon Advertising complexities 1. AI-driven marketing Optimization Amazon Advertising Campaigns gets a boost through AI & ML, keeps track of the performance of the keywords and help adjusts your campaign budget to maximize your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). The sophisticated AI is used to automatically turn competitor keyword bidding ON/OFF depending on the stock availability of the competitor. Completely Automated Process Product code Bidding Keyword Bidding Comprehensive Budget Planning 2. Continuous Optimization of Keywords Identifying and monitoring keywords should be a continuous process as the bids need to be optimized according to the keyword performance change. The use of AI can turn on/off bids on keywords, based on Keyword performance. The campaign performance can be optimized by bidding on high-performing keywords. Brands or sellers need to be aware of keyword performance on a real-time basis to optimize the campaign and avoid waste of ad spending. The Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) can be optimized with an automated process in place. 3. Effectively Optimizing Ad Budget Platform Marketing Service Optimization boosts campaign performance not just by optimizing Campaign Spends and deciding what amount to spend but also how and when to spend it. The click and traffic analysis can help generate automated bid prices and empower budget shuffle across multiple ad campaigns for optimal ad spend utilization. 4. Adding Value to Brands The optimization of advertising services raises the brand’s advertising game. Plugging in automated solutions for optimization can add value to the services. Improvement in ROAS and Conversion Rate is a key value addition to the brand performance with data-driven decision-making. The automation of the process reduces advertising complexities and saves several hours of manual work. Final Thoughts Marketing on eCommerce platforms has eased with comprehensive marketing services provided by the platform but that’s too much manual work considering the massive number of products and wide geography to cover. The Optimization of platform marketing services automate systems and reduce ad budget by making ad campaign more effective. mScanIt eCommerce Intelligence Solution can help guide brands or sellers to automate and optimize advertising strategies on the eCommerce platforms. With the pace at which advertising is evolving, it’s important to get hold of things swiftly as any lag in strategy can push back your brand way behind other sellers or brands. The digital commerce universe is so much bigger than you realize. Brands need

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Uncover New Opportunities: Fill the White Space in eCom Landscape

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Praveen Dhama

The cursor blinking on a blank page is the writer’s white space waiting for sweaty palms and dry throat to relax and get over the excruciating writer’s block. In business, things are not that different or as nerve-wracking yet very exciting. It is all about identifying the target and formulating strategies to acquire these white spaces on the eCom landscape and uncover new opportunities. Is it that easy? Certainly not. Brands need insights and comprehensive analysis of competition or lack of it in the geography or pin-code to target. The omnichannel shopping avenues and new demographics turning to online shopping have opened up white spaces for brands to target and make their brand presence felt in the untapped territory. For Example, global QSR giant, McDonald’s started with just two items on the menu. They surveyed competitors and found out that they need to hyper-focus on best-seller items instead of expanding the menu to propel customer satisfaction. These were the white spaces in their industry. The insights helped them focus on customer service which was lacking among the competition at that time. Just imagine what ecommerce competitive analysis can do now for business – identifying White spaces and beyond. Understanding what was missing from the market, identifying what customers were lacking, and turning that industry gap into a success. Let’s dig deep and find out what exactly are white space opportunities, and how can they be turned into an asset. Benefits Of Digital Commerce Analysis to Identify White Space Digital commerce intelligence across e-commerce platforms, geographies, product categories, sub-categories, and variants vis-à-vis competition provides actionable insights. These insights and analysis help uplift product performance in existing space along with displaying brand untapped potential. Analysis of white space could help improve the product sales process, strengthen customer relations, acquire new customers, grow business reach, and enhance potential. Here are some key benefits brands can achieve from analysis and identifying white spaces: Expanded customer base Increased opportunities for upselling and cross-selling Improved customer relations, acquisition, and retention Refined sales approach and strategy New opportunities for innovation The white spaces are filled when the unspoken and unmet needs of the customers are uncovered by brands holding on to new opportunities, leading innovation, and expanding product reach. How to Find White Space in the eCom Landscape? Map New Opportunities It’s time to map your white space opportunities. The mapping can be done in 3 ways – internally-focused, externally-focused, and future-focused. Internally focused white space mapping – identify your brand or company strengths, abilities, potential opportunities, and competitive threats. The comprehensive analysis of own product performances across the digital commerce ecosystem provides a clear picture. It helps businesses determine how effectively act upon the market barriers, opportunities, and competitive threats. Externally focused white space mapping – identify products and services in the existing market failing to meet needs – potential gaps in the system, lack of competition, non-consumers, or new market spaces. Future-focused mapping – strategic forecasting, based on insights, devise business strategies based on actionable insights. Analyze Your Findings The compiled data on KPIs and power SKUs help connect the dots. The data tells the story of your product performance vis-à-vis competition. Brands monitoring their own and competition across platforms and geographies keep them on their toes. Understanding customer needs, finding out and plugging gaps in brand performance, discovering new areas to focus on, and identifying existing region that needs a boost based on platform, geography, and product-specific data insights. The analysis will highlight the white space and illustrate where you can target customers with better solutions. Accelerate Revenue by Identifying White Space Smart businesses take advantage of customer data, sales performance metrics, and competitor information to formulate cutting-edge strategies. Full visibility into your sales, delivery TAT, and customer sentiments find the gaps in your offerings and fill them with suitable action. This leads to accelerate revenue generation from the existing system and venturing into new untapped markets and demographics opens new avenues for revenue generation and expands brand reach. Final Thoughts – Get the Competitive Advantage There are many different interpretations of ‘white space’ in business. Some consider it to be all about unchartered territories, while others feel it is a lack of competition. The key is finding the white space in your market segment and identifying market opportunities that your business is capable of capitalizing on. Map out new opportunities that your business has the capability, resources, and drive to meet. Evaluating the competition marketing strategies find a white space and define your target customer. Figure out What you do better than our competition. And What do they do better than you? Competitive advantage helps position the brand in the eCommerce market segment. Finding white space may sound straightforward – but it is not. Plug in mScanIt, a Digital Commerce Intelligence Solution, to get real-time actionable insights across the digital commerce ecosystem. Monitor and analyze your product performances vs competition at every touchpoint across the customer journey. Your ‘white space’ lies in Identifying key needs within the target market that are currently not being met by any other provider. This is where the brand focus for growth should be. Get in Touch for more information.

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