Blog - mfilterit

Click Injection: Why Should Brands/Advertisers Worry About It?

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / Expert Opinion

During the first install session, fraudsters hijack ‘install broadcasts’ using bots/malware, and inject clicks for misattribution with the MMP. This fraud is commonly called click injection and is the most hated fraud by brands/advertisers. It diminishes click integrity and derails the efforts of providing a safe experience to the user, the backbone of an organization. In addition, it forces brands/advertisers to pay for their ‘own’ traffic from the advertising budget to the fraudster The reliability of campaign analytics for building marketing strategies is further hampered, and the scary part is that fraudsters build ‘relationships’ with the brands by sharing false performance reports. If we want to add fuel to the fire, cybercriminals also take over user accounts and steal identities and financial details through malware/bots. 6 Ways Click Injection Endangers Brands/Advertisers Organic Stealing Organic traffic is an intent-based audience targeted using many marketing practices. They are vital to advertisers as they help diminish advertising budgets, increase app installs, generate higher revenue, etc. Brands often advertise their apps on their websites, and social media handles to increase organic installs. The users click on such ads and install the app after redirection to the Google Play Store, Apple Store, or a third-party store. Such users have organically installed the app, but unfortunately, the credit for it often goes to the fraudster because he/she injected the last click, and it got registered with the MMP. As a result, cybercriminals are stealing organic users of the app owner. Attribution Theft Attributions are important for advertisers because they help understand the highest/lowest-performing sources/channels, drive campaign goals, and structure investment decisions. Unfortunately, advertisers become victims of attribution theft through click injection. It is the basic principle of this ad fraud. The cybercriminal can report a high install conversion rate (CVR) by manipulating the advertiser’s attribution and acquiring financial gain. However, the user could have organically installed the apps from any store or the brand’s website. Bad Analytics Brands often measure the click-to-install (CTI) ratio to determine the CVR of an ad install campaign. Unfortunately, attribution theft caused by click injection leads to reporting falsified high CVR of the fraudster. As a result, advertisers instill confidence in the campaign’s performance. In reality, the conversion rate of install campaigns lies between 1-1.5%. Therefore, a high percentage of CVR, which in most cases is a result of click injection, is 100% and drives the marketers in the wrong direction. Furthermore, the estimated Click-to-Install Time (CTIT) becomes extremely short through click injection. As a result, brands misinterpret the performance of campaigns/affiliates and make wrongful investments. Builds Trust on ‘Fraudsters’ – Scary! Fraud affiliates share high-performance reports with the advertiser and gain the advertiser’s trust. However, they are in the game for making money and don’t care about them. So, they continue with their click-injection fraud. Moreover, brands/advertisers would seek alternative options if they don’t receive the ongoing performance. Additionally, brands/advertisers don’t recognize the attribution misrepresentation by cybercriminals because the real CVR is hidden through spiked traffic. Their irresponsibility of not using an ad traffic validation solution makes them vulnerable to fraudsters. Meanwhile, brands/advertisers disassociate with an underperforming affiliate displaying the real campaign performance. Furthermore, affiliates rely on ‘word-of-mouth’ for brand associations, and their distrust drives away other affiliates from the brand/advertiser. However, this doesn’t last long as the latter has the option of switching affiliates. Loss of Advertising Budget Brands/advertisers lose millions of dollars every year from their advertising budget to fraudsters by not eliminating click injection. The misattribution caused by it diminishes the profits/commissions of legitimate publishers and advertisers. Moreover, most businesses run CPI campaigns on different ad networks. Additionally, global CPI rates for many countries are much higher than in India. Therefore, brands/advertisers constantly expand budgets for increasing networks for running CPI campaigns on such networks. Our research suggests that networks with higher CPI costs often witness higher click injection because the fraudsters can make more money and find this an ad campaign vulnerability. Therefore, brands/advertisers begin paying even more than before to cyber criminals due to network expansion or placements in costlier networks. Creates Brand Distrust Due to Malicious Device Activities Users installing brand apps and becoming victims of click-injection fraud also experience malicious device activities. Besides stealing unconsented “install broadcast” notifications from the user’s device, fraudsters also use bots/malicious codes to read messages and take over accounts. User messages often consist of OTPs and financial details. Fraudsters steal this information and conduct identity/financial theft. As a result, the malicious activities through the app make the user disinterested in the brand and uninstall the app. Brands experience high drop-offs as the users have lost trust in it. Furthermore, the CTIT ratio of the install campaign substantially diminishes. Therefore, click injection directly hampers the brand’s reputation. A Single Solution for App and Web Ad Frauds mFilterIt’s Ad fraud solution uses AI, ML, and data science to reveal the actual traffic sources and eliminate ad fraud on the web and app. In addition, the solution reports activities of click injection to the brand/advertisers and helps prevent association with fraudsters. Moreover, mFilterIt’s solution tracks sudden spikes in traffic, attribution hijacking, organic stealing, and other fraudulent activities on brand and performance campaigns. Therefore, a single solution is enacted as a safeguard against ad fraud. Diminishing ad fraud through click injection restores the user’s faith in a brand, optimizes analytics, and avoids wrongful investments. Conclusion Mitigating ad fraud has become a primary objective for advertisers across the globe because it reaps multiple advantages. In addition, however, it has become crucial to fight against click frauds, especially click injection, because marketers rely on user engagement and assess it through click-to-visit conversion as a measuring metric. mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Solution solidifies consumer trust in the brand/advertiser by avoiding the dangers associated with ad fraud. Brands seeking accurate analytical results, higher human ad engagement, and reliable CVR must use this solution. Get in touch to know more about Click Injection.

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How Does Click Injection Affect a Brand’s Users?

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / Expert Opinion

“You have been locked out of your account/You have zero balance” is a message no user ever wants to see. Can you believe this could happen to a brand’s user through the same source of click injection? – a copycat app or pirated APK. Users behold brands as the responsible party for their asset duplication. The repercussions for the brand become dire in this process. On the other hand, fraudsters committing identity and financial theft, besides click injection, make the user’s life a living hell. Here is what happens to them: 4 Direct Implications of Click Injection Attacks on a Brand’s Users ● Device Access/OTP Fraud/Financial Fraud Click injection is often found in pirated apps downloaded from app stores or APKs. Users are tempted to download such apps because they offer free access to the content/features and remain immune to the click-firing activity in the background. Moreover, fraudsters use malicious codes or bots within the app or APK to acquire access to a user’s device, messages and hacking financial details. Unfortunately, the user also blames the brand for the financial and OTP fraud. Therefore, the apps/APKs responsible for click injection fraud also drive users away from a brand and switch to next-in-line alternatives. ● Decreases Trust and Loyalty Click injection generates unconsented ‘clicks’ on behalf of the real user. Unfortunately, the MMP doesn’t see such ill-actions, so the advertiser/brand remains unaware & unworried. Unfortunately, the sources of this ad fraud are also responsible for plaguing other attacks through them on the user’s device. Such activities make the user concerned and hardwire distrust in the brand, which becomes nearly impossible to repair. Furthermore, the brand’s inaction to fight back against the sources of fraud makes the user backlash through negative reviews, app store reports, and participation in social media trolling. The bad publicity causes a dent in loyal users and increases the real app’s drop-off rate. Moreover, the users become tempted to find other shortcomings and cripple the brand’s reputation through the ongoing repercussions. ● Creates Widespread Panic and Anxiety Pirated apps or APKs causing click injection and identity/financial theft create widespread panic and anxiety in the minds of the brand’s users. The users become more concerned about the thefts and want payback. At this point, they can’t sue anyone other than the brand. On the other hand, the brand doesn’t take responsibility for the thefts because the user was never on its app. But unfortunately, when a large number of users use a brand, new users are less likely to create accounts, and the old users won’t want to stay associated with the brand. Anxious app users also believe any fake news and share it across social media, causing widespread anger, panic, and irritation against the brand. Moreover, the user’s actions diminish the potential reach of organic traffic, and competitor visibility significantly increases. ● Cannibalizes Revenue from Existing Users Bad reputation caused by click injection and other frauds certainly cannibalize business aspirations; however, a positive notion makes a brand rise: “Time heals all wounds.” – the Greek poet Menander. But until the right time arises and the brand has somehow restored faith in the existing users, the company witnesses diminished revenue through in-app and web ads. Moreover, the brand also has users who haven’t been victimized. Moreover, the existing users still have faith in the brand and believe it will repair its reputation. Furthermore, the existing users are scared of making profiles and purchases. So, they are less likely to make large transactions. A Solution to Avoid Ad Traffic Violations mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Solution safeguards brands against web and app ad fraud. Moreover, it is driven by AI, ML, and data science and generates real-time alerts. Therefore, brands can detect analytical anomalies caused by ad fraud instantly. Moreover, mFilterIt’s solution uses technology to eliminate ad fraud and safeguards digital advertising and customer data systems. Additionally, it systematically showcases the types of ad fraud and their sources. Some of the biggest advantages of using the solution include avoiding attribution & organic stealing, better ad engagement rates, no wastage of advertising spending, etc. Conclusion Click injection seems like an advertiser-centric problem, but it is also a brand and user issue. Moreover, fraudsters commonly use the source of this ad fraud for identity and financial theft and cause widespread panic, disinterest, and disengagement with the brand. As a result, fighting back against click injection has become essential for safeguarding a brand’s reputation, revenue, and users. mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Validation monitors and eliminates ad fraud on the internet and contributes to the brand’s faith restoration in the users’ minds. Get in touch to learn more about the Click Injection.

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The Deep Dark World of Digital Ad Frauds

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Advertising / Expert Opinion

Digital ad fraud is a thing that didn’t drop just today. It has been surviving in the ever-evolving digital world and making its space in bits and bytes. While some cases have been there in the limelight, some are just well hidden in the systems. The last decade has made digital fraud, the perfect crime to do in silence. With everything tracked in spreadsheets and dashboards, there has been no crime easier to commit than this. The cybercriminals don’t even have to make bots and malware themselves. They can hire a person easily and all they need to do is rent their time on the botnets and pay for what they use like cloud computing. They can easily paint the picture of ads running and traffic generating when nothing is happening in reality. Fraudsters Who Became Celebrities Between 2003 till 2016 there was a splurge of celebrities in the cybercrime world who became famous for the wrong reasons. All the world could see was their fancy cars, homes, and yachts which attracted heavy traffic. But behind all this glam, there were some of the biggest digital frauds for which they had no fear of getting caught. Here are some of the examples of such cases that made a layman into a celebrity due to the digital fraud they have committed. Bot Traffic or Human Traffic: In 2013, a guy from the USA admitted his indulgence in buying many of the visitors to his websites. One fraud detection firm detected 94 percent of the visitors as a bot and the other detected approximately 74 percent traffic as bot traffic. It was surprising to see that despite all these findings, he was not concerned. Instead, he stated that if he can buy some traffic and it gets accepted then why not do it? He also highlighted the fact that advertisers pay only a little to get more traffic and results. And he got away with this scam by saying that the advertisers can go directly to the publisher if they want human traffic. But how does it affect the company? The bot traffic receives impressions which directly affects the click-through rates. Though, the campaign results appear massive in terms of engagement. However, that doesn’t imply actual human traffic. The false impressions heavily manipulate the metrics of the campaign and lower the value of ads which further results in loss of revenues. Traffic Manipulation Havoc: In 2003, some news articles allegedly brought a digital fraud of massive traffic manipulation in the limelight. The person behind the fraud became the traffic manipulation kingpin. He created browser extensions that generated a massive amount of irrelevant traffic by injection of ads. In the ad industry’s terminology, this is the term used for manipulation or fake views, clicks, and users. The key mastermind has also been sued for allegedly helping to force malicious software onto a PC. Despite such gruesome acts, his name has never been connected to a takedown of a high-profile name related to ad fraud. The line doesn’t end here because the traffic merchant’s shadow stretches beyond the operations of web extension. Sophisticated Scam: Another fraud celebrity made money – not just enough but lots of it by executing the most persistent and sophisticated digital fraud the internet has ever seen. The subscription trap is a scam where people are lured to buy a single free trial of a celebrity-endorsed product. But once the free trial is purchased, the customer unknowingly gets indulged into a pricey monthly subscription which is hard to cancel. But this was just one part of the big black hole created by Ads Inc. They later created a boiler room-style operation that convinced thousands of people to rent their personal Facebook accounts to the company. Ads Inc. later used this data to place ads for its flawed free trial offers. This strategy helped the company to run misleading ads at a huge volume, targeting people from all around the world in a sophisticated fashion. He also got away with it. Special Code: A ‘special code’ hit the digital market and created an avalanche of fraudulent views of video ads from companies like Unilever, Hershey’s, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, MGM, and Ford. The mastermind behind this is the owner of the 12 websites that were involved in the fraud and has earned revenue from fraudulent views. The ad platform was also provided by his company which is used by the sites in the scheme. Another master player in this fraud was a former employee of a massive ad network who ran a group of eight sites that were part of the fraud. And another group of eight sites that were consulted by the person. The last site identified by the researchers is owned by the co-founder of one of the 20 largest ad networks in the United States. The former mastermind was part of the industry and helped other insiders make tons of money with this scheme. He got away unaffected. Why do these fraudsters get away easily? The biggest reason that the fraudsters remain unaffected after committing a digital ad fraud is that there is globally no law to convict these fraudsters for this crime. Due to this, it is estimated that ad fraud will reach up to $68 billion globally in 2022 and will keep increasing aggressively. The Landmark Cases In 2021, Uber won over Phunware in a multi-million-dollar advertising fraud suit. There were suspicious practices that Uber noticed in Phunware ad activity in 2016. The Uber app installations that Phunware delivered came due to a fraudulent process known as “click flooding”. This means that a higher number of clicks are shown than the actual number. Some of the ad traffic also came from auto-redirects where the customers were taken to the app store automatically, whether the user had clicked or not. During an internal investigation, two of the former Phunware employees discovered that the company had also falsely billed Uber for non-delivered ad clicks. In addition to this, some of the ads run

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Why Has “Brand Safety” Become a Major Concern?

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

Facts that worry brands, marketers, and advertisers. Brand safety safeguards a brand’s reputation and image by ensuring correct context or placements. Nowadays, it is a serious concern for advertisers. Misleading ads or ads without custom contextual targeting often get trolled on the web. The Most Concerning Brand Safety Issues Brands that use digital advertising face brand safety issues like incent/coupon fraud, non-contextual media placements, keyword bidding fraud, etc. The strain of this problem is dominant in the BFSI sector. A banking advertisement on a terrorism video can have serious implications like online trolling, negative press coverage, wrong cause funding, etc. Managing it has become crucial for ed-tech. Unmonitored ad placements on the ed-tech app/web can expose kids to unsuitable content. In 2018, a press release by Digiday’s AI company GumGum and Custom revealed serious implications of brand safety issues. 47% of companies suffered social media blowback, 25% received negative press, and 13% lost revenue due to brand safety issues. Additionally, 44% of companies and brands faced brand-unsafe imagery, and 32% reported that it resulted from videos. Our experts analyzed one billion frames within 25 million videos on YouTube. The research revealed that 14% (3.5 million) of the context was unsafe, and 7% (1.75 million) content was unsafe. While monitoring videos according to the GARM categories through our brand hygiene protection, we identified 10.5% Illegal Drugs Tobacco E-cigarettes Vaping Alcohol, 9% Terrorism, 6% Online Piracy, and other violations. On the other hand, correct placement of ads can lead to higher conversions, signing up for newsletters/loyalty programs, increasing social media followers, and building trustworthiness. Moreover, it will help brands to reap higher and recurring profits. Since 2018, marketers have started incorporating strategies like earned/influencer media, user-generated content, working with premium publishers, etc., to curb brand safety issues. However, the massive scale of such problems required a much more effective AI, ML, and manual monitoring solution for recognizing brand/ad placements. mFilterIt’s brand safety solution encompasses GARM checks and content classification under brand-safe or unsafe categories. These include contextual, content, and sentiment analysis. Blacklisting URLs can help to protect online reputation. On the other hand, whitelisting URLs helps to recognize relevant ad placements. So, the audience targeting of brands increases and enhances the overall ROI. Our brand hygiene protection recognizes brand infringement, brand safety (media), and Keyword Search Abuse. Implementing this solution will further improve ROAS. Should You trade between Brand Safety and Ad Performance? The rising concern about brand safety is important for marketers and advertisers. However, the dilemma lies in trading it off for a better performance campaign output. In August 2018, a survey across EMEA and the US revealed that 64% of marketers believed that problems related to it negatively impact the campaign performance, and 71% struggled to target “reachability” with the right context. Almost 2/3rd of marketers believe that it is okay to use unsafe brand environments to achieve campaign targets. However, the perception that brand safety protocols undermine campaign performance is completely misguided. Marketers need to look beyond the initial vanity metrics to realize that brand safety doesn’t come at the expense of meaningful results. Firstly, marketers should realize that incorporating a solution can enhance reachability by targeting the correct audience, even when a programmatic campaign fails. For example, a sports brand ad next to a cricket match would enhance conversions and clicks. Likewise, ad placements on pornographic, torrent, free music, or similar domains can tarnish the brand’s reputation, diminish profits, etc. So, optimizing campaigns without incorporating brand safety can have deadly implications. In November 2018, GumGum and Digiday Media surveyed hate speech (34%) as the most brand-unsafe element. Marketers who participated in it also revealed that disaster/tragedy, divisive politics, and fake (accounted for 39%) were elements encountered next to client’s digital advertising. It also showed that Facebook (-23%) was the least safe platform whereas, Linked In (+45%) was the safest platform brand. Brands that didn’t take measures to ensure brand safety have suffered social media blowback, lost revenue and received negative press. On the other hand, incorporating brand safety offers benefits like effective ad spending, increased ROI, enhanced brand image, etc. Takeaway It even protects against misinformation, data protection & privacy and recognizes correct ad placements on digital platforms. mFilterIt’s brand safety solution also provides great online transparency and reduces ad fraud. The solution also supports more than 50 languages, offers a global reach with regional capabilities, encompasses 96+ content avoidance categories, and has flagged 400+ million content globally. Get in touch to learn more about the Brand Safety.

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How Bad is Organic Stealing for Your Brand?

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / Expert Opinion

Unpaid/Organic traffic signifies that a brand has obtained a market reputation and trust of its consumers. The traffic growth happens over time and is a collaborative result of the product, marketing, promotion, and other teams. Organic traffic is beneficial for brands for many reasons such as visibility, garnering consumer trust, free engagement with qualified prospects, etc. Meanwhile, inorganic traffic boosts reachability/visibility to the target audience, influences brand searches, acquiring leads, and more. On average, 16-20% of conversions happen through organic users. The term ‘organic stealing’ often stirs up emotions like fear, anger, frustration, etc. “By doing organic theft, fraudsters deprive brands of new user acquisition and steal attributions of existing loyal users.” For any given brand, a user base is quantified by the revenue. The purpose of doing advertisements is to increase this very base. But what if your ads are not bringing in over and above the revenues that it is expected to increase the current traffic base? You might be a victim of organic stealing. What essentially happened is that you are paying for customers who are already engaged with your brand, and no new addition has happened. Your ad budgets went inlining the cybercriminal’s pocket. Stealing organic traffic also causes other repercussions for a brand. For example, a fraud affiliate may continuously inject clicks and register attributions with the Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP). Besides money, the brand receives falsified campaign analytics because the user never clicked on the ad. Additionally, misattribution results are used to develop marketing strategies, and an additional budget is used to boost the fraud affiliate’s activities. App optimization efforts also get scrutinized due to organic traffic theft. A team working on app optimization would use the behavioral data to check organic downloads/installs. The team would use the exact data for optimizing features, functionality, and user experience (UX). Unfortunately, the data visible to the analysts is falsified or doesn’t display its full potential. 2 Ways to Combat Organic Stealing ● Continuously Review CTRs on Every Campaign Paid digital ads witness meager conversion rates whenever organic stealing comes into the picture. Your click-through rate (CTR) substantially plummets for every campaign and demands reviewing the analytics. Upon review, you would notice high impressions or views but drastically low clicks or visits. As such, paid ads should increase users because the brand has enhanced visibility. Unfortunately, the reverse impact is happening and draining the advertising budget faster than before. ● Ad Traffic Validation The best method of staying away from fraud affiliates and avoiding organic stealing is by using mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Validation. The solution works 24×7 and alerts about analytical anomalies in real time. Therefore, brands can eliminate ad fraud and retain their organic traffic. Furthermore, detecting authentic inorganic sources helps brands identify the actual top performers of their affiliate marketing campaigns and build marketing strategies using accurate analytics. Besides this, the solution also validates traffic sources on the URLs shared by the brand. So, brands can eliminate ad fraud and keep their customer data systems/remarketing lists clean. Conclusion Cannibalizing organic traffic drains the marketing budget and straightforwardly showcases that ad fraud is prevalent. Moreover, it dramatically threatens analytics concerning marketing strategies and compromises asset optimization. Therefore, brands need to mandate an Ad Traffic Validation solution. mFilterIt is a pioneer in ad fraud detection and elimination. The company’s solution is safeguarding brands across six continents from advertising fraud. Get in touch to learn more about Organic Stealing.

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Is Having OTP Validation Sufficient to Protect Your Brand Campaigns from Ad Fraud?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Advertising / Durgesh Rathore

Brands run lead-generation campaigns to get people interested in their products/services. They often incorporate form submissions to acquire personal details for callbacks and address lead inquiries. In marketing terminology, a Single form submission is called a ‘punch-in. Brands frequently incorporate OTPs in such forms to validate that a human is submitting them. All industries, including BSFI, Ed-tech, OTT, E-com, Gaming, etc., are acquiring leads through form-filling and OTP validation. But unfortunately, fraudsters have found a method of OTP bypass. Fraudsters collate personal details of real users, such as names, phone numbers, email IDs, etc., from different sources. Fraudsters use bots to fill user information in forms and punch them as leads. Unfortunately, brands don’t realize whether the information was filled in by a BOT or by a genuine user. On the other hand, the advertiser assumes that an actual person filled the lead. As a result, the sales team contacts the lead to convert it into a potential customer. The unconsented call receiver gets irritated because the person was never interested in the brand to begin with. These are commonly referred to as ‘fake leads’. The consequences can be near fatal as ad budgets are drained without generating any ROI and the brand reputation is put at stake. Repercussions of OTP Bypass Cybercriminals use bots for bypassing OTPs and submitting forms. The brands connect with the actual user; however, the lead gets irritated because the submitted details were unconsented. Hence, a real person is no longer interested in the brand and wants to disassociate from it. Another disadvantage of OTP bypass is the loss of marketing budget to fraudsters. Cybercriminals use form-filling or lead-generation bots to submit the wrong user information. Alternatively, fraudsters even submit duplicate user information after altering names, surnames, and emails while keeping the same phone number. The permutation and combination of altering user information could be endless. As a result, brands waste valuable time and money connecting with “fake leads.” Brands lose valuable marketing budgets to fraudsters because they never vetted the traffic sources of their affiliates or used an ad fraud elimination solution like mFilterIt. Alternatively, they increase their marketing budgets to get high campaign performance which most likely leads to increasing the “cost-per-lead”. Fraudsters code bots to click ads and then visit a landing page for submitting forms. As a result, an additional drawback of form-filling bots is an exponential rise in click fraud. Moreover, cyber criminals hide their ongoing CVR, i.e., 100%, by continuously using sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) on ads during specific time intervals. The spiked traffic also transforms the click-to-visit and visit-to-conversion ratio into believable percentages. As a result, brands think that increasing the budget for the CPL campaign would help increase revenue. But, by doing so, they lose even higher amounts to fraudsters. Many cybercrime experts advocate two-factor authentication that can safeguard brands against form-filling bots. However, bypassing OTP during a CPL campaign for form submission eliminates this myth. Moreover, this is a severe breach as it is sent to a user’s device for a specific duration. Furthermore, it means that the fraudster has found a method to breach the “user device” and read the messages. Therefore, user safety is hampered and can even cause severe issues like ATO, as the fraudsters have device access and can reset passwords. Last year, OTP and message breaches had already happened in India and were reported in the news. So, brands facing such issues lose reputation and consumer trust, directly impacting revenue or growth opportunities. Moreover, these practices can diminish ad fraud but never eliminate it. Therefore, the need for an ad fraud elimination service provider like mFilterIt has risen drastically across continents. Here is an example of our exemplary work with a single client: Case Study of a BFSI Company One of our leading BFSI clients running regular performance campaigns involving product offerings became a victim of fake leads. The brand used multiple new landing pages/micro-sites based on the occasion’s theme, like festive campaigns, home loan campaigns, etc. Moreover, the client regularly ran diagnostic checks on their website; but they often failed to test the new landing pages. Fraud affiliates took advantage of the loophole by doing high-volume lead punch-ins through OTP bypass. One of their methods involved filling multiple leads using a single device. These fraudulent activities substantially affected the campaign’s performance resulting in financial losses in terms of marketing spending happening to these ad fraud activities. Our analysts have found that brands have witnessed 25-30% fraud in lead generation campaigns involving form submissions with OTP validation. The victims (brands) have lost nearly $130,000 or more through this fraud in a month. mFilterIt helped the brand identify such fake leads and optimized the call center cost by helping the brand detect and eliminate fraud. After analyzing similar instances, we have found that the average monthly punched leads ratio across affiliates ranges from 28 to 42 percent. Moreover, we have witnessed that two types of lead punching are widespread: ● Basic Lead Punching Affiliates punch all leads from the same device and don’t change anything (cookies and properties). The average number of leads received from these devices in a month is ~4k from one device. ● Advanced Lead Punching Affiliates change device properties like cookie and IP but use the same device, and the repetition is as high as filling 400-500 leads/day from the same device. Conclusion Detecting loopholes in CPL campaigns is essential for preventing ad fraud. Moreover, brands can face significant drawbacks due to form-filling bots, which could easily be avoided by mFilterIt’s ad fraud elimination solution. The solution uses data science, AI, and ML for checking analytical anomalies and verifying fraud activities on the targeted landing pages. Moreover, brands receive real-time alerts as the solution works 24×7. Protecting the ad campaigns through mFilterIt’s ad fraud elimination solution can also offer advantages like more real leads, connection with real human traffic, higher revenue, etc., especially on CPL campaigns. Get in touch to learn more about the Ad Fraud.

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Top Keywords: It all begins with Identifying them, Correctly!

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Noopur Mathur

Generally, consumers find new products on eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Shopee, etc., by navigating or searching on the platform itself. Whenever users type an alphabet or word in the search query, it displays head/short-tail, long-tail, and LSI keywords, which most users have used to find their desired product and the brands bid to rank their products. Brands also optimize their product pages by using the top searched keywords in their product page so that the listings display on the top. According to a source, 38% of global customers use Amazon to find their desired products. Top keywords are the ‘most popular searches’ under a category of an eCommerce platform. The popularity is based on the keywords with the highest search volume. Ranking high on such words or phrases ensures a higher share-of-shelf on the top pages as well as higher visibility, brand awareness, click-through rate, add-to-cart, and conversions/sales. Today, brands need to measure the search performance of their product’s top generic, brand, and competition keywords under a category to achieve a higher market share. Searches on eCommerce marketplaces have navigational, commercial, transactional, or informational intent. For example, navigational intent keywords consist of brand names with the product type, enabling consumers to find their desired product faster, e.g., ‘MIVI earbuds.’ Similarly, transactional intent could mean ‘t-shirt under 799’ or ‘shoes under 15000,’ wherein the online shopper is searching for products under a defined price tag and could desire a specific brand too, e.g., ‘Levis t-shirt under 1200’. Likewise, commercial keywords refer to comparative searches, like ‘Batman t-shirt’ – here, the brand is non-specific, but the intent to buy a specific product type is clear. Informational keywords refer to ‘best shoes for football’ or ‘best gaming smartphones.’ Identifying Top Keywords Using AI and ML Keywords can entice, hook, or allure consumers to check out a product on the eCommerce platform. Finding the top keywords of your brand can offer insight into the consumer’s mindset while searching for your product and that of your competitors under a category. Many marketers might suggest that traditional methods of using URLs, suggested keywords, consumer intent keywords, etc., could help to find keywords, but these methods have limitations. Now, brands can easily identify and analyze their performance on top generic, competition, and sponsored keywords and the competition using our eCommerce Competitive Analytics tool, mScanIt. This tool enables the brands to see their share at a deeper level compared to their competition by using the multiple filters given in the tool such as brand, sub-brand, variants, SKU, etc. Moreover, the brand could also use a keyword planning tool to find the keywords with the highest share and optimize the Product Detail Pages (PDPs) accordingly. On the other hand, the highest-grossing competition keywords would help the brand find areas of improvement across platforms or ask whether the product needs to have this keyword. A few common questions that brands can answer using mScanIt capabilities: What is the overall SOS of your brand compared to the competition on the top keywords of the eCommerce platform? Are the ongoing page optimization delivering successful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) on e-commerce platforms? Can/Should the brand add new keywords to its product page copies? Which keywords are the competition brands more focused upon, and what is its impact on the brand’s SOS on the eCommerce platform? Are any keywords with high competition share more relevant than your existing ones? Is there any other keyword that is more consumer intent-centric than your existing ones? Which keywords are most of your competitors using – long-tail, short-tail, or LSI? Are the competitors spending more on paid or relying on organic searches? Discoverability becomes vital to brands as eCommerce platforms are built for purchasing products. Understanding the relevance of the top keywords by measuring your brand’s Share-of-Shelf becomes crucial for enhancing the product discoverability. Some marketers suggest that monitoring reviews offers insights into the pros and cons of a product, which is certainly true and simultaneously enables one to find long-tail keywords. Unfortunately, identifying keywords relevant only through a single source doesn’t offer perspective. Therefore, brands need to identify the top keywords from every possible source. Using multiple filters, the solution also sights the most promising/critical aspects of a brand and its competitors. (Read here) A single category page on Amazon could consist of up to 50 product listings, which means your brand’s single variant competes with 49 other listings, some of these could be of your brand as well. Analyzing the top keywords on the eCommerce marketplace’s digital shelf helps the brand increase its page positioning/ranking and enhance visibility. Bottom Line Targeting top keywords has become necessary for increasing the brand’s discoverability and thus, sales on e-commerce platforms. Our solution, mScanIt, makes it possible for brands to weigh the relevancy of their relevant keywords on eCommerce marketplaces, especially when paid searches get involved in the business. Today, brands need to focus on the top keywords for measuring their SEO and SERP, making the PDPs more consumer-centric, assessing the keywords the competitors are focused upon, and more. Get in touch to learn more about the advantages of eCommerce Competitive Analytics for your business.

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Why is Price Monitoring Important for eCom Brands?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Price is one of the most crucial factors contributing to the final buying decision on e-commerce platforms. According to research, 60% of customers would shop for a product online based on the best price or value. Seeing that price is a leading reason for most customers and has the potential of driving customers towards or away from your brand, monitoring price is no longer a brand’s choice. Price monitoring is the practice of continuously keeping an eye on the price of your products as well as similar listings of your competitors. However, the analytics of e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, BigBasket, BlinkIt (formerly Grofers), etc., don’t offer this choice to the brands. What could happen if you don’t monitor competitors’ prices? You would miss out on chances of increasing sales, develop imperfect pricing strategies, never know the difference between your and competitors’ prices of similar listings in real-time, etc. On the other hand, a price monitoring solution can give you an overview of the market scenario, deep-dive into buyer personas, explore new target audiences, etc. The scope of price monitoring extends beyond these reasons. During a conversation, our mScanIt Vertical Head, Ankush Arora, stated “Tracking online prices helps to know who started the price war. and, What was the price? – which are definite factors in creating pricing trends, sighting MAP violations, changing discounting strategies and analysis, and more.“ 5 Major Advantages of Price Monitoring Enhances the Pricing Strategy Margin is an important part of deciding the product prices. It is essentially the amount achieved after deducting the purchase cost from the retail cost. However, most brands have the lowest price they can offer, even though they might lose a significant proportion of the profits. eCom brands often lower the price to acquire a higher customer base, build loyalty, sell out multiple products, avoid expiration, etc. Therefore, the brand might not make the highest profits on its single product but has the potential to acquire higher basket purchases. Such a scenario becomes impossible without knowing the ongoing prices of the competitors in real-time. Analyzing the rival’s product prices also gives a perspective of your product’s market positioning and makes you aware that a competitor has begun a price war for a similar listing. When such an opportunity presents itself, offering a price that keeps the market reputation intact but increases the conversions/sales could significantly impact your rivals across search engines and e-commerce platforms. Reviewing prices of competitor listings also offers a chance to know the lowest/highest costs daily, weekly, and monthly across e-commerce platforms and enables your brand to create individual platform-wise price strategies. Recognizes the Pricing Trends Price is often correlated with discounts and sponsored ads on e-commerce platforms. Monitoring competitor prices and comparing them with discounts gives an overview of a trend of distinct periods. For example, Brand A is offering a 10% discount on a smartwatch and is offering the product at Rs 3,500. On the other hand, your brand has a similar listing priced at Rs 3,200. So, money-savers would often opt for Brand A versus yours. Herein lies the opportunity to offer a 10% discount and still offer the product for Rs 3,350, if possible. Similarly, mScanIt or eCom Competitive Analysis can help to compare pricing intelligence with stock availability. By knowing the prices at which the competitors faced stockouts and the duration, you have the opportunity to identify trends and create new strategies. Likewise, pricing analysis compared with share-of-shelf would decipher buyer preferences based on higher search rank and visibility as well as lower prices. Such a trend would help identify the share of sponsored ads of your competitors within the top three page results, which is also effective for channeling sales/conversions. Herein, you can identify the pricing trends based on the top keywords used by the competitors. Helps to Avoid MAP Violations The Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) is the lowest price at which a product can be sold. However, e-commerce sellers often indulge in MAP violations for clearing stocks, building a market presence, attracting new customers, etc. Doing so damages the brand’s reputation in the eyes of the consumers and creates a bad price perception. Moreover, legitimate sellers and resellers associated with the brand lose their faith and seek products of their competitors that can keep their reputation and price perception intact while maintaining their share of the sale. Moreover, price perception is one of the leading reasons consumers can lose faith in a brand. Imagine an iPhone 13 available for Rs 30,000, which is less than half its existing market price across e-commerce platforms. If consumers no longer have faith in the brand, the product demand shifts towards the competition, and resellers/sellers would want to get associated with them. Implementing pricing intelligence through automated technology like eCom Competitive Analytics helps to sight instances of MAP violations in real-time and fight back against them by flagging, reporting, or revoking them on e-commerce platforms. Identifies Counterfeit Sellers A pricing insight solution such as mScanIt shows in-depth reports on prices and types of sellers across e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, BlinkIt, BigBasket, etc. Tracking prices helps your brands to know if a new seller has recently launched your product listing at discounts, causing a MAP violation. Your authorized partners would lose their profits due to unauthorized or counterfeit product sellers. The bigger impact would fall on the brand reputation and create negative publicity on the e-commerce platform towards your brands, losing out even a loyal customer base. eCom Competitive Analysis also offers the chance to set alerts or notifications to identify similar instances and take measures against counterfeit sellers. Revoking fake products is necessary and an everyday task that requires a solution that can deliver real-time reporting, a feature offered by mScanIt. Boosts the Customer Base Recognizing the pricing mistakes and building pricing strategies using real-time competitor & brand data can certainly help to boost the customer base. For example, tracking competitors’ prices can reveal the best prices across e-commerce stores for promotions such as deals, offers, discounts, etc.,

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Are You Using Your Digital Marketing Budgets for Paying Your Offline Orders?

Leave a Comment / Ad Traffic Validation, Blog / Ritu Khanna

Yes, this is one of the digital ad frauds that the affiliate networks are doing, and the advertisers end up paying for orders that are not online orders. As a result, offline orders get cannibalized into online orders, and marketing budgets are drained. Apart from the loss of digital marketing budgets, the advertiser pays online offers/discounts for these offline orders. How is this Fraud Happening? In the below graph, a fraud affiliate has used a Bot to send spiked traffic during a specific hour of the day to control the conversion ratio. However, orders are placed during the whole day from two devices only. As a result, the flat line conversion rate is at 26%, in which orders are coming from two devices (offline cannibalizing). However, the spiked traffic conversion rate is 2%, in which orders are all coming from the same two devices. This clarifies that this traffic is purposely spiked in this hour to control the overall conversion ratio. Actual repetitive events are coming from visits. Moreover, these visits are from the same desktop and IP, which indicates that the visits are coming from the exact location, and offline orders are getting punched in. These orders can be cash on deliveries and canceled at any time or a meager value that adds nothing to the bottom line. What Does the Network Achieve? ● Advertisers Make Payouts Affiliates team up with the retailer to earn commission from advertisers by completing the KPIs of a campaign by unethical means, which are other than digital sources. This happens when a retailer places orders using affiliate and referral links. The affiliate receives a monetary benefit from the advertiser for delivering high conversion rates or confirmed orders. Moreover, most affiliates receive a fixed payout from the advertiser for delivering confirmed purchases. But, on the other hand, the “order value” is not often set. Therefore, the affiliate could receive a payout of Rs 20,000 or Rs 200/100 order, whereas the order value could be as low as Rs 50/order or Rs 5,000 for 100 orders. Assuming the affiliate pays a fixed amount to the retailer for placing the order, let’s say Rs 5,000, the fraudulent affiliate still makes Rs 15,000. Moreover, the retailer can place CODs and reject or cancel online orders. So, the advertiser might not even receive money but must make payouts to the fraud affiliate. Therefore, the advertiser loses money for non-online orders. ● Loss of Commission/Offer/Discount on Online Orders The retailer partnered up with the affiliates to get a better-discounted value on their sale. They also can resell the products to their offline customers at the MRP. As a result, the retailer is making money by reselling products and even receives money from the fraud affiliate for placing the orders. mFilterIt & Ad Fraud Solution checks for retailers creating multiple fake profiles on e-commerce apps by detecting their location and device as it remains constant. By detecting such anomalies, brands can avoid cannibalizing their online orders and making commission payouts for offline orders to fraudulent retailers. What Losses Do Advertisers Incur? ● Offline Orders Get Cannibalized The retailer orders for multiple customers by creating various profiles with a single delivery location. Therefore, the retailer cannibalizes online orders offline and makes additional money by reselling at MRP to offline customers after availing of online discounts/offers. On the other hand, the brand suffers a loss as it doesn’t expand its customer base. Moreover, the advertiser fails to explore the scope of areas with the demand, as the existing customer base lies with the retailer. Furthermore, the advertiser only receives a signal that a single location has high demand when the reality is different. ● Digital Marketing Budgets Incur Offline Order Payments Through their digital marketing budget, brands make payouts to affiliates and retailers. As mentioned earlier, the retailer places the order using the fraud affiliate and resources, and the fraud affiliate shares a portion of the earned commission with the retailer. Moreover, the retailer will likely resell these orders at MRP to offline customers and earn more money from the sale. There were no payouts required for these offline orders as the affiliate is incentivizing retailers for placing orders, a.k.a., incentive fraud. Furthermore, the affiliate hides the peaking conversion rate by using bots to deliver high traffic within certain time intervals. For example, an affiliate spikes 1000 visits using bots and displays a 100% conversion rate. As such, CVR can never achieve its full scale. On the other hand, legit affiliates have a 1-1.5% CVR. Therefore, such a high CVR indicates ad fraud and is only done by fraud affiliates to hide their fraud CVR. In reality, the fraud affiliate might be using 100 visits to deliver 100 purchases. Therefore, advertisers are losing the marketing budgets by paying commissions to fraud affiliates and retailers. ● Derails Reachability to Potential New Customers The fraud affiliate uses a retailer to create multiple profiles and place orders at the exact location. As a result, the advertiser fails to build a new customer base. Moreover, the customer base created by the advertiser is also displaying falsified information, as the same retailer creates the profile. Additionally, we can say that fake users also avail of discounts/ offers. Moreover, the advertiser pays a commission to the fraud affiliate for delivering bot traffic and not a single customer. Such partnerships between affiliates and retailers drain the marketing budget to attract legitimate customers from different locations. Furthermore, the advertiser may attract zero customers if the retailer cancels the orders. Takeaway Partnerships between affiliates and retailers are cannibalizing offline orders as online. As a result, brands and advertisers lose their marketing budgets to commission payouts. Also, it leads to warped marketing analytics and polluted business numbers. Putting an end to this is possible by detecting ad fraud, especially incent fraud in marketing campaigns. mFilterIt ad fraud solution detects any sudden spike in online traffic and displays the source credentials to advertisers. As a result, advertisers can recognize the fraud affiliate and attract a new

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Brand Infringement: Impact of Copycat Apps

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

Originality or uniqueness is one of the contributing factors in forming brand identity. Consumers resonate with brands and foster relationships based on this. Any person stealing a brand, such as an app, puts the reputation at stake and diminishes credibility. A tarnished reputation drives users away from a brand and causes a loss of revenue. Unfortunately, the implications of brand infringement through copycat apps don’t nearly stop at this point. Fraudsters use this as an opportunity for financial and identity theft by selling the user details on the dark web to acquire money and maliciously attacking devices. Brands and users often become victims of cloned apps on third-party stores. Therefore, putting an end to brand infringement through duplicated apps has become highly essential. Brands should keep a constant lookout for any form of infringement to save their consumer community. 5 Negative Impacts of Copycat Apps for Brands ● Cultivates a Culture of Distrust Most copycat apps are hard to tell apart from the original app to a user. Moreover, users become vulnerable to cloned apps as fraudsters package these apps with unbelievable offers and deep discounts on the original app. However, fraudsters end up tarnishing the brand and goodwill. For example, a cloned app could sell free access to OTT platforms post-registration but never provide access. Furthermore, the original app owner is spending millions or billions of dollars annually to deliver a good User Experience (UX); however, fraudsters are not worried about this. Instead, cybercriminals use this opportunity to commit identity/financial theft and implicate the brand in the process. After experiencing false promises/bad UX, the user gets agitated and shares a bad review against the brand. Brands unaware of cloned apps become too late to address consumer issues and, once again, lose customer loyalty. They even experience a high percentage of user drop-offs on their original app. In addition, the troll of bad reviews creates bad publicity and spoils the reputation. ● Brands Lose Edge Over Their Competition Brands work relentlessly to become leaders in their field. Unfortunately, cloned apps destroy their leadership goals by diminishing their value in the eyes of the users. As a result, users quickly switch to the second-best alternative which is a more trustworthy brand. The consumer is spoilt with choices across product/ service categories. One bad experience can snowball into multiple others in a matter of time. One brand mistake is another brand opportunity window in this ruthless world. Damages due to impersonation take longer to recover than anticipated. It is in the interest of the brand to keep its ears and eyes open to keep its digital assets secured at all times in the digital ecosystem. ● Leads to Account Takeover (ATO) Users unwaveringly register on a duplicate app, log in to their accounts using their credentials, and make their accounts susceptible to fraud. The cybercriminal uses the credentials of the new users to log into the original app, change email/phone numbers, and overtake the user account. Moreover, fraudsters obtain access to financial details like saved debit/credit cards linked to payment partners and digital wallets and engage in financial fraud. Cybercriminals end up selling such creds on the deep/dark web for monetary gain. Fake apps are also laced with malware to acquire OTPs and passwords by accessing the device messages. Fraudsters access other apps replace the email id/phone number, and block the original user from their accounts. Fraudsters, once again, steal user identities and credentials loaded on such apps. Therefore, multiple brands face the consequences of such ATOs as consumers raise complaints/claims on forums and boards. ● Inflates Marketing Budget for Revamping Reputation Customer acquisition is one of the most uphill tasks for any brand. Once the copycat apps hamper the brand reputation, restoring it becomes challenging, and twice as much effort is to win back customers if they are lucky. Reacquiring lost customers and building inroads for new consumers can increase ad budgets phenomenally. It is a double-edged sword that the brand needs to combat. Restoring faith/trust is both time and money-consuming. Hence a preventive approach works better. ● Strong-arms App Stores The responsibility of not removing the replicated apps falls on the app stores. For example, in 2020, Google Play Store removed 600 copycat apps that deliberately covered user devices with full-screen ad pop-ups. Unfortunately, third-party app stores don’t monitor cloned apps constantly like Google Play and Apple stores. Therefore, brands blame such stores for not removing the apps that cause brand infringement. Unfortunately, users’ trust in the brand is not restored until the complaints are resolved, or the app store removes the cloned apps. However, recovering from irreparable trust damage becomes challenging for brands even after taking measures to resolve the problem. Solution of Brand Infringement from Copycat Apps mFilterIt & Brand Safety & Infringement solution, a state-of-the-art Open Source Intelligence system that leverages AI & ML driven technology and is backed by a repository created by mFilterIt&3B+ device coverage & blacklist databases to identify brand infringements like cloned apps across the digital landscape. It checks for any instances of replicated apps across the Google Play, Apple, and OTT stores. Moreover, the solution checks for duped apps advertised on fake websites, social media sites, and apps with incent walls. Therefore, brands can maintain their online reputation and credibility and avoid the blowbacks of duplicated apps. Conclusion Safeguarding a brand reputation increases consumer trust and boosts engagement. But unfortunately, fraudsters have found a loophole to attack brands’ apps by copying them and relishing monetary benefits. The brands face direct consequences by not removing the duplicated apps from stores and revamping the brand reputation becomes challenging. Therefore, the need to use a brand safety solution that incorporates measures to fight back against brand infringement from copycat apps has strongly risen. mFilterIt & Brand Hygiene Protection undertakes measures to provide overall safety to the brand by identifying the culprits and taking down infringed assets. Get in touch to learn more about the Brand Infringement.

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