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inorganic-engagement

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

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

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

Leave a Comment / Blog, Ad Traffic Validation /

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

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

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

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

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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third-party-validation

Neutrality is Key to Third-Party Audits and Validation

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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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brand-infringement

Brand Infringement in the Digital Landscape

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

Brand Infringement and imitation have been predominantly an offline affair. Brands have set up checks and balances to monitor any sort of violation by any individual or an entity that might be unauthorized to represent or use any of its identity like trademark, logo, etc.   In the digital landscape, this has never been taken seriously. The reason for that could be because digital primarily relates to content, reproducing the identity of one even without authorization was not considered damaging. For instance, people conveniently search for logos of different brands on Google and use them even incorporate presentations and official documents. This goes without adhering to something like Creative Commons Licenses (CCL). However, the relevance and objectives of digital have changed fundamentally for any organization. From being an add-on to the primary business, digital has become the Centre stage of activities. After the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic, digital has become the default in many cases. A brand is increasingly having many touchpoints over digital where it is represented. Through these digital touchpoints, it interfaces with several stakeholders including customers, partners, employees, government, and others.   A brand is the notional and perceived owner of all these channels and the messages that go over them in the eyes of audiences including customers.   So, it is incumbent on the brand to keep a regular check and monitoring of all its assets to ensure that it is presented rightfully across them. For instance, there are typically several pages on social media channels for any brand. These are owned and managed by brands, their partners, users, fans as well as fraudsters. Other than having a verified sign for brand-owned pages, and accounts, there is no way to make a distinction for ordinary users who genuinely want to engage. This means a user could potentially be engaging with an unauthorized representative of a brand digitally! Similarly, there could be advertising messages including promos and offers, running in the name of a brand where the brand is neither aware of nor has any obligation to respect them. But, since they are run for various reasons in their name, it only earns a bad reputation for them. The fundamental issue here is that brands engage through various channels and mediums which plot across the level of control they have on them. Even the channels where they have absolute control, like a website or an app, parallel or mirror websites and apps are being created and distributed through non-regular means, like third-party app stores among users. A brand can walk the long journey of legal redressal to bring such parallel assets down, but by then much of the damage is already done to its reputation. Even when going legal, it needs substantial proof to seek justice. Brand Infringement is not only impacting the brand reputation and image but also hitting the funnel and revenues. So, all the investments that every brand is putting in digital transformation automatically diminish returns.   Additionally, the brand also becomes a medium of data and privacy breaches as its imitated assets could be exploited through malware, etc., comprising user data. Brands with a vision and sustainability objectives always look at a wider canvas of offering the best experience rather than just a sales-driven approach.   This experience can only be created when brands are in full control and visibility of their presence on digital as well as have a monitoring mechanism in place which alerts for instant actions to bring things on track from the deviations caused by uncontrollable variables in the equation. As brands transform into digital businesses, they will require to have a 24×7 eye on their presence and reputation over digital and proactively keep the brand assets aligned with the overall positioning and principles for which a brand stands for. That will keep the brand infringement under control and add sustainability to the reputation and image of a brand.

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atma-nirbhar-bharat

Brand Safety is a Big Opportunity for Atma Nirbhar Bharat, and at mFilterIt, We Are Pursuing It.

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

To solve Brand Safety issues effectively, the nuanced understanding of vernacular is the essence for AI and ML-based solutions to work. This can only be handled by a local brand that recognizes the local languages. Globally, brands are becoming conscious of Brand Safety. Introducing Brand Safety at a 30,000 feet height is about keeping a brand secure from every potential controversy or damage that could result from its presence at irrelevant and unsafe digital assets. No brand would want to earn wrath by getting associated, or at least the audience perceiving them so, with something that goes against their philosophy.   A brand would never want its ads to appear on sites, apps, and video channels that do not reflect it. Not just because it would not get the right target audiences, but also because its positioning would go for a toss.   For example, an airline company would never want its ads displayed on video series like an air crash investigation. Here, even if the audience might be relevant, the sentiment set out by the content would not appreciate air traveling, at least at that spur of a moment when a viewer’s mind could be thinking that air travel isn’t perhaps safe. Additionally, there is abusive content, obscene content, and so forth.   Even if a very relevant website for a brand to display its ad has content in any local language and is abusive or foul language, the brand would never want its ad to appear there. There are essentially two core requirements for a Brand Safety solution to work.   One is the algorithm tree that will trigger needful actions based on the event we want to monitor. The other is the database of keywords, phrases, audio, images, and video, which can compare the content in real-time to decide if the content is safe for the brand to get associated with.   This understanding can only be managed by a local Brand Safety solution provider, which constantly keeps the library of potentially unsafe content updated and lets its algorithms decide whether the placement of a brand’s ad is safe.   With the Honourable Prime Minister already having advocated for Vocal4Local and Atma Nirbar Bharat initiatives, Brand Safety is an area that naturally fits the program, where achieving self-reliance makes economic sense and has a highly great product relevance.   Platforms like YouTube are increasingly becoming the default internet space for regional content in India. This content runs thousands of ads from different brands that would never understand the content. In situations like this, where a locally developed solution will make a lot of difference.   The opportunity for Brand Safety is immense. Every brand is not conscious of it, and some have already started proactively taking measures to tackle Brand Safety challenges. Over the next 5 years, brands will start making considerable spending on achieving Brand Safety. With the recent trend of digital becoming a mainstream interface and D2C (direct-to-consumer) also gaining momentum, it would be incumbent on brands to have zero tolerance towards Brand Safety. This is an opportune moment for the entire ecosystem to pitch for locally designed and developed Brand Safety solutions.   Thankfully, at mFilterIt, we are already on the charter, and every day our portfolio of locally designed and developed Brand Safety Solutions becomes wider. We aspire to make digital space a trustworthy, reliable, and accurate experience world. Our endeavor to make a Brand Safety portfolio a comprehensive solution offering end-to-end safety is a step in this direction. To know more, get in touch with our experts today!

Brand Safety is a Big Opportunity for Atma Nirbhar Bharat, and at mFilterIt, We Are Pursuing It. Read More »

digital-ecosystem

To Help Digital Ecosystem Resume with Trust, mFilterIt Announces 2 Months Diwali Care Program

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

The program aims to help advertisers resume their digital marketing activities with trust, confidence, and transparency to get the best RoI on ad spending and resurrect after the COVID-19 impact. Help the digital ecosystem resume with trust. Gurugram / Noida – Friday, October 23, 2020: mFilterIt, the leading holistic digital advertising safety solutions provider, today announced ‘Diwali Care Program’ under which it has opened the entire solutions stack for the advertisers and their partners to resume and resurrect with trust, transparency, and confidence as the economy is attempting to restart after the complete lockdown due to covid-19 pandemic. Amit Relan, Director & Co-Founder, mFilterIt launching the program, said, “Digital is everyone’s hope of resumption. There is no scope for any inefficiency or trust deficit to go to market. Keeping this in view, we decided to help all forms of businesses, including SMEs to help them optimize, making the returns more visible and clearer.” Under the ‘Diwali Care’ offer, mFilterIt is offering its entire digital advertising trust and transparency solutions, which cater to over 90% of the Digital spending done by advertisers, for a free assessment for 2 months. These solutions cover Brand Safety and ad fraud solution on both browser and app-based digital applications accessed over Smartphones, Smart TVs, Tablet PCs, or Laptops/Desktops. With this program, mFilterIt expects brands to achieve 20-25% efficiency in their ad spending, making a tangible contribution in these challenging times when there is extra effort to minimize any wastage. mFilterIt solutions are unique and offer end-to-end transparency and validation of digital events or transactions at the advertisement and online purchase levels. This gives a marketer, including partners, a periscopic view to look for fraud and trust deficit challenges even over the surface. About mFilterIt: A leader in trust, transparency, and validations of digital ad spending covering over 90% of the digital advertising mediums, mFilterIt uniquely offers end-to-end platform-agnostic brand safety and ad fraud detection software relied upon by leading digital and mainstream advertisers globally. With a neutral and third-party partner to the digital partners, mFilterIt helps eliminate trust deficit in transactions and events that occur to the end consumer through the digital value chain. The scalable and robust technology platform from mFilterIt validates over 2 billion transactions yearly, resulting in over $30 million in savings to the digital ecosystem. mFilterIt is headquartered out of NCR, India, and has global operations in the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and America. A thought leader in the space, mFilterIt actively contributes to the standards and best practices in the industry on global platforms. Recently, mFilterIt was recognized as the Top Ad Fraud Prevention tool by Business of Apps in its 2020 research. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn more!

To Help Digital Ecosystem Resume with Trust, mFilterIt Announces 2 Months Diwali Care Program Read More »

ad-fraud

Why is Ad-Fraud in Retargeting Campaigns Rising as We Move Towards the New Normal?

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Retargeting and re-engagement campaigns have a difference in intent but face similar ad-fraud challenges.   Covid-19 brought the entire world to a pause. At the same time, it also either forced or allowed businesses to get into new areas. Everything got to a standstill in digital space, like the physical world. However, digital was the first to resume as it inherited the new standard properties, which included social distancing, less human interactions, and a relatively sanitized and cleaned logistics chain.   The resumption of businesses and sales fulfillment meant brands are going heavy on retargeting and re-engagement campaigns. Brands had to tell their customers that they are open and, in many cases, selling new products and services. For instance, Amazon started focusing on ‘essentials’ versus ‘shopping’ items.   So did many other e-commerce players. Yet, there was a new breed of digital players who started afresh selling ‘essentials’ or the traditional offline players onboarded the digital journey. Many industry sectors like FMCG went digital, and brands like Pepsi also forayed D2C or Direct-to-customer.   In a typical retargeting / re-engagement ad fraud, affiliates resort to organic hooking where they falsely attribute already motivated users to a retargeting campaign and take the credit. They fire a volley of clicks and steal the attribution against a device ID, which organically engages with the campaign. As the intent is genuine and high, the performance of such campaigns results very high.   However, the pandemic situation paves the way for the new normal is an extraordinary one. Here, such campaigns are more susceptible to fraud.   The explanation for that is users are organically looking for such products and services via digital mediums. Not just the ones who are used to it, but even novices are exploring digital means to buy groceries, medicines, baby food, and other essentials.   So, while users are anyways moving towards digital to buy existing and new products and services, fraudsters in the ecosystem are keeping eyes and ears open to leverage from the situation. They need to poach organic users to misattribute them, jacking up the performance results. Performance Marketing has taken precedence over Brand Marketing as marketers are looking for inorganic means to resume. The first preference is for re-targeting and re-engagement so that transactions with the existing base are encouraged. Remember, the cost of a transaction with a new customer is always higher than the existing one. So, as brands are looking at the sales graph to go up, they also keep tight control of costs and inefficiencies.   Keeping a check on ad fraud in re-targeting and re-engagement campaigns is a priority for marketers. Digital marketers have become front-line business development warriors in this new normal against the supporting role in the pre-Covid-19 era. They need to reorient themselves and start thinking like astute business development folks where they focus on sales and keep a deep view of the entire sales enablement process and partners.   Retargeting is one of the most effective and efficient techniques for digital marketers to maximize the merchandise value and take the average transaction value up per active customer.   At the same time, re-engagement can attract inactive customers, thus adding to the funnel. However, there must be comprehensive and real-time monitoring of such campaigns and give credit to affiliates for the genuinely re-engaged customers. They learn about new products and services that the online seller is offering now.   Therefore, ad fraud in retargeting and re-engagement campaigns are rising as we move towards a new normal. Here is an interesting case study giving a deeper view of how mFilterIt retargeting ad-fraud solution works and what tangible benefits it gives to a customer.

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