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identity-theft

Explainer: Identity Theft and How Does it Target the Banking Sector?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

With a rise in internet penetration and the adoption of digital means, sophisticated forms of crimes have taken shape in the banking sector. Scammers and fraudsters leverage a plethora of schemes to conduct financial fraud. One of the most pervasive forms of fraud is ‘Identity fraud’, which equally affects customers and banks. A study estimates that 45% of adult internet users in India faced identity theft in one way or the other in 2020. Identity theft does more than compromise customers’ bank accounts. It costs them untold hours that force the customers to change their account passwords meticulously and contact customer care to have the charges revoked. The sophistication of such fraud attempts has forced financial institutions to address identity theft as a top priority. There are varied forms of identity theft and fraud in an online ecosystem that can wreak havoc on the financial status from both the bank and customer’s perspective. Let us understand them in detail and how it targets the banking sector. Types of Identity Theft Fraud 1. Phishing Scammers often send emails and pop-ups that appear from legit banks and credit card companies. The content of the message contains a link that, when clicked, directs the user to a fictitious site created to convince the users to reveal their personal information and banking details. The links direct to an exact-look alike site of the official bank site. 2. Account Takeover Fraud This type of fraud entails when someone else gains access and takes control of your accounts without your knowledge/permission. It can then be used for fraudulent transactions, gain access to other accounts and vital information, transfer money, undertake scrupulous exchanges. Research cites that account takeover fraud accounts for 53% of total frauds online. 3. Senior Identity Theft One of the most prevalent forms of fraud, the scammers target the elderly citizens (most vulnerable to cybercriminals) and trick them into divulging crucial information. The scammers call to ask for passwords and personal details to access the accounts by posing as bank officers and trustworthy allies. 4. Biometric ID Theft Another sophisticated form of fraud, Biometric ID theft, involves stealing or spoofing a user’s physical or behavioral traits to unlock a device- for instance, voice recognition or facial recognition to unlock the device or tap into other devices. This form of theft is a goldmine for hackers, for they get access to digital wallets and additional important information. 5. Synthetic Identity Theft One of the faster-growing forms of fraud, Synthetic Identity theft, is a highly sophisticated crafted fraud that uses personal consumer data (Aadhar card numbers, PAN card, birthdays, addresses) to create new fictitious identities designed to look like actual users with good credit history. The scammers opt-in for numerous financial frauds, opening new bank accounts, applying for loans, defaulting on credit card bills, all on account of a real user’s name, birthday, and address (among others). There is a big playground for hackers and scammers to steal identities and commit identity theft fraud on the pretext of a real user. Apart from opting for fraud solutions, it is imperative to keep a check and monitor the accounts for any suspicious activities.

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ad-integrity

Ad Integrity is No Longer an Issue Native to Digital-First Industries Only

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mFilterIt started its journey with a leading online travel portal as its customer. Today, it has a diverse basket representing different stages of digital evolution. The pandemic has indeed brought digital to the limelight. The above word cloud showcases mFilterIt’s customer engagements that represent a diverse pool of industries using our solutions to validate the digital user and the behavior. This was not the case before. Earlier, ad fraud & brand safety were seen as issues concerning only a few industries like eCommerce OTT, among other digital-only / digital-first sectors. With digital becoming an integral medium or channel of outreach, business, and engagement, all sectors are increasingly becoming conscious of the channel’s challenges. Contrary to the offline channel, the patience for online to show results is minimal. As a result, without making ourselves much aware of the channel and its channels, brands start spending to expect specific results, ranging from acquiring users, making a sales transaction, re-engaging, cross-selling, or simply viewing an ad. In addition to their organic efforts, brands invest in performance-driven marketing activities to maximize the impact of their advertising so that as many potential buyers see a campaign (an ad). There is expected behavior (action) from a user who engages with the campaign. This could be a click, purchase, install, or anything as per the campaign’s objective. (Read a case study about a leading pharma company in India that uses mFilterIt to validate its returns on inorganic spending.) The intent of using mFilterIt across these sectors is the same: establishing the integrity of the advertisements and validating results from the ad campaigns in terms of the reported user behavior. However, each sector has its nuanced flavor. Working with such a diverse pool of clients has helped mFilterIt build a sector-specific knowledge pool that further optimizes the results. For instance, our lead validation tool to verify the genuinity of leads received through a digital campaign validates leads conforming to IRDA guidelines for the insurance sector. It is advisable for every brand joining the digital medium to promote business, acquire leads and transact business, and have ad integrity and performance validation tools in place right from the beginning. There is an approach adopted by a few where they go with the hit-and-trial method and keep on optimizing the spending as per the results of the previous campaign. While it’s an excellent strategy to adopt a data-driven approach, the flip side is that by then, a lot of damage is already done, and now a brand has to spend additionally to undo the impact, which often is irreversible or creates a new set of challenges. For instance, if there is no monitoring of brand safety, it will consume the campaigns in all possibilities on obscene or undesired content sites. The performance results will only show low CTR, which obviously will happen as the campaign isn’t reaching the right audiences. As a post-mortem analysis, a new strategy can be implemented to increase the CTR. Still, the damage that the brand would have undergone by associating with unwanted content will go unnoticed. For adequate integrity and validation solutions, it is essential to have the right blend of technology and domain understanding. mFilterIt, through its comprehensive customer cloud, has acquired knowledge about the nuances of very niche segments. This blend helps it to develop particular algorithms to maximize the results for advertisers and its partners. Hence, it can customize its technology with particular domain requirements. Are you a digital advertiser in BFSI, Automobile, FMCG, Education, OTT, Government, or any other sector? We have purpose-built solutions for you that help you achieve integrity and validation of your digital journey. Contact us today.

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brand-safety

Brand Safety and Celebrity Endorsements

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

A close eye on Brand Safety can help brands as well as celebrities to leverage associations more effectively. Celebrities have their own lives.  They have their own thought process, value systems, and opinions which at times could go against the positioning of a brand they are endorsing.  Also, celebrities are high-interest people, and any action or posture they take, especially after the advent of social media, in all probability also makes the associated brands a party to a possible controversy. Similarly, sometimes a brand gets into serious trouble and the celebrity also starts trending on social media for negative sentiment.  In recent times we had two very widely talked about situations where brands and the celebrities endorsing them postured in opposite directions.  One was when Sourav Ganguly had to undergo heart treatment while he endorses a particular variant of Fortune edible oil which talks about its positive impact on health, especially the heart of a person. At the same time Akshay Kumar, not only features in ‘unlock’ campaigns of the government but also endorses Dabur Chyawanprash as an immunity booster where a specific campaign talks about the protection offered against COVID-19 by the chyawanprash by having 2 spoons of it daily, has also tested positive as per media reports of April 4th. In both situations, the celebrities have fallen to medical conditions which the products they are endorsing claim to offer protection against.  Similarly, some celebrities could be in the midst of any controversy making it difficult for the brands they endorse to manage the situation.  They cannot disassociate themselves and at the same time, they don’t want to harm their brand reputation. Close monitoring of Brand Safety over digital mediums can be an effective way of handling such situations where the damage control can be activated instantaneously helping a brand to minimize the impact.  In such situations, the brands can quickly get a complete view of where such campaigns are appearing which they may want to put on hold for some time till the issue is resolved or goes off the radar of ‘digital miscreants’ who always keep on looking for such issues to start conversations and threads on social media, like Twitter. Likewise, celebrities must understand the brand safety of any brand before they decide to go about endorsing it.  There could be some aberrations that the celebrity can ignore, but if it finds that a brand is habitually putting its brand reputation at risk, the celebrity should choose not to endorse it. This will also add to the reputation of the celebrities who will not be seen as endorsing just for the fee they get. Medical conditions can change at times for anyone including celebrities.  At the same time, there are proven clinical reports for brands to make their claims which they do through ads in which celebrities humanize them.  But we have to understand that most of the claims are not for 100% results.  There is always an iota of opposite behavior expected in terms of effect and results.  Also, the product that is being positioned for protecting against a medical condition never offers umbrella protection. It can at best protect from a few causes, while there could be still a few that may land a person, including the celebrity, in the same medical condition. From a brand reputation management point of view, brands, as well as celebrities, need to have a real-time view of what each other is doing which could attract negative attention from audiences on digital platforms like social media.  Both must have mechanisms in place to monitor each other and pause the association in the interest of long-term association with each other as part of any potential crisis management. Brand Safety solutions can give this real-time intelligence to brands, agencies managing them as well and celebrities to derive maximum out of the association and create a complimenting synergy between the brand and the celebrity.

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brand-safety

Brand Safety is an Ethical Responsibility of the Brand Towards Its Stakeholders

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

“Congratulations! We’re calling from WhatsApp and your number has won a lottery of 25 lakh!” Does this message or call sound familiar? Welcome to the internet or online fraud world, which costs individuals lakhs of rupees. Such scams are continuously evolving, and India alone has witnessed 65% of businesses losing money on account of online fraud. According to NCRB’s Crime in India report, 2019, fraud made up over half the cybercrime cases in the country. In one such case of a cyber scam, fraudsters use WhatsApp to con people off their money. These scammers call themselves representatives of WhatsApp and Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian adaptation of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’) team and inform the victim that their number has won prize money by participating in the quiz. Not only this, but it also informed the victim that names such as Mukesh Ambani, Narendra Modi, and Amitabh Bachchan are funding the prize money. The victim is then asked to deposit somewhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 as tax money or processing fee at SBI bank to enable the KBC team to send the prize money of Rs 25 or Rs 30 lakh. Thousands of individuals have fallen prey to such scams. In the quoted incident, the scammers are banking upon the trust and reputation established by these brands (WhatsApp, Reliance, Amitabh Bachchan, SBI). Companies who only look at this issue from a prism of brand protection miss one central point, ‘Customer is God’. In such scenarios, their customers are being defrauded, phished, and even sold counterfeit goods that they think come from their trusted brands. The internet user base stands at 624 million in India, and India is also WhatsApp’s biggest market with 340 million users. Now, one can only imagine the vastness and extent to which these frauds have penetrated the market. The anonymity being offered by the internet presents an advantage to criminals for they use fake trademarks, tags, emblems, and even bogus certification labels to convince the victim of the genuineness of the brand, often referred to as identity theft or infringement, which again becomes a significant issue for a brand. This also brings to light another component of brand safety, keeping the above incident in mind- privacy. What measures are taken by a brand to ensure that consumer data is held safe and their privacy is honored? With scammers having access to their victims’ personal information and databases, does this not become a significant aspect of brand safety for companies? Brand safety — keeping a brand’s campaign and reputation safe from online frauds and scams — has become one of the most critical components in the marketing industry today. In these incredibly challenging times, brand owners should step up to the plate by deploying necessary brand safety measures- tools to analyze the content and intention of these scams’ fraud detection mechanisms to ensure that they are getting visibility into the threats against the brand. A scammer is doing this under the garb of a brand. This is one of the ‘safest’ frauds for any scammer. A scammer has nothing to lose. The identity created online is fake, and it reaches out to people in the name of a reputed brand. Such fraud happens because everyday internet users entertain such messages only because they have confidence in the brand being infringed. In the example shown in this writeup, the fraudsters use a mix of endorsers who have emotional, social, and business appeal. Such a mix makes the possibility of someone falling to it high. A brand has to act responsibly and ensure its brand cannot be misused or abused by scamsters digitally or otherwise to fraud people who have high esteem for it. Brand safety may not be perceived as having a direct impact on the Balance Sheet and P&L statement (though it has). However, brands must ensure the safety of their name and other trademarks and set it out as a practice of business ethics – a set of principles governing the conduct of a business. The current situation presents a ‘dream opportunity for scammers and a nightmare for brand owners’ to identify these threats in real time. Absolute brand safety lies in the blending of protective elements. Stay vigilant! Check out how we at mFilterIt help you achieve Brand Safety. Do you want to know more about our Brand Safety solutions, fill up your details, and we will reach out to you 1 business day.

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inorganic-engagement

Is Maharashtra the leading location of your inorganic engagement? It could be the BOT traffic

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Some specific campaign analysis showed that Pune is contributing over 40% of the traffic within Maharashtra which is attributed to it being the den of VPNs and Proxy Servers used for BOT traffic. Maharashtra has the highest internet population in India. Many times, marketers while reviewing the performance of campaigns take it as an expected behavior seeing Maharashtra contributing maximum to the traffic for this reason. However, there is a catch. For many campaigns we analyze to validate the Genuity of engagement, we see Maharashtra leading the traffic source. On a double-click analysis, the concentration of engagement within Maharashtra spots to Pune. In many cases, Pune contributes over 40% of Maharashtra’s traffic. The reason for Pune emerging as the hotspot of engagement within Maharashtra is because it is the den of VPNs and Proxy Servers in India. Consequently, whosoever is running BOTs to jack up the performance to make bucks without delivering any real value, will be using these proxies and tunnels to show them up as users from India. So, a quick check for analyzing the genuine engagement for inorganic campaigns could be to compare the proportion of traffic from Maharashtra with that of an organic campaign. A deeper level would be to further check on Pune specifically. This will be the first indication that the campaign is heavy on BOTs and an advertiser is losing money without any ROI. Compared to a few years back, the awareness about ad fraud has increased and organizations plotted through the digital learning curve have started realizing this as an increasing challenge, which they shouldn’t shy about; rather fight back. This can also be validated by the pattern of inbound requests we receive at mFilterIt. (You have a request, simply signup here, and our specialist will contact you within 1 business day) Some 3 years ago it was only digital native organizations and sectors like eCommerce, and since 2020, we have received interest from a wide spectrum of industries like BFSI, Auto, and FMCG, among others. The recently released FICCI-EY report on the M&E sector shows the Internet population spread across India which is defined as the composition of unique visitors from each of these states/clusters. Cross-analyzing this with mFilterIt’s ad fraud rate across these states/ clusters, we see that it’s an omnipresent challenge though translates into different volumes basis the internet population. This means the volume of fake traffic for Maharashtra (including Goa) would be much larger than the BOT-driven engagements in Himachal Pradesh (including Uttarakhand). Whatever the ad-fraud rate is, we are already conceding that almost one-third of the engagement is not with real humans. While the internet population is still not evenly spread across the country and is exhibiting the same pattern of physical infrastructure development, which is skewed to larger cities, ad fraud (BOT) has already spread across the country without much of an uneven spread. This is an alarming sign as all major sectors of BFSI, FMCG, auto as well and eCommerce are focusing on expanding digitally through the country. For instance, in this interaction with NDTV, Sandeep Aggarwal, CEO, and Founder of Droom expects 6% of the total automobile market to shift online by 2025 from the present 0.7%. Similarly, banks are trying to adopt digital banking fast and minimize traditional banking operations. Again, eCommerce players are expanding beyond metros and Tier-1 cities and towns leveraging the expansion of broadband across India as well as strengthening logistics footprints. The point to ponder is whether any company adopts the favorite strategy of focusing on key markets defined by top 10 or top 50 cities, or it wants to expand beyond metros, it will interface and engage with BOTs while discovering real users (internet population). Advertisers and their partners would find going deep into the country digitally is quite difficult as there isn’t much data available to understand the behavior of users over digital. This means the vanity metrics cannot be relied on even the slightest degree of confidence failing even the thumb rules. The user understanding of digital is also relatively lower than that of a city or major town, meaning users could easily be trapped by fraudsters and their footprints ‘hijacked’ to skyrocket the performance. The data set here analyzed by mFilterIt pertains to affiliate marketing fraud. But we see this across every mode and platform. It’s more or less the same trend. Whether we like it or not, bad BOTs have already polluted the digital environment and one cannot create a space that doesn’t interface with this environment at one or the other point. So, this inefficiency is going to remain whatever platform or medium an advertiser decides to go with. Digital is changing from a marketing and outreach platform to a business platform. Even for organizations that had never thought of getting directly in touch with a consumer. We have already seen how D2C is growing up as a trend. This means investments in digital will have to go up substantially and it will not only be the marketing budget but also business development cost which one would have to invest in digital. However, this should not happen without a completely neutral view which does real-time audit and in certain cases ‘proactive’ audit in terms of integrity check to decide whether to put in money through the channel or not. mFilterIt has prescribed actionable best practices to tackle this situation which could be the first step in the direction of any decision-maker. I would encourage you to read them and connect with us for any explanation or assistance you may want regarding its implementation. We all have to find out a balance between taking care of the safety of people and minimizing the impact on economic activities. Digital is indeed an enabling powerful medium, but we need to use it optimally and spend judiciously with a 24×7 validation that could guide us the way forward.

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artificial-intelligence

Using Artificial Intelligence to Detect Real Humans

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AI-powered ad fraud detection and protection help advertisers build a wall of defense. The ad fraud detection and elimination suite for the app and web platforms by mFilterIt does real-time pattern analysis of events and engagements to review fraudulent performance. In a typical anti-ad fraud solution, a post-mortem analysis is done on the events to draw patterns and identify fraud. The engagements which show expected behaviors are marked ‘Not Fraud’. In such solutions, one doesn’t require advanced data science techniques or the power of machine learning as well as any AI engine. One can analyze the data dumps and figure out genuine versus fake patterns. A logic check is required on the data, which can very well serve through any spreadsheet application, let’s say advanced MS Excel functions. Of course, one needs to capture the right data points, which may require some integrations with the mobile or web applications to be analyzed. The game changes when one wants to go up the challenge and start building a protection layer, which can do an analysis on the go and block any potential invalid engagement. The tech requirements changed dynamically, hence the architecture. mFilterIt has always been focusing on ease of integration. For us to deploy ad-fraud monitoring and protection, it is a simple javascript integration or an SDK integration depending on whether it’s an app or web deployment and how deep protection is required. SDK integration makes it a data-rich integration helping our data analysis engine throw up some of the unique analysis of events. Our solution uses data analytics, real-time computing services, and cognitive logic to offer the best ad fraud detection. The internal analysis shows that we can detect an average of 22% more ad fraud over and above the industry benchmark compared to other solutions available in the market. This is not just our analysis but jointly done with some of our anchor customers. We also perform more than 70 checks to uniquely identify the origin of an event, including that of coming from an actual human. The set of unique data points powers all this we capture and real-time computing possible due to our lean on-prem architecture. We securely connect any application with our cloud-based solution for computation. The layer of artificial intelligence built over it is even more critical, which equips the suite with all cognitive power. This is very core to the solution’s architecture as all the thinking ability is designed and structured in it. As soon as the data starts shoring our servers, the ‘brain’ of the solution, based on proprietary algorithms using AI, starts drawing patterns to segregate actual versus fake, human versus BOT. As version 2.0 of the solution, we have taken it to the proactive stage, where we can validate the integrity of the click and base the results; it can be blocked much before the event occurs.  This helps the mFilterIt ad-fraud suite to protect proactively rather than through post-mortem analysis only. It may sound easy to read, but it isn’t elementary in architecture and implementation. As a technology architect, I can vouch for that independently it’s one of the most complex solutions that I have come across in my career. However, we have always ensured to keep the integration as simple as possible. Taking ad fraud to this level is another game-changer. Many advertisers who rely heavily on non-affiliate marketing would find using any ad-fraud solution less effective as payment is prepaid on such platforms and recovering the money after establishing any fake engagement is cumbersome. With click integrity capability, advertisers can take a call much in advance about where to spend. In our journey of more than 5 years at mFilterIt, where we have saved over $150 million and validated over 10 billion events for our happy and satisfied customers across the world, the brain of the solution has been one key differentiator. Just like any human being, where you may acquire similar skills but cannot always replicate the capabilities that are powered by the thinking ability, mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Validation also thinks much ahead thanks to its cognitive power based on artificial intelligence engine, where it can distinctively differentiate between a real unique human engagement and a BOT.

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click-spamming

Click Spamming in UAE: Over 50 Million Clicks in a Country of 10 Million

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The case of organic traffic theft of a leading BFSI client in UAE A major publisher partner of a large BFSI client was massively engaged in click spamming registering huge events. This publisher was stealing the organic traffic of the client. Once its engagement was blocked, the organic engagement went up for the client. A new breed of smaller affiliates sprouted to grab the opportunity through click spamming. One of the leading BFSI clients of mFilterIt in the region was recording huge events as were reported by its key publisher which was entrusted with the task of getting relevant engagement for a campaign.  The client was facing the typical situation of viewing extremely high events that even did not stand some basic logic.  For instance, the total population of the UAE is less than 10 million.  The nature of the service is not something that anyone from other countries would be interested in.  For example, one could absorb extremely high events, even more than the population, in the case of a real estate campaign in UAE assuming that foreigners are interested in buying a property in the country.  However, there would be hardly anyone looking for a financial service in the country from a foreign land. In this specific campaign analysis, it was found that a campaign registered events above 50 million in a single day.  This is five times the total population of the emirate.  It can only be interpreted that on average every single person living in UAE clicked 5 times on this campaign! Why would any person do that? On a deeper analysis, an inverse relationship was established between organic traffic patterns and the traffic acquired through a particular publisher.  mFilterIt took down this publisher and instantly started seeing the organic traffic going up for the client for some time.  However, one of the fundamental principles of effective ad-fraud protection is that there should be no exceptions.  No one can combat it effectively by monitoring only a few, or for that matter ignoring smaller agencies and focusing on the larger ones alone. The same was the experience in this case.  As soon as the organic engagement started going up, a set of new agencies, though smaller started pulling down the organic engagement by click spamming.  This is a learning for every marketeer not to be only after the ‘big fish’.  There should be no tolerance for any size of fish in the pond. It is a typical strategy to engage one or a few major publishers which account for 70-80% of the campaign KPIs and the remaining is entrusted with several smaller affiliates.  An advertiser is mostly focussing on the key partners for everything, including when investigating ad fraud.  This analysis shows that while focusing on the key partner does help, we cannot ignore the smaller affiliates as well.  Click spamming is done by all irrespective of their size and they do hijack the organic traffic, though the impact would be proportionate to the engagement level of the publisher. This is the reason mFilterIt has always been advocating for holistic ad fraud protection where the strategy should be to analyze to the 100th percentile and across platforms.  Unless that is done, ad fraud will barge into the system from one of the other weak points. The thought process for campaigns must change.  Every advertiser does evaluate a potential partner on certain KPIs as part of the hygiene factors. The need is to also include parameters like genuine (BOT free) engagement as well as brand safety assurance offered by any potential partner as part of the hygiene parameters. The approach adopted by mFilterIt is a neutral one where it does not only solve the advertisers’ problems.  It does work along with publishers and agencies as well helping them implement the best practices so that such ‘pilferages’ in campaigns wherein the long run it maximizes returns for everyone in the value chain. Get in touch to learn more about click spamming.

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ramadan

The True Spirit of Ramadan 2021 Woven for a Brand

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There are four ways mFilterIt can collaborate with advertisers to deliver the best experience to their respective audiences through digital advertising during Ramadan. Ramadan is the month of introspection, altruism, celebration, and camaraderie. This period calls for spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and compassion for others. Like real life, in the digital world, we are challenged with the good and bad, and as marketers, we attempt to sail through to deliver the best for our audiences. Brands need to observe a similar discipline and therefore must come across as respectful and thoughtful. mFilterIt can be your trusted partner throughout the digital advertising journey and ensure that you deliver a pure experience with the right intent and integrity. Here are the ways mFilterIt can help you go through the digital journey. a) Acquisition of Users:  This Ramadan will leverage digital like never before. In 2020, it was a contingency approach. But this year, marketeers, even in the ‘Essentials’ category, have a thought-through process of leveraging digital platforms to deliver the best to the customers and audiences. Whether acquiring new users for an app or getting genuine non BOT traffic to web resources, mFilterIt can help brands achieve the best engagement by connecting with real humans who want the service, thus optimizing the return on acquisition spending. Typically, 1 of every 3 users acquired is not genuine due to challenges like BOT traffic, etc. b) Ads with Integrity and Safety: A mature brand is always conscious of the experience it creates. During Ramadan, brands become extra cautious and do not want to get associated with something that doesn’t go with the core thought of Ramadan. For instance, certain brands may not desire to show cooked food before Iftaar in ads. Also, marketers will go the extra mile to protect their brand image from getting associated with obscene and explicit content. The bars of safeguarding brands are raised very high during Ramadan, and mFilterIt helps advertisers create a safe and pure view of the brands within which they can engage with the audiences over digital platforms. The brand safety suite of mFilterIt scans ads to do high-quality content analysis and flag off any placement, relevancy, or messaging issues contrary to the brand’s reputation. c) Honouring the Promotions and Offers: Ramadan is also a month when people spend a lot. This is in the spirit of giving the family the best food and other essentials and buying for the needy. To complement this, brands roll out special offers and promotions. This situation is also exploited by rogues in the system. They exhibit unbelievable offers to allure genuine buyers for cheating or taking credit (attribution) for organic engagement. Even if a buyer doesn’t lose money in all such situations, it does not portray the brand in a good light. This is not the image that the brand wants to be associated with. mFilterIt’s incent tracking solution helps brands stay alert about the offers and promotions being rolled out in its name. It can proactively safeguard consumers’ interests by acting upon the fraudsters and ensuring end-users get genuine promotions. d) Creating a Ramadan View of the e-Store: Like the product placements and shelf management in the brick-mortar stores, the digital stores also need to change during Ramadan. The shelf display needs to be optimally organized for a richer experience for users visiting online marketplaces on apps and web portals to buy products that are sought after during Ramadan. Leveraging mScanIt (Powered by mFilterIt) share of shelf and other powerful insights, a marketer can decide the optimal strategy for an online marketplace and create a competitively richer experience for visitors to buy the right products and leverage the maximum from the promotions that are being rolled out for them. With the array of services offered by mFilterIt, marketers can optimize every segment to create a synergy that gives a richer, wholesome, and value-driven experience to the audiences for engaging and buying online. So, what are you waiting for? Connect with mFilterIt to make the digital experience for your customers driven by the genesis and value systems that guide us during Ramadan.   Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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edtech-brand-safety

Edtech and Brand Safety

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One of the serious concerns for any parent with the digital ecosystem is how they keep their children safe from the ‘digital ghost’, and ed-tech could be an easy trap. Kid safety is of paramount concern. With digital exposure, new challenges result in other types of potential harms caused by ‘digital ghosts’ or ‘digital bhoots’, which exist in the ecosystem. There is no denying that the digital exposure of children has increased. It has also gone beyond regular schooling, and parents are encouraging promoting children to opt for several courses and certifications offered digitally. This has resulted in a thriving ed-tech space, and over the past 6 months, we have even seen ed-tech companies acquiring brick-mortar education brands. Various flavors are offered in the ed-tech space to differentiate and attract as many students as possible. Much content is being recreated to go well with this mode and facilitate easy self and virtually assisted learning. At the same time, these ed-tech companies completely understand that they are dealing with tender ages meaning the Internet exposure to them cannot be like an adult. For this, they adhere to ‘kid-safe’ practices and ensure that they are using content that does not harm children – especially psychologically. The ed-tech companies are cognizant of making the experience safe and children-friendly. However, that is all within the boundaries of their application, where they have all the control. But a lot more can be counterproductive to a much larger engagement who may even never cross the line to experience all measures they take to make every element inside the application child-safe and friendly. Other than children less than 10 years of age, parents allow children to explore such opportunities independently. When in their teens, children also get a chance to recommend to parents which courses they want to pursue. In the latter case, children get exposed to the discovery of such applications, which means they interface with the promotional / advertising environment of ed-tech apps. For children less than 10, parents will primarily explore such solutions. In both situations, the decision-makers need to get assurance that the application they want to go with isn’t harming children in any way, especially the ones which could contribute to the development of any negative trait in children as they would not have the capability to handle such exposure at that tender age. For instance, hate language, obscenity, crime, and other content. We have clear demarcations of what is suitable for children and what is not in the broadcasting world. That is why even action content isn’t advised to children, and specific content is explicitly categorized as adult only. Due to brand safety issues, often without any intervention from the ed-tech solutions provider, the ads do get placed wrongly, which could be carrying content not suitable for children. This means that children and parents exploring such solutions could land in ‘bad areas’ of the Internet. While children could land up in entirely the wrong territory, which isn’t suitable for them, parents would get shocked to see the affiliation of the platform they are exploring for their children. The issue could worsen as the ads are served based on the content consumption pattern and interests of the user with whom the device is profiled. In these cases, it would be a parent, or an adult, whose profile would be targeted by advertisers through ad networks, affiliates, and other mediums. A responsible and aware ed-tech platform has to look at things end-to-end and make the entire experience safe and friendly, not just inside the app when someone is on board. This could result in the majority of the potential users having a bad experience and impression about the platform, while only the ones who convert and sign up appreciate the proactive measures taken by the app to give children their due environment. This ‘digital ghost’ or ‘digital bhoot´is something that we need to keep children away from. Otherwise, what a ghost invisibly does in the real world to the minds by causing psychological damage, which at times longs for a lifetime, could get replicated in the virtual world with children at a very tender age. Unfortunately, ed-tech is the platform that has a high risk of carrying this invisible ghost, harming children while attempting to do better for their overall development. Brand Safety is a crucial thing to address for any brand, especially those dealing directly with potentially vulnerable sections like children. mFilterIt is already engaged in this space with a few proactive ed-tech platforms piloting some activities with us in this direction. However, this should become an industry/vertical hygiene where the objective is to make the entire experience children safe, not just inside the app, which is a controlled world for the platform.   Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

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Neutrality is Key to Third-Party Audits and Validation

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

mFilterIt proactively gave up a million-dollar opportunity 4 years back to uphold the integrity and neutrality of validating ad-spends. Any ad fraud detection & prevention solution is algorithmic in nature. So even if the results are statistically driven and scientifically proven, the biases can be absorbed within the algorithm design. The simplest example could be white-listing traffic of a particular publisher or ad network making it a valid high-quality engagement source. Tracing back the journey of mFilterIt, it also started with the idea of establishing an ad network (mXpresso), which would offer ad fraud detection as a value addition. But soon it was realized that it’s fundamentally contradictory to act as both – someone to spend for campaigns (ad network), and someone doing the validation of whether it has been done rightfully (ad fraud). Like any ad network, mXpresso was blossoming and as goes the very nature of this business, the growth parameters were overwhelmingly encouraging. This only indicated that it was going to be soon a million-dollar opportunity. It was a very difficult trade-off to give up a growing opportunity versus creating something that would face resistance from all corners. Obviously, both could not continue. To uphold the integrity and bring neutrality and impartiality invalidating the ad-spends on performance campaigns, mXpresso was shelved for eternity, and mFilterIt, which was an add-on to the ad network became the anchor and only offering. Presently in the market majority of the widely used ad-fraud detection solutions do not give a 3rd party view. They are part of the 2nd party in the form of either being an add-on to the attribution platform or with some recent acquisitions, even an ad-network. This raises the fundamental question of how anyone can do both very important roles without diluting the conflict of interest. The same party, in its dual role, is responsible for the spending and then again responsible for validating if the spending did take place in the right way, giving the desired ROI. Ad fraud cannot be combated alone algorithmically. The neutrality and 3rd party orientation are as important as the efficacy of the tool which is determined by how deep a view it can offer basis the advanced algorithms used in its design. This is what mFilterIt has always stood for and shall continue to have this equally distanced approach from everyone in the value chain – advertisers, agencies, and affiliates. It envisioned these 4 years back, which is why it today is trusted by some of the leading digital advertisers globally for auditing their ad spending on performance campaigns and adjacent issues.

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