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Is Cyber Security Now Synonymous to Brand Safety?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

Lessons from Facebook Malware threats on verified account A recent incident of cybercriminals sending out fake copyright complaint notifications to verified Facebook users has pointed out an extremely neglected, ignored, and underrated aspect of the digital ecosystem- Can a cybersecurity issue become a brand safety issue and vice-versa? In the quoted incident, these criminals are targeting verified accounts of Facebook users (politicians, celebrities, and government officials) and sending notifications in the name of the Facebook security team. The notification states that the (targeted) user’s page is non-compliant with the terms & conditions of Facebook as other users have reported the page. In order to comply with the Facebook terms and services, the owner has to re-verify their account. The notification contains a malicious link that can potentially (not just) harm the device, hijack it, steal personal information such as bank login details, web browsing history, initiate surveillance, and many more issues which are beyond imagination. Let us try to break down each and every aspect in finer detail to scan the impending disaster. To begin with, we’ll first understand the Brand Safety and infringement element. With cybercriminals sending out notifications on the pretext of Facebook’s Security Team, the user may as well trust these notifications since scammers have veiled their identity behind a big brand (jeopardizing Facebook’s Brand Safety). Little do the users and brands realize that the trust and goodwill the brand uphold and maintains with its users will soon be shattered once it is learned that the entire scheme is a fraud. The criminals have intentionally infringed the brand’s name, logo, and reputation to carry out this fraud scheme. Now, these cybercriminals are specifically targeting verified users on Facebook which becomes a great threat to their (targeted user’s) brand safety. Hypothetically, if a government official or a celebrity clicks on the link, what could be the possible scenarios? The malware will hijack the device of the user Steal bank details and commit a financial fraud Unimaginable serious (and potentially dangerous scenarios) with the stolen identity Wipe out their bank account to fund terrorism Breach privacy and initiate surveillance, a national security threat These scenarios are not based on the movie “Eagle Eye” but real threats which await the nation at large. Putting numbers in perspective 760 million Smartphone users Around 630 million active internet users 448 million active social media users These numbers represent a massive playground for fraudsters to infiltrate the digital ecosystem and commit fraud. Phishing, malware, domain spoofing, brand impersonation, SMS fraud, fake web pages, are all some common types of threats which are becoming a cause to worry. The threats today are much larger than just financial loss. India alone witnessed 1.16 million cases of cyber-security issues in 2020 and there’s been no dearth of more cases. Remember Paytm’s KYC fraud? KBC WhatsApp Fraud, fake Flipkart’s big billion sale page issues? Every brand, every consumer needs brand safety solutions, from bigger brands to personal brands, from the president of the nation to a commoner in the state, this wave of brand safety and cyber security issues affects all the people in the ecosystem. Accelerated digital adoption, Covid19, ever-evolving technology, they’re all contributing to the expanding digital threat landscape. Brands are thriving on digital to reach their customers and fraudsters are simply following places where money flows- digital ecosystem. It’s about time where brands, consumers, cyber security experts and economies together understand the broader context of brand safety and address the impending disaster before its too late.

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How Does Your Ad Campaign Work?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Advertising /

The traditional methods of measuring the success of an ad campaign might not work for brands trying to build a market reputation. Primarily, the most common metrics of measuring ad campaigns are brand recognition, awareness, and considerations. These are based on ad views, click-through ratio (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), conversion rate, return on advertising spend (ROAS), social media sentiment, and earned mentions. Unfortunately, marketers fail to account ad fraud metrics into these brand campaigns, and therefore, the results are untrue and lead to a loss of revenue. Moreover, fraudsters use the ignorance of marketers from either startups or big brands to their advantage through domain spoofing, click spamming, click injection, and other fraudulent practices. Ad fraud is an industry-agnostic problem. Fraud is getting detected in BFSI, OTT & Media, Gaming & Ed Tech to the extent of 35-45% both on apps and on the web. As a result, the reachability to the end-user diminishes, cost per keyword/ clicks/ conversions, etc., inflate, marketing strategies become misconstrued, and brand reputation tarnishes. Cybercriminals even collect the personal information of potential consumers and earn additional revenue by showing higher traffic/clicks through these malpractices. According to a report, ad fraud would lead to a loss of $44 billion by the end of 2021. Must Read: Rising Menace of Ad Fraud in MENA Region The Success Metrics of an Ad Campaign ● CTR and CPC The average CTR across all industries is 1.9% for search ads and 0.35% for display ads. Technology has the highest CTR of 0.84% on Google Display Network, whereas dating & personal tops the search CTR with 3.4%. Presently, the average CPC for display ads is $0.58 and $2.32 for search ads. Employment services reap the highest CPC of $1.66 for GDN and bear the highest CPC for search ads, i.e., $4.20. Our analysts suggest that marketing campaigns have 15-25% of ad frauds. Therefore, recognizing such frauds can result in saving significant ad spending. Moreover, the results would become more eminent and consumer-driven. Our experts follow a deep insight approach for an ad campaign focusing on clicks, events, conversions, etc. Therefore, the ad spending would deliver the expected results at lower costs. ● Conversion Rate The average conversion rate states the total conversions after running an ad. A high conversion rate signifies that the campaign is running effectively by delivering more leads/customers. According to WordStream, the average conversion rate of Google display ads is 0.57%, whereas it is 4.40% for search ads. Ads can have a low conversion rate for three reasons; namely, ad channels have a poor user experience (UX), ads not reaching the relevant audience, and issues with security certificates. A study suggests that enhancing UX increased sales for 74% of business owners. Similarly, programmatic display ads can publish on platforms unsuitable for the audience and tarnish a brand reputation or low reachability. ● Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) As the name suggests, CPA is the cost incurred by a brand after completing an action, such as event registration. According to research, the average CPA for display ads is $60.76 and $59.18 for search ads. Fraudsters often use the practice of cookie stuffing for deliberately obtaining ad attributions. Often a user browser is stuffed with unalarming browsing cookies for delivering optimum experience, even from unrelated advertising sites. Therefore, MMP or the attribution tool often mistakes the attribution of a paid action to the cookie, mostly resulting from missing information or technical errors. The cybercriminal makes use of these mistakes by stealing the attribution and getting paid for false advertising. Such wrongdoings are common across industries, and therefore, there is a need to keep these aspects in check. mFilterIt’s Ad Fraud Solution detects & prevents such actions of publishers on app/web and saves up to 15-25% on ad spending. The ML and human feed-based model focus on duplicate IP, fake devices, incorrect regions, and other touchpoints to determine digital ad frauds. Takeaway Every company running digital campaigns, from the largest spenders to the new-age startups, they’re all bleeding precious marketing spends on account of ad fraud. From affiliate traffic to walled gardens, fraud is omnipresent. The level of ad fraud may vary between channels, but the size of the problem is huge enough for advertisers to improve their ROI by taking action against it. From media marketing campaigns to performance-driven campaigns, the scope of fraud today encompasses the entire digital landscape. Finally, advertisers assume that more “trusted” partners have tools and checks in place to protect against this menace. While that is generally true, unfortunately, the level of protection and the detection of fraud is very superficial. It results in fraud identification of only the basic minimal type, and the advanced cases are ignored or missed. The problem intensifies when we go deeper to find out that ad fraud is not just an IVT issue anymore. It’s not that fraud is low; it’s just that fraud uncovering is low. There’s more to it that is better disguised owing to sophisticated technologies; hence basic fraud detection technology sees less and less of it. We at mFilterIt combat these fraudulent activities in real-time and help drive the media quality and effectiveness. We detect and prevent abnormal patterns and take corrective actions on the go. While very bad traffic is easy to pinpoint and weed out, very good traffic can equally be a problem. By conducting continuous analysis and research, we give precise information on the sites, apps, and devices responsible for malicious activities. We unleash the power of machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence to extract the best out of the marketing campaigns and protect the advertisers in virtually real-time, and better the ROAS.

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Rising Menace of Ad Fraud in the MENA Region

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region digital advertising has recently witnessed widespread adoption, whether from the consumer’s end or by a brand. This has led to the expansion of digital advertising landscape in the region. However, ad fraud is proving to be the major hurdle in the evolving ad landscape. The accelerated adoption has given businesses the much-needed push to grab a large share of their business by reaching to their customers who are now operating online. The digital Ad spend in the MENA region has touched $6,25 billion with 13,6% YoY growth. It’s a faster-growing market, among digital ad spend video ad category dominates at 50% of the total digital investment. Ad Fraud in the MENA Region The MENA digital advertising and marketing ecosystem stood at US$8.11 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach US$17.36 billion by 2029.  In the projected period of 2024-2029, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.39%. The growing smartphone and internet penetration is leading to such exponential rise in the digital advertising market. As much as businesses have profited from leveraging digital advertising as a tool to reach out to their potential target audience, they’re often negligent or unaware of a bigger threat looming over their marketing budgets- ad fraud. The menace of Ad fraud is the major roadblock in the growth of the Advertising ecosystem in MENA region. It is eating out their targeted reach to actual customers, decreasing a brand’s ROAS, and costing millions to marketers. The unfortunate truth is that many aspects of digital marketing have been pervaded with fraud The ad-fraud economy is now named one of the biggest markets for organized crime worth a staggering $50 billion. In 2020, digital media accounted for 70% of spending on MENA ad space 2020 whereas online ad fraud has risen by 46% in the MENA region since the beginning of the pandemic. Challenges in combating Ad fraud in the MENA Region This highlights a potent challenge that brands have been reeling under. Brands have a large pool of budgets allocated towards digital spending and it becomes imperative for marketers to ensure that every dollar spent yields returns by maximizing ‘real’ engagement. Fraudulent activities such as click spamming, domain spoofing, and fake installs among others can manipulate the campaign which directly impacts the advertiser’s ability to generate ROI. Fraudsters have an army of bots at their disposal to infiltrate the campaigns and eat away the budgets that otherwise be used to target human users. As the digital world battles this complex phenomenon of ad fraud, there have been constant advancements in technological tools that build solutions to deter these fraudsters masquerading behind digital screens. Today, ad fraud is common across all channels and devices. With more and more sophisticated forms of bot attacks and nefarious criminal activities engulfing the digital campaigns and becoming an evolving threat to the MENA region, mFilterIt takes pride in being a TAG-verified member where our technologies are backed by machine learning technology and advanced algorithms that provide real-time updates that weed out such attacks from the advertising campaigns and ensure that every dollar spent is every dollar earned. TAG is having a significant impact on reducing ad fraud across the world – the USA, key markets in Europe, and many markets in the Asia-Pacific region. This could save companies millions of dollars in advertising spend. Despite knowing that ad fraud is very real, for many in the industry, implementing strategies to combat the issue is an abstract concept. Conclusion Brands must take responsibility for their own online safety – safeguard their precious digital spends from fraudsters who’re waiting to pocket your ad spends and deploy solutions to tackle this ever-evolving issue. A close examination of fraud on real time will help marketers and advertisers optimize conversions, reduce cost, and drive real human engagement. Ad fraud is a menace, and the ecosystem needs to come together to fight this battle as one single entity and simultaneously anticipate where it may arise next. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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5 Threats to Watch Out for this Black Friday 2021

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

The 2021 Black Friday is touted to become the largest retail event in the MENA region (the Middle East and North America) with consumers spending as much as $6 billion in online shopping. Research has shown that 65% of purchases will be in the fashion, grocery, and home sectors! Where there is money, there is fraud. This exciting quarter has also presented an opportunity for fraudsters to trick consumers by defrauding them in the smartest ways possible to pocket their spending. Covid19 has further opened doors to online warfare as consumers are now shopping online to avoid crowds therefore, consumers, in their fervor to grab the best deal, don’t take necessary precautions to protect their personal and financial information. Here’s are some threats to look out for before you jump with excitement about grabbing the hottest deal of the Black Friday Sale 2021: 1. Don’t click that link on your mail It’s the season of promotions and sales. Brands woo their customers with mouthwatering deals and unbeatable offers. But is the deal too good to be true? “iPhone 13 pro at 1200 SAR! Click here to grab the deal before the black Friday sale ends” Luring customers with such deals is a fraudsters’ favorite way to trick you into divulging your financial information easily. Such mails are commonly referred to as ‘phishing emails’. These criminals create fake email addresses and fake sites on the pretext of the brand and send emails on their behalf. These links contain malicious content which can harm your device and hijack it. When you click on the link, you’re taken to a fake lookalike website, and as soon as you enter your bank details and other information, voila! You’re hacked! Make sure to identify the sender’s address on the mail and confirm the authenticity of the webpage you land on. 2. Try your luck ‘lucky wheel contest’ This does bring back the nostalgia when as kids the spinning wheel contest gave you butterflies, and the anticipation of winning was the adrenaline rush. But wait, are these contests genuine anymore, especially in the digital world? During Black Friday sales promotions, online contests are run to grab customer attention, but fraudsters leverage it to collect your personal data and empty your bank accounts. Each section of the wheel guarantees a prize, a plasma TV, a smartphone, or maybe a car! Beware! Do not enter such contests which guarantee prizes because that may just be your last! 3. Fake social media messages Another common trick in a fraudster’s scamming hat is defrauding customers by sending out fake messages on social media. Once they get hold of someone’s contact list via WhatsApp or Facebook messenger, they send messages citing that some online store is giving away pre-loaded gift cards. All one has to do is follow the link and enter their personal information to get access to the gift card. Keep your eyes open! These links contain viruses that hack into your device, and they can then commit financial fraud by using your details. 4. Those nasty pop-ups and fake ads Spreading viruses and malware aren’t restricted to phishing emails. They take shapes and forms on the internet in the form of pop-ups and advertisements- generally referred to as malvertising. Such ads send you to web pages that ask for personal data and also infect the device with a wide range of harmful programs- spyware, ransomware, adware, and more. Compromising your device safety and personal data due to ad fraud is not the right way to shop this Black Friday. 5. Fake product delivery Getting your hands on something you’ve been longing for at the best price possible is a dream come true for every shopper. Couple it for free delivery, now that’s how your festival season is made. As happy as one could get, you enter your details, home address, and bank account details on an online store (without a second look at the URL), awaiting your most prized Gucci bag. As the parcel is delivered to you, it suddenly hits you that the product is not genuine but a copy of the brand you purchased! Did you basically end up paying a bomb, even in the sale, to get hold of a fake product? Black Friday sales are marred with fake product deliveries so always ensure that you have the right website with actual customer care support, in case there’s an issue with your product delivery. Luckily, mFilterIt specializes in filtering distrust in the digital ecosystem and adding a layer of trust for the consumers and brands alike with ad-fraud detection and prevention solutions. The evolution of technology has made it possible to weed out such fraudsters from the ecosystem and safeguard your money. It is becoming more important than ever to deploy safety measures in the form of tools and solutions which help maintain the trust between the consumer and the brand. Having said that, enjoy the black Friday sale but keep your eyes open!

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Ad Fraud Through Domain Spoofing: What and Why Should You Know?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

Domain spoofing is a criminal act of impersonating a high-quality platform using a low-quality website to obtain programmatic bids. In Sep 2020, MultiTerra was accused of obtaining a monthly revenue of $1 million by using this malicious method for their ad inventory. The organization is a top-rated ad publisher on mobile and connected TVs or CTVs. The key reason for the attack was high CPMs or ad rates. Botnets generated almost three million daily fake ad requests with an average of fifty impressions per nine premium publishing apps using a single IP impersonating sixteen smartphones. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) declared a loss of $5.8 billion in May 2019 after analyzing 27 billion ad impression results of 50 online ad marketers. However, Juniper Research disagrees with this result and estimated a global loss of $42 billion through ad frauds. Another study suggests that domain spoofing through 404bot ad frauds caused a loss exceeding $15 million in 2018. These figures tremendously affected advertisers, marketers, and publishers. 3 Types of Ad Frauds Involving Domain Spoofing The liability of ad fraud falls directly on the publishers, and they deal by manipulating ad tags. Unfortunately, they are not rewarded for their predicted profits if caught in the act. Moreover, advertisers and marketers encounter major monetary and consumer losses. Some of the most common ad frauds involving domain spoofing are as follows: ● Ad Tag Modification A publisher can promise a constant audience on a high-quality ad space but use sub-par websites in the background by modifying ad tags. The advertisers believe that their results appear from a high-quality platform. Ad tags are used to track the publisher’s ad effectiveness on the company website. ● Ad Injection Another common practice by fraudsters is injecting ads into the end-user browser when they visit specific websites or accidentally click a download button. The malware or infected ads use codes for displaying ads not owned by the publishers. ● Custom Browsers Scammers also engage in websites operational only on custom browsers. They spoof URLs by showing premium platforms to advertisers. The latter conduct transactions without knowing that it is just a disguise. Until 2017, authorization was a concern for websites because fraud rings were operating Hypbot and Methbot. Advertisers lost more than a million dollars yearly because of these scams. They came to a halt after the introduction of the “ads.txt” file. This step taken by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) helped to combat programmatic advertising spoofing by tracking ad inventory. Unfortunately, the problem diminished significantly but remained because advertisers failed to keep track of their inventory and gave rise to the 404bot scammers. The fraudsters used this information to target unaware buyers by spoofing publisher domains. The scheme is named after the 404-page appearance running in the background and appearing as an authorized seller to the advertiser. Domain Spoofing Attack Indicators The easiest method of identifying a domain spoofing attack is by checking the details of URLs. Match the URL against the one generated by the organization and check for discrepancies like misplaced or extra characters. Analytics can help in recognizing such threats to the company. Advertisers, marketers, and publishers can check real domain names through analytics. By doing so, they can check the real-time bidding traffic. Moreover, the analysts can even verify the cost-per-mille (CPM). The latter is commonly referred to as cost-per-thousand (CPT) and used by advertisers as a monetary expenditure indicator for every thousand impressions or views. 3 Methods of Avoiding Ad Campaign Domain Spoofing Domain spoofing drastically affects ad campaign leads and the larger impact falls on the brand reputation. Fortunately, a few methods can help to avoid ad campaign domain and email spoofing: ● Verify Publishers Review the publisher background before making an ad placement bidding by asking for transparency and checking online or offline reviews. Ensure the publisher is not questionable and ask the third party to conduct an online background check before making any transactions. ● Use Ads.txt File Websites that don’t update “ads.txt” file regularly become prone to domain spoofing attacks. Reconciling the same, the “Authorized Digital Sellers” file, owned by the publisher, helps in the management of authorized ad inventory. Comparing information on ads.txt and sellers. SON files help to learn about publisher inventory. The sellers.json file represents ad inventory directly authorized for the sellers. ● Avail the Services of Ad Fraud Detection Company mFilterIt is one of the leading organizations for brand management through mobile and web ad fraud detection and analyzing traffic. The ad fraud suite of the organization weeds out fake traffic ad sources and advertisers have saved 36% on campaigns by using this suite. Conclusion Ad frauds through domain and email spoofing have become like the ongoing COVID-19 virus. It has become crucial to fight against scammers posing as publishers or advertisers to build or maintain brand reputation and customer base.

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Your Checklist to a Perfect Black Friday Sale Campaign

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It’s that time of the year again! Leaves turn to gold, nights get longer, and Black Friday Sale walks the red carpet! Brands shower their consumers with mouth-watering deals; bargain hunters chase and scout the digital web to grab the best offer. This time of the year is indeed the most awaited season for brands and consumers alike, as well as for online scammers because the festival season becomes a playground for their nefarious activities. Owing to Covid19, there’s been a splurge in online buyers in order to minimize the risk of contracting the disease. With the onset of the festival season, the trend is here to continue as consumers will be shopping for holiday season and gifts at the comfort of their homes. As brands gear up to make the most out of the festival season by maintaining checks and balances across customer service, staffing, and delivery, they also need to ensure that their business is protected against fulfilling inventory requirements and fraud spikes. Festival season becomes a critical period for advertisers as well. In order to grab consumer attention and compete in a cut-throat competition, they spend a significant part of their budget in Q4, with as much as 40-50% payouts expected to go towards Black Friday campaigns. The exponential rise in digital ad spending also needs to be looked at in tandem with the rise in ad fraud during the holiday season. Last year, the US economy witnessed an upsurge in digital ad spending during the holiday season with as much as 3.1x more spending on ecommerce channels, 2.9x on paid search, and 2.1x on social advertising. The Americans spent 116.6 million hours shopping online during Black Friday thus marking 2020 as the second biggest online shopping day in history. Higher traffic coupled with high ad spending translated into more opportunities for seasonal ad fraud to take place. Across the U.S., $86 million was reported lost in 2020 from frauds. During the Black Friday promotions when prices are slashed to drive sales, it attracts fraudsters who post fake advertisements (posing as trusted brands). The consumers never receive the goods they ordered but they’ve (unintentionally) shared their personal information including card details. This not only affects the consumer but affects the reputation and goodwill of a brand. Studies have indicated that exposure to ad fraud during the Q4 is 17% higher than the rest of the year, affecting marketing budgets and brand safety. Wasted Ad Spend Fraudsters enjoy the revenue share of a marketers’ budget which would otherwise be spent on acquiring real (real human) users. For instance, marketers can see a significant number of clicks on their advertisement but with little-to-no conversions. This is because fraudsters redirect or click spam in order to spoof the analytics and the marketers are left wondering. In one such scenario, fraudsters fired an enormous number of clicks to claim app installs along with the event of that install. A UAE-based fintech app witnessed 9 billion clicks accounting for app installs. The company was paying out on real account opening post verification. Guess UAE’s population- less than 10 million! Affiliate Fraud and Competition Bidding Fraud Ensuring compliance with your brand keywords on Search is extremely critical, especially during the festive season. One could be letting go of their ‘almost’ organic users being stolen and getting them back as ‘inorganic’ users via affiliates. The affiliates start bidding on your brand keywords and take the user back to the original website, but with the UTM parameters of the affiliate attached. In short, your organic users are now inorganic users and you end up paying for your own users to your affiliates. The bid rates of the branded keywords also increase as the competition is bidding against the same brand keywords, opening doors to invalid/bot traffic. Ultimately, everyone makes money from the advertiser, at the cost of the advertiser. Messed Up Analytics Data is the new oil. The decision-makers rely on data to drive their strategic decisions. But, what if the data is spoofed and you do not know what’s working and what’s not? Ad fraud ruins the purity of the analytics: skewed data means that the right decisions cannot be taken to drive sales and make the most out of the black Friday campaigns. Fraudsters’ actions of pixel stuffing will signify high impressions but low click-through. Thus the inference drawn by marketers would be that the ad is not targeted or well designed and they’ll rethink the campaign, which otherwise would work perfectly well. Therefore skewed campaign statistics will result in bad strategy management resulting in negative sales or diminished ROI. Ad fraud is pervasive. Higher the spend, higher the presence of fraud. This holiday season is all about safeguarding your campaigns from fraudulent elements to make the most out of your bottom line and also increase your ROAS. Happy and safe festival greetings!

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Brand Safety : A Paradigm Shift in the Digital Age

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Using specialised BOTs powered with AI and ML, real time digital policing is helping brands to safeguard their identity, reputation, and positioning. When we think of BOTs we associate them with all negative things happening around. For instance, fake engagements and snowballing of fake content. However, the reality is BOTs are also divided like humans as good and bad depending on what they are programmed to do. Digital is no longer a flirting affair for brands. It’s a serious commitment which not only helps in amplification and outreach but is also used to commerce as well as establish a direct connect with the stakeholders including customers. The D2C ‘wave’ is sailing only because of digital technologies. Today, even traditionally a B2B brand has a direct connect with the end customer. However, nothing is less of challenges and issues. Digital is an always changing space where every second has a new picture and map created by so many contributors together. Some make positive additions, while some nefarious urchins make regressive ‘contributions. In all this, a brand also becomes a party and many-a-times without their knowledge or approvals. But as they say ignorance of law is no excuse. Similarly, brands cannot just shed off the responsibility by acting proactively to safeguard their image, identity, and reputation. Fortunately, the thought has been steered and some proactive digital brands have already started looking for solutions which can effectively and proactively solve the problem. Brands are looking for solutions where they or someone on their behalf could police the entire digital universe and report for any brand thefts, imposters, scams, and other such activities being run in their name. Replicating things digitally is a cake walk. Additionally, there aren’t very stringent laws to tackle them. Even if they are, they aren’t easy to implement. This leaves brands in a kind of helplessness; at least what they feel. However, with the advancements in technology especially with the emergence of deep technologies, it has become to solve this problem very efficiently. We, at mFilterIt are using advanced and specialized BOTs who continuously monitor the web space and report any discrepancy or identity theft issue. These BOTs use some of the very advanced techniques like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for deep-link analysis, text, image and video processing, scenario analysis, contextual analysis and other important tasks that they have to do on-the-go to report for any Brand Safety issue. Brand Safety without the help of advanced technologies is impossible in the digital universe. Contrary to offline, where typically market research and auditing firms are engaged to do an on-foot reporting of similar issues in the physical world, a brand can leverage technology for achieving the same with utmost accuracy and coverage. There cannot be any manual intervention to succeed in Brand Safety in the digital world. A brand may have high value digital ‘enclaves’ which it can monitor manually, but even then, it’s not comprehensively done. Also, Brand Safety is non-negotiable. There must be zero tolerance from the brand regarding Brand Safety. It cannot leave even a single issue unattended, for which there must be first a comprehensive reporting system in place. mFilterit takes pride in filtering out the distrust in the digital ecosystem with a robust Brand Safety, Brand Infringement and Ad fraud solutions. We leverage latest technology and solutions and are today the bandwagon of digital policing in the complex web digital advertising industry. Brand Safety is an emerging area in Martech space, and every brand custodian is increasingly becoming interested in it. It is also bringing in different teams of a brand together which includes digital team, brand team, ecommerce team, legal team, CorpComm team as well as partners including agencies which are engaged for various roles. A brand, which is serious about its digital journey, will have to invest in Brand Safety Solutions and set very high standards to position as one with whom stakeholders including customers, partners, employees and even government have the highest level of comfort to engage. Otherwise, it will not be able to leverage the latent potential of digital which is making brands and businesses boundary less opening wide horizons of fortune empowering their journey of becoming sustainable unicorns and decacorns. Partner with us today to safeguard your brand to leave a legacy of trust and goodwill!

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Brand Infringement is the Gateway to Brand Safety

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Hands off my brand! The ever-expanding digital landscape invites for a major challenge and threat faced by the brands of today-Brand infringement. The pandemic has further accelerated the threat of this abuse where the consumer and brands are being victims of scams, impersonation, fraud among many such cases of abuse. Brand Infringement is an umbrella term that encompasses brand abuse when there’s an attempt to exploit the reputation or enjoy the goodwill of a brand for profit or any other malicious intent via fraudulent and unlawful schemes: stealing or using brand’s IP assets such as copyrighted works, patents, impersonating the brand, trademark stealing, counterfeit products and much more. Such instances of brand infringement have a direct consequence on brand safety for it hurts the reputation and legitimacy of any established brand. Ensuring brand reputation online is akin to using the Covid vaccine as a protection layer to protect your brand’s legacy in the digital world. Bad actors out in the market are always on the lookout to distort your brand’s reputation and online representation by misguiding YOUR consumers to benefit their motive. These fraudsters ride on consumer trust in the original brand to hoodwink them into buying the fake ones and eat the revenues of the original brand. Research suggests that brand infringement goes beyond simply using a brand’s name: Business name (44%) Web domains (44%) Social media (38%) Online marketplaces (38%) Advertising campaigns (34%) So what are the different ways in which your brand can be a victim of brand infringement, thus comprising your brand safety? Let’s have a look: Trademark and Copyright Infringement • Counterfeit /Replica Products Counterfeit or replicas are those products that are intentionally made to look identical to the original product that belongs to a third party. Such products have the original brand’s trademarked names, logos symbols and are used without authorization of the original brand. It is done with a motive to deceive the customer to believe that their product is genuine FMCG, Pharma, Content, Lifestyle are some sectors where counterfeit cases are rampant. Over 30% of online drugs brought are supposedly fake which is the reason behind the rising death cases in the country. A study also concluded that alcohol, Currency, and FMCG are the top sectors to see cases of counterfeit incidents in the last two years. A spike in cases being reported about fake hand sanitizers, masks, and PPE kits has been observed during the COVID crisis. In another such instance, a case against the largest e-commerce giant was registered for selling counterfeit products on their platform. Cybersquatting • Brand Impersonation Brand impersonation takes place in the form of a phishing attack where the criminals pretend to be representatives of a trusted brand or a company. They send out ‘official’ emails containing malicious content impersonating a bank or any other financial, government organization with the sole aim to gain access to the user’s personal data. Most of these fraudsters also call on behalf of the brand impersonating themselves as customer care representatives and asking for personal information. In a recent known case of a Paytm data leak, fraudsters got hold of the entire customer data. They then shared SMS on ‘behalf’ of Paytm asking users to complete KYC verification. Upon dialing the concerned number mentioned in the SMS, the ‘customer care’ representative asked users to download a ‘Quick support app’ through which they gain mobile access and ultimately rob the consumer of their hard-earned money. Typo-squatting • Fake Sites Typo-squatting essentially entails registering slightly changed variations of domain names of popular websites to divert traffic and reap the benefits of any established website. These scamsters rely on the small errors in spelling committed by the users and then present them with counterfeit products, or even worse, scams and viruses. In one such instance, Flipkart was caught in the whirlwind of fake sites. In 2020, fake advertisements did rounds on various mobile browsers which directed users to the fake Flipkart website. The site had a complete look and feel of the official website and it had products at highly discounted rates, thus duping the user with fake products. Repercussions Losing control of your IP may have devastating consequences for your brand! Revenue loss The title says it all. If a third party is selling products in your name, the revenue is landing in their account and not yours. Depending on the size, and success of the scamster’s business, your brand potentially stands to lose from a few dollars to millions. Reputation loss Consumers often cannot differentiate between a genuine and a counterfeit product. What if they end up buying a counterfeit product or any cheap knock-off, and when they want to contact customer support, there’s no one? Given the fact that it’s not your fault such issues are bound to come back and haunt you. Loss of trust Your brand name and goodwill speaks volume. It has your customer’s trust and they expect quality along with customer support. Your brand spends a lot of time making a name for itself and the same can be shattered with one bad instance. You might not realize the loss in monetary value at the beginning but in the long run, loss of trust impacts your top and bottom line altogether. In the age of social media, everything is a click away. Be it gaining reputation or losing it. Brands are accountable for their brand safety and upholding the trust of their consumers. Intellectual Property (IP) laws exist to ensure that the creator gets due recognition and financial benefit from their creations. Increased digital penetration and adoption have made things difficult to keep track of and protect your brand’s IP. Fraudsters are constantly copy-pasting your hard-earned work to benefit their motives which could have massive losses for your brand. Our Brand hygiene protection marries brand safety with brand infringement issues to give your brand comprehensive online protection. Talk to us now!

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How are Ad Fraud Masterminds Cashing in on the Crypto Mania?

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Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum If you haven’t invested in them, you must have heard of them! All of it (and more) have become the favorite of many. These currencies are heavily invested in, and cryptocurrency exchanges are helping the mass by facilitating the transaction. Cryptocurrency has attracted more eyeballs than the much-awaited Spanish show ‘Money Heist’ in today’s shared virtual world. A term once the prerogative of the ‘elite’ has now cascaded to the masses. Today, the ecosystem, which once had very thin liquidity, is rife with fraudsters and criminals. The advent of legitimate crypto businesses has enabled get-quick-rich schemes. With more and more people becoming involved in the roaring digital monetary mechanism, the cryptocurrency ecosystem has given birth to a new breed of scammers- the crypto ad fraudsters. Are you of the investors interested in buying a Bitcoin or an altcoin? Have you signed up on an exchange? If yes, you’re doing right. But did you happen to check if the exchange is a legitimate one? Fake Exchanges In one such instance, a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, BitKRX, was named to establish itself as the legitimate cryptocurrency arm of the trading platform in Korea-Korea Exchange (KRX). Given KRXs legitimacy and goodwill, BitKRX attracted a large pool of investors. People who (thought they) had invested their hard-earned funds via the platform (whoop!!) the money had vanished. “According to a report, 54% of attacks came from threat actors impersonating brands, employees, and executives on social media. Social media became a favorite attack vector, accounting for 47% of all attacks.” Word of Caution for investors: Always sign up on regulated exchanges. These exchanges have a legitimate online presence: social media, website, customer support. But, what if a fake website, fake social media, and fake customer support are all a set-up? Fake/Lookalike Website A well-known exchange runs an online ad to attract more people to its platform. (*Google has recently allowed crypto ads from exchanges based out of the US to advertise on their platform). Fraudsters also run the same campaign only with a minor difference with their landing page, taking advantage of this opportunity. Upon clicking the ad (which you assumed belongs to the fair exchange), it takes you to a similar looking, professionally designed website with matching details, customer support, and even (fake) social media pages. And once you sign up with all your personal information, including your private key, you may wake up to an empty bank account and zero digital assets. The legit crypto exchange will lose its brand equity where it had no role. The fraudsters duped the customers on the pretext of a legit platform! “Congratulations! You’ve won 6.999 BTC in a lucky draw. Access it now.” Read your mail. You check the sender; it says ‘(take any reputable) xchange.com. Excitedly, you click the link, and you’re redirected to a website that asks you to fill out all the personal details so that the currency adds the currency to your account. But, to facilitate the transaction, a certain amount has to be paid as the transfer fee. Fine! You’d do that, 6.999 BTC after all! And you’re done for good, literally! Did you happen to check the domain name? (We mean the spelling!) Phishing, Typosquatting In one such email scam, a specific crypto exchange targeted millions of mail ids with a similar monetary incentive. The mail read that they had won x amount of Bitcoin in a lottery, and the users can access it via a link. For the victim to withdraw the free Bitcoin, they had to add funds to meet the minimum withdrawal criteria! In June 2020, a notable France-based crypto wallet company’s database was hacked. Over 2 lakh mail addresses were put on websites under hacked databases. Fraud capabilities are endless! As an organization, you must constantly look for such scams and fraud, which may harm your reputation and compromise user safety. Fraud can hurt you at all the places you’re presently online and spoil your reputation, irrespective of your industry. What tools are you using to prevent your reputation and ensure Brand Safety while ensuring your user’s trust? Talk to us now!

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Are Your Affiliates Trustworthy?

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You’re a bank or a brokering organization. It’s that time of the year when you want more and more people to have their bank accounts with you. Or you want more and more people to sign up for a DEMAT account with you. What do you do? Simple! Set up a digital marketing campaign to reach out to your audiences, wherever they are. Look for affiliates who would help to support your ‘sales’. These affiliate marketing strategies help brands increase their sales, visibility, in exchange for a commission when the said objective is increased. It could either be a sales event, a form sign-up event or, in our case an account opening event. The brands maintain an infrastructure for such affiliate marketing program that tracks which affiliate delivered which web users to monitor their credit via an affiliate identifier. When the user clicks on the link provided by the affiliate, there’s a HTTP cookie set in their browser identifying the source though which the user landed on the site. Thus, when the objective of the campaign is fulfilled, which is asking users to sign up for an account with the said bank, the affiliates are rewarded. Simple enough? Absolutely! You spend some amount on these campaigns; on an average one lead acquisition costs around INR 1000. You pay a small commission to these affiliates who would bring customers to you and it’s a win-win situation. You have successfully garnered ‘X’ number of signups with a digital marketing campaign for account opening. But, do not celebrate just yet. You’re yet to be privy to one the biggest scams where all your money spent on these programs might just be a complete waste. mFilterIt got to a task of analyzing the ROAS for a financial institution who ran a campaign for account opening using affiliate marketing strategy. We found out that after spending lakhs of rupees on the campaign, the amount of leads that were acquired were in sync with the amount spend on the advertising. But, it still yielded on result in terms of revenue. How is that possible? Here’s how we figured another affiliate fraud tactic which not only plagues the online world but has now graduated offline. Let’s go back to an era of door-to-door sales. These salesmen convinced the offline user to buy the product, and upon the final purchase, the sales team received their commission. Similarly, what these fraudulent affiliates are doing is that they’re incentivizing their user. They go to random users in the market, ask them to open an account with the bank, and in return they’ll receive ‘x’ amount of money in CASH. Say, an affiliate earns INR 1000 per one account opening, he then incentivizes the user with 200 or 300 in exchange for him to open an account with the said institution. In this case, the end result is justified but post the account opening, there’s no activity which takes place from these accounts. More often than not, the kind of users of who open an account (given the fact that they’re getting INR 300 just to give their information) they have a yearly income of less than 3lakh rupees. Which means that quality of users who’re opening an account with you are not really your target audience. Which also translates into the fact that the amount you’re spending on affiliate marketing program is a complete waste of budget? But how are these fraudsters compensated? The fraudsters share their affiliate link via WhatsApp or mail, therefore when the user clicks on the link from their own device, it is understood that the traffic is diverted through the said affiliate and thus they receive their commission. So when the analytics are deep dived, one can see that the user is real, IP address is real, device is real yet fraud exists. Why? Because these new accounts are as good as dormant accounts and you’re paying people to acquire more such accounts. Ad Fraud detection is way more complex that merely detecting an act of fraud. One needs to analyze a campaign’s success and failures to further understand what helps in maximizing their ROAS. And that’s where we come to your rescue. We’re sure the above case must have piqued your curiosity to finally analyze your campaign’s performance to not only detect fraud but also to analyze ‘such’ ‘non-fraudulent’ activity. Guess who’s a pro at it? Talk to us now!

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