mFilterIt
Contact Us
mfilterit

USA

Brand Bidding in Affiliate Marketing

Brand Bidding in Affiliate Marketing: What It Is and Why It’s Riskier in 2025

USA, Affiliate, Blog /

Your brand keywords are your identity. But what if you’re paying higher cost for your brand keywords, or in worst case scenario – paying for your organic traffic.  Brand bidding is a technique used by affiliates and competitors where they bid on your branded keywords to divert your traffic to their landing pages. The impact of brand bidding in affiliate marketing is not just limited to ad budget wastage.   The brands have to pay more for their own branded keywords, they lose search traffic, and revenue drops.   In 2025, it is expected that the expenditure on search advertising will hit $351.5 billion worldwide, indicating a strong growth in the paid search sector. And with the demand for search surges, it is critical for brands to have the right protection against brand bidding violations.    According to our analysis done, we have found that 43% of affiliate traffic is invalid.   This blog is going to unpack:  Why brand bidding protection is critical in 2025?   What Leading Brands Are Doing to Prevent It?    How mFilterIt Protects Your Affiliate Program from Brand Bidding?    Why Brand Bidding Is Riskier in 2025 In 2025, brand bidding has become more than just a compliance problem; it has emerged as a strategic threat. It directly attacks the authenticity of your website, leaving users in a dilemma and baiting them to make the purchase from an affiliate’s website or tracking link. Let’s understand how brand bidding is riskier in 2025:  1. Increased PPC Brand Bidding = Higher CPCs on Brand Terms Affiliates bidding on brand keywords are directly proportional to the cost-per-click. The higher the bidding, the higher the cost-per-click, leading to an increased cost of paid search campaigns, making the visibility achievement on search engines greater challenge.   2. Detection Becoming Harder Due to AI-powered Tool Monitoring the actions of affiliates and enforcing policy violations rules have become tougher for brands as affiliates consistently use cloaking, dynamic redirects, and global targeting by AI to evade detection.  3. Exploitation of Performance Metrics In 2025, brands are relying heavily on performance metrics, prioritizing channels that generate maximum clicks, conversions, and ROAS. Hence, affiliates aim to exploit these metrics by click baiting users and taking credit of the purchases, they made without creating any new demand. This boosts the performance statistics of affiliates through mispresented numbers.  4. Brand Goodwill at Stake Misleading affiliate advertisements, fake discounts, and unreliable affiliate tracking links can severely hamper the goodwill of the brand by eroding customer trust.  Real Impact: How Brand Bidding Eats into Your ROI Your market funnel is at risk; brand bidding is draining your profits. Let’s know how profit leaks are undermining your return on investment (ROI):  1. One Customer, Double Payment If users who are your organic customers, are specifically searching for you, visit an affiliate’s tracking link and make purchases, you lose one organic user and instead pay the affiliate commission on a sale you would have gotten anyway.  2. CPCs Rise Manifold Your PPC campaigns land in a competitive landscape when affiliates bid on your keywords, increasing the cost-per-click and affecting the overall paid search efficiency.  3. False Attribution Affiliates gain commission from selling your products, but no new demand is created. The customers are the same buyers who would have visited your website, anyway, hence creating false attribution.   4. Poor UX = Lost Conversions Misleading or outdated ad copy from affiliates can create confusion, frustration, or distrust — increasing bounce rates and reducing conversion quality.  How to Prevent Brand Bidding: What Leading Brands Are Doing As major talks are going around how to prevent brand bidding in affiliate marketing, brands are also recognizing its importance. The following are the strategies opted by them to tackle the same:  1.Transparent Brand Policies and Contracts Brands create their affiliate program agreements, forbidding affiliates to steal their trademarked terms. The agreement includes what keywords the brand can use; the penalties imposed on the agreement and more.  2. Real-time Monitoring through Automation Brands are keeping a hawk’s eye on violations of their trademarks by affiliates. They monitor the landing pages, ads that appear above their official website and take action accordingly.  3. Negative Keyword Implementation The tactic of negative brand keyword implementation is followed by several brands across the affiliate campaigns to prevent affiliate ads from triggering on brand terms.  4. Timely Audits & Reporting Brands evaluate affiliate traffic through patterns, source, and conversion behaviour to detect and prevent suspicious behavioural patterns. This also includes reviewing landing pages and promo codes to identify any misleading information.  5. Cross-Functional Team Alignment (Legal, PPC, Affiliate Management) Leading brands are bringing legal, PPC, and affiliate teams together to tackle brand bidding in affiliate marketing. Legal handles takedowns, PPC monitors brand keyword activity, and affiliate managers enforce the rules. When these teams work in sync, violations get caught faster and the brand stays protected.  6. Third-party Solution for Detecting Brand Bidding Violation Third-party solution provides unbiased monitoring and detection of brand bidding violations. By offering an external perspective, it ensures transparency, credibility, and consistent protection of a brand’s search presence.  How mFilterIt Protects Your Affiliate Program from Brand Bidding Every click, every booking, every creative asset your brand deserves to own them. Yet brand bidding and unauthorized promotions quietly cause loss of direct traffic, inflate acquisition costs, and dilute trust.  That’s where EffCent steps in, mFilterIt’s affiliate monitoring solution built to protect your performance marketing ROI. But how do we do it? Let’s know now –  Real-time Monitoring –Track brand keyword bidding across ad networks and regions to spot misuse instantly.  Actionable Reporting –Deliver daily reports that highlight brand bidding violations for quick corrective action.  Proprietary Detection –Use Effcent’s technology to precisely identify unauthorized bids on branded keywords.  Restrict Violations –Enable immediate blocking of ad networks bidding on brand terms.   Know how a leading brand utilized mFilterIt’s affiliate monitoring solution to combat brand bidding.  Conclusion Brand bidding is a real threat to your performance, budget, and brand trust. As we

Brand Bidding in Affiliate Marketing: What It Is and Why It’s Riskier in 2025 Read More »

Lead Landing Page Optimisation

Lead Landing Page Optimization – How to Spot Bots and Improve Lead Quality

USA, Ad Fraud, Blog /

The USA digital advertising industry significantly relies on lead generation strategies. For advertisers in the USA, landing pages are the backbone of their ad campaigns. Millions are spent each year on ads to drive traffic and capture user attention.   But traffic is not always equal to opportunity. Marketers often notice unsettling patterns – even when dashboards show high volume of engagement and ad traffic, clicks, and form fills, somewhere conversions still lag behind.  Why is this happening?  The issue lies in the quality of traffic. Even the most beautifully designed, highly optimized landing page doesn’t convert if the people (or bots) visiting it were never real prospects in the first place.  Bots, click farms, and fraudulent traffic infiltrate digital ad ecosystems and degrade the lead quality, leaving advertisers with misleading reports and empty pipelines.  This not only leads to wasted ad spend but also performance inefficiencies across campaigns.   To overcome this challenge, improve landing page traffic quality and lead quality, brands need to rethink their landing page optimization strategies. Landing page optimization is no longer just about design, CTAs, or A/B testing; it is also about ad traffic validation and lead validation.  In this article, we will talk about:  What is lead landing page optimization?  The hidden threat brands in the USA need to be aware of.  How can advertisers spot bot patterns themselves?  Need for behavior analysis in landing page optimization – some practical steps to implement this  How an ad traffic validation and lead validation solution helps?  What is Lead Landing Page Optimization? Landing page optimization refers to the process of improving key elements of a landing page, such as design, messaging, and user experience to maximize conversions. A good landing page has a clear headline, persuasive copy, an easy-to-find call-to-action, and a layout that minimizes friction. All these steps help maximize conversion opportunities. But only if the traffic is real.  Advertisers often track clicks, form submissions, and engagement to guide optimizations. But bots quietly pollute the funnel, making A/B tests, bounce rates, and conversion data unreliable. This leads brands to optimize for noise while neglecting real buyers.  To break this loop, landing page strategies must go beyond surface-level optimizations. Incorporating behavioral analysis (like unusual browsing patterns or abnormal session times) and web fraud monitoring ensures traffic quality, helping brands achieve meaningful results and stronger ROI.   The Hidden Threat: How Bot Traffic Pollutes Lead Generation Campaigns Bot traffic is one of the most damaging but often overlooked issues in digital advertising. In the USA, where ad spend is among the highest globally, bots exploit every opportunity, from fake clicks to automated lead form submissions. Moreover, these aren’t just spam bots; fraudsters now use sophisticated bots that mimic real human behavior and are harder to detect.  Pay-per-call campaigns are also a widely used lead generation method in the USA. However, instead of connecting advertisers with genuine prospects, fraudsters generate fake or automated calls to trigger payouts. This not only wastes budgets but also distorts campaign performance data, leaving marketers with no real customer engagement to build on.  Further, the impact is severe.   Bots fill out lead forms with junk data, leaving sales teams chasing contacts that never convert.  Fraudulent submissions make campaigns appear cheaper per lead, masking the true cost of acquiring real prospects.  Inflated lead volumes give a false sense of demand, making it harder for marketers to forecast and allocate budgets effectively.  With CRMs overloaded by bot-generated entries, genuine leads get neglected, reducing the chances of meaningful customer acquisition.  Landing pages and ad creatives end up being optimized for fraudulent behavior instead of genuine prospects.  And when businesses base optimization decisions on false signals, it directly leads to long-term ROI damage.   That is why validating ad traffic based on various behavioral signals and parameters is no longer optional; it’s a core part of the landing page optimization strategy to combat web fraud.  DIY Guide: How Advertisers Can Spot Bot Patterns Themselves While recognizing sophisticated bot behavior requires an advanced AI-ML-based ad fraud detection solution to be in place, many patterns of fraudulent activities can be uncovered using simple observation and existing analytics platforms. Advertisers and marketers in the USA can start by monitoring:  Abnormal session duration: Bots often leave instantly, resulting in high bounce rates.   Repeated form fills: Look for duplicate names, fake emails, or strangely perfect data entries.  Analyze unnatural browsing patterns or scroll behavior: Real users skim unevenly; bots scroll mechanically, or not at all.  Watch clicks patterns: Bots click too quickly, with no hesitation or natural flow.  Unusual geographies/devices: Leads showing up from regions or devices outside your campaign targeting also indicates bot activity.  Traffic spikes at odd hours: Sudden bursts of activity at 2 AM followed by dead ends or zero follow-ups.  Junk conversion: High volume of form submissions, but emails bounce or calls go unanswered.  Bot registrants and junk leads: CRMs filled with incomplete profiles, disposable email IDs, or leads that never respond waste sales resources.  These DIY checks act as early warning signs against bot traffic. This helps advertisers identify suspicious patterns before optimizing landing pages.  Why Behavior Analysis Complements Landing Page Optimization When advertisers only optimize design and messaging of a landing page, they improve the chances that a visitor will take action. On the other hand, behavior analysis acts as the missing piece in the landing page optimization process.  Behavior analysis helps track how users move, click, and engage with a landing page or an ad, separating real prospects from fake ones.  By monitoring signals like irregular mouse movements, abnormal session durations, repeated form submissions, or patterns that don’t match natural human interaction, advertisers can separate genuine prospects from fraudulent traffic in real time.  As a result, this not only helps improve campaign efficiency but also improves lead quality. Sales teams receive fewer junk leads, reducing wasted effort. Marketers can make smarter budget allocation decisions when they’re working with clean data instead of bot-inflated numbers. Ultimately, it protects ROI by ensuring that every dollar spent is directed toward

Lead Landing Page Optimization – How to Spot Bots and Improve Lead Quality Read More »

Leverage affiliate monitoring to prevent fraud & boost ROI

Affiliate Marketing Campaigns: Know How Smart Affiliate Monitoring Drives Growth

USA, Affiliate, Blog /

The global affiliate market continues to expand at an annual growth rate of nearly 8%, with brands investing heavily in affiliate programs to drive performance and reach new audiences.  But here’s the catch — rising spend doesn’t always equal rising returns.  As affiliate programs scale, the need for transparency and accountability across every click, install, and conversion has become critical. Consider this scenario: one affiliate is driving a surge in installs, but downstream conversions remain flat. Without evidence of what’s happening behind the scenes, how do you explain this performance gap — let alone fix it?  This is where the disconnect lies. Dashboards may glow with inflated numbers, yet real business impact lags. Budgets leak, brand reputation is put at risk, and marketers are left with more questions than answers.  To truly maximize the value of affiliate partnerships, brands need visibility into traffic quality, confidence in partner compliance, and the ability to direct spend toward affiliates that actually drive growth.  In this blog, we’ll unpack:  The most common affiliate fraud and violation techniques. Why traditional tracking often falls short.  How brands can safeguard ROI with deeper monitoring and smarter optimization.  The Blind Spots You Can’t Ignore: Common Affiliate Fraud and Violation Techniques Without active monitoring come hidden risks. As affiliate programs scale to include multiple partners, from influencers, coupon sites, and ad publishers, brands often lose visibility into where and how their campaigns are being run. And without visibility, small issues can quickly snowball into wasted budgets, poor-quality leads, and even damaged brand reputation.  Here are some common affiliate fraud techniques every marketer should know about, along with some real-world affiliate use cases detected by mFilterIt.  1. Brand Bidding A major blind spot is when affiliates bid on your branded keywords. In such cases, you end up paying for customers who would have anyway reached you organically.  Example: A user searches for a brand name on Google and clicks on a sponsored ad from an affiliate pretending to be the brand’s official site. This results in a commission payout for a user who would have converted anyway.      Watch for: Inflated CPCs on brand-specific keywords and affiliate-attributed conversions that come mainly from branded queries.  Impact: You end up paying twice, once for the ad and again for affiliate commissions, with no added value.  2. Ads Placed on Harmful Sites Sometimes affiliates place ads in environments that are completely misaligned with your brand values, such as adult sites, piracy platforms, MFA sites, or counterfeit marketplaces (in case of ecommerce brands).  Example: A family-oriented or financial service app being promoted via banner ads on explicit content sites, often completely unknown to the advertiser.      Watch for: Customer complaints or unexpected mentions of your brand in unsafe spaces.  Impact: Even one misplaced ad can damage years of earned trust, as audience perception is built basis the kind of content they see you besides.  3. Fraudulent Traffic Fake clicks, bots, or incentivized traffic spikes from unfamiliar geographies or domains inflate numbers while delivering zero business impact and making further optimizations even more difficult.  Example: An affiliate running click farms that generate thousands of automated clicks on ad campaigns, resulting in high engagement but no actual sales or customer value.  Watch for: Sudden spikes in traffic or leads from unusual locations or sources that don’t align with real customer behavior.  Impact: Fraud distorts performance data, wastes ad spend, and even manipulates further optimizations.  4. Trademark Violations Affiliates may misuse brand assets like trademarks, logo, images, tagline, etc, run ads in restricted regions, or push creatives that were never approved by the brand.  Example: An affiliate creates a fake offer banner using the brand’s official logo and runs display ads or push notifications directing users to another landing page.      Watch for: Sudden conversions from unrecognized sources.  Impact: It creates confusion and distrust among customers and weakens your brand message or identity.  5. Counterfeit & Fake Offers Some affiliates drive sales through tactics that attract one-time buyers using deceptive offers or counterfeit promotions with no repeat value.  Example: A cashback banner offering ₹200 cashback for downloading an app that actually provides no such benefit, causing consumer frustration and support complaints.        Watch for: Affiliates with high conversion rates but low repeat purchase or retention.  Impact: Your reports may look positive, but customer lifetime value (CLV) stays weak.  Why Traditional or Manual Checks Aren’t Enough? Affiliate payouts are based on performance. Marketers often rely on contracts, affiliate network agreements, and occasional audits to keep their programs in line. But in today’s real-time, ever-evolving digital ecosystem, and increasing use of AI, these safeguards fall short.  1. Contracts & T&Cs are reactive: They define what affiliates shouldn’t do but rarely prevent violations before damage occurs.  2. Manual audits are too slow: By the time discrepancies are spotted, affiliates may have already pocketed commissions and moved on.  3. Affiliates adapt quickly: What worked yesterday may already be replaced by new tactics designed to bypass outdated checks.  It is impossible to manually keep track of fraudulent tactics that affiliates use to earn commissions. That is why most brands are shifting towards a smarter data-driven affiliate monitoring strategy to safeguard their marketing budget and brand reputation before it hits the bottom line.  The Smarter Approach: Advantages of Using an Affiliate Monitoring Solution While self-audits help you identify surface-level red flags, they often fall short when it comes to detecting sophisticated affiliate fraud and ensuring long-term compliance. By combining automation, data intelligence, and compliance checks, it offers brands a smarter way to manage affiliates and protect investments. Key benefits to the brand are:  Enhanced Transparency – Clear visibility into affiliate activities and contributions.  Improved ROI – Optimize affiliate spending by focusing on genuine, high-performing partners.  Brand Protection – Safeguard brand reputation through compliance monitoring.  Market Competitiveness – Stay ahead of competitors by leveraging advanced fraud detection and compliance tools.  Regulatory Compliance – Ensure adherence to global and local regulations to avoid legal penalties.  How mFilterIt Helps: Affiliate

Affiliate Marketing Campaigns: Know How Smart Affiliate Monitoring Drives Growth Read More »

Brand Bidding

Peak Season Brand Protection: Stop Brand Bidding Violations

USA, Ad Traffic Validation, Blog /

Would you pay twice for the same customer? Many brands do—without knowing. Every time your top-of-funnel campaigns drive branded search traffic, affiliates and ad networks are watching. Some quietly bid on your brand name, intercept clicks meant for your site, and take credit for conversions they didn’t create. You pay once to generate the intent. Then again, as a commission on your traffic. During high-demand seasons, this problem scales fast. CPCs rise, ROAS drops, and budget burns faster than it should. Most marketers chalk it up to increased competition. But the real threat is invisible: brand bidding by partners you’re already working with. This guide breaks down exactly how affiliate brand bidding works, how it distorts your campaign performance, and what to do to stop it in real time—before it eats into your seasonal results. Why High-Demand Seasons Invite Brand Bidding Top-of-funnel campaigns aren’t just good at driving awareness. They spike branded search queries. As performance teams push seasonal offers through social ads, influencer drops, or email blasts, users start googling the brand directly. That’s the window affiliates and ad networks wait for. They target your brand name because these aren’t rivals or fakes. They’re your own affiliate partners, coupon sites, or arbitrage platforms. Here’s how it happens: · Coupon aggregators bid on your brand plus terms like “discount” or “promo” to catch deal-hunters. Even if you don’t work with them directly, many ride through indirect affiliate links. · Automated bidding tools used by partner platforms use dynamic scripts to spot trending queries—your brand being one of them during a big campaign. · PPC arbitrage networks snap up brand terms at scale and send users through a redirect maze, taking a cut of the conversion while inflating your CPCs. The result: you end up paying twice. First to generate the intent. Then to win it back from your own partners. hey know the intent is hot. Their ads show up right above or next to yours, competing for the same clicks you’ve already paid to generate Signs You’re Losing Budget to Brand Bidders Brand bidding often hides behind metrics that appear healthy at first glance. But dig deeper, and patterns start to emerge—especially during high-demand campaigns. These are the most reliable indicators that your branded traffic is being hijacked by affiliates or ad networks. Sudden Branded CPC Spikes During Campaigns If your branded search CPCs climb sharply during a sale or new product drop, and you haven’t changed your strategy, it’s likely external bidders have entered the auction. Affiliates or partner platforms may be targeting your brand keywords This shifts you from low-competition bids into competitive territory, inflating costs by 20–30% or more. You’re now competing for traffic you already created. Drop in ROAS Despite a Stable Media Strategy ROAS should stay consistent when targeting, creative, and user intent remain steady. If it drops without a clear cause, CPC inflation from brand bidding may be the culprit. You’re still getting conversions, but at a higher acquisition cost—and sometimes paying an unnecessary commission on top of it. This directly reduces your return. Performance Plateaus as Spend Increases You increase your media budget expecting higher conversions, but results don’t scale. That’s a sign your campaign isn’t reaching more users—it’s just paying more for the same ones. Bidding partners can drain your daily budget early in the day, especially if their tools ramp up aggressively on trending brand terms. Your budget runs out before the day’s highest-intent traffic arrives. Affiliate Reports Show High Last-Click Wins on Branded Terms If affiliates suddenly show strong performance from last-click conversions and branded queries, take a closer look. Partners who haven’t changed tactics but start claiming more conversions may be targeting your brand name. Campaign Budgets Exhaust Early in the Day Brand bidding drives up CPCs quietly. When that happens, your campaign spend gets used up faster. If your branded campaigns go offline by afternoon, it’s not just strong demand—it could be your own partners outbidding you, forcing premature pauses in delivery during critical traffic windows. Traffic or Click Surges in Irregular Geographies If affiliate-referred traffic starts showing higher CTRs from regions not aligned with your core market, this could be automated bidding behavior. Some arbitrage networks use scripts to scoop up branded traffic wherever they can find it, regardless of quality or location. These patterns waste spend without contributing meaningful conversions. Spotting these signals early gives you the chance to stop CPC leakage before it spirals. Passive monitoring doesn’t cut it during peak periods—especially when brand bidders are watching your campaigns as closely as you are. The Real Cost of Ignoring Brand Bidding During Peak Periods When brand bidding by affiliates or ad networks goes unchecked, the damage isn’t just in a few lost clicks. It hits multiple layers of your performance stack. · CPC inflation from competitive auctions Branded keywords typically deliver high ROI due to lower CPCs and stronger intent. But during high-demand periods—sales, product launches, festivals—affiliate partners and coupon sites often start bidding on those same keywords. This competition drives up the auction price. Brands that normally pay ₹4–5 per click may suddenly pay ₹6–7 for the same traffic. That’s a 25–30% increase in acquisition cost without a corresponding lift in quality or volume. · Paying twice for the same user. First, you run TOF campaigns to build intent—think influencer reels, paid social, email, SMS. Then, that user searches for your brand. If an affiliate’s ad appears above yours and gets the click, you pay again in the form of a commission. That’s media spend plus affiliate payout for a single conversion. It erodes the margin and misrepresents channel efficiency. · Attribution distortion. Most brands rely on last-click attribution models. Affiliates and arbitrage platforms know this. They aim to be the last touchpoint by intercepting brand searches. This hijacks credit from the real performance drivers, like your paid social or content efforts. Over time, this distorts media performance data, leading to misallocated budgets. · Faster budget exhaustion. Higher CPCs mean your daily

Peak Season Brand Protection: Stop Brand Bidding Violations Read More »

Mobile Ad Fraud

Mobile Ad Fraud: Challenges for Advertisers in the USA

USA, Blog, Mobile Ad Fraud /

As mobile app ads have become more pervasive, advertisers are facing growing concerns around app installation fraud and the complexity of detecting fraudulent activity, especially in markets like the USA, where the stakes are high. The U.S. market mobile ad fraud, with estimated losses of around $1.2 billion. The focus is on safeguarding the organic traffic stolen, preventing APK fraud and referral fraud along with full-stack fraud prevention that can help optimize ad campaigns and build trust and transparency across the digital advertising ecosystem.  Let’s dive deeper the unveil the various aspects of mobile ad fraud and how to combat them.  Challenges of Mobile Ad Fraud in the USA The mobile app ecosystem is growing and evolving and expanding across the global especially in the BFSI industries, the rise of Fintech apps and lending apps has also raised the stake of fraud prevention in app ecosystem.  Most app fraud prevention apps don’t cover the sophisticated and dynamic nature of ad frauds that lead to fake installs and thereby low return on investment.   Here are some of the major challenges:   Organic hijacking via Click Spam: Theft of organic traffic is one of the biggest hurdles in mobile app advertising. Deceptive techniques to mimic legitimate installs and generate traffic that appears organic, resulting in inflated numbers that distort performance metrics. It leads to skewed insights for advertisers who rely on authentic user data and affects the return on investment (ROI).    Click Fraud: Validating traffic with comprehensive click fraud prevention is a must for advertisers to excel in the competitive landscape and ensure that budget is spent on valid clicks only. The deterministic, heuristic and behavioral checks with google approved mFilterIt click tracker can help combat fraud like no other.   APK installs: Fraudulent mobile app ads are created to mislead users into downloading fake apps or counterfeit APK files. This compromises devices or artificially boosts install metrics. Detecting APK fraud is essential for ensuring that advertising budget is spent effectively and that users are protected from malicious content and bring true performance to their campaigns.  Referral fraud: Fake referrals or incentivized clicks driving traffic inflate numbers that affect campaign efficiency. Fraudulent end users use the coupons codes multiple times either by cloning the app or by using VPN/Proxies etc. creating multiple device environments in the same device.  By exploiting referral programs, fraudsters generate fake installs and impressions, tricking advertisers into paying for traffic that doesn’t convert. Implementing mobile ad fraud detection systems can protect advertisers who rely on mobile app ads to drive real user engagement.  How can advertisers combat mobile ad fraud? Make Payout for validated traffic and work with Trusted Publishers Validate traffic and pay for only genuine engagement. Identify the publishers the bring in influx of invalid or fraudulent traffic to your campaign and work with only trusted published to protect integrity of your ad campaign.   Encourage Good practice by Ad Networks to give a ‘Certificate of Validity’ Ad traffic validation could also support ad networks to authenticate and validate based on the performance to safeguard the interest of advertiser and builds clean and transparent digital advertising ecosystem.   Ask MMPs the right questions Do not trust the MMPs blindly, a third-party validation removes the suspicion around traffic validation as fraudsters bypass MMP fraud detection. Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) have become pivotal for marketers and businesses, especially in tracking app installs, user engagement, and campaign performance. However, recent developments highlight the limitations of solely depending on MMPs for ad fraud detection.  How deploying independent Third-Party validators build transparency? The most effective way for advertisers to combat mobile ad fraud is by using independent third-party validators—an unbiased, external layer of protection. Validate the fake traffic and interactions associated with an ad campaign. mFilterIt offers a comprehensive ad fraud detection system powered by advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. It can identify suspicious patterns with deterministic, heuristic, and behavioral checks.   It enables advertisers to identify and block fraudulent activities before they drain their budgets and ensure that only genuine traffic is counted, reducing the risk of fraudulent interactions, like click fraud, bots, and fake impressions. As an essential step in the fight against ad fraud and invalid traffic, it is important to validate before advertisers, ad networks and agencies collaborate with publishers.  Monitor and verify each install or click with Mobile ad fraud detection solutions. It helps in identifying APK fraud, referral fraud, and protects organic traffic from being stolen. Proactive fraud prevention using data-driven strategies preserves the integrity of mobile advertising campaigns and ensures it delivers true value.  Impression Integrity: Start with checking up impression integrity with Impressions validation, ad visibility and post-bid validation.   Click Integrity: Weed out invalid or fraudulent traffic and bots with click fraud prevention.   Install Validation: Check if the installs are by genuine customers or bots also follows up tracking soft KPIs and events triggered such as registration, logins or signups.   Re-engagement & Post-back Blocking: Hard KPIs such purchases, deposits, and transactions also need to be validated for efficient re-engagement and post-back blocking.  Advertisers and developers need to adopt robust ad fraud detection systems with advanced algorithms and machine learning tools to identify suspicious patterns and block fraudulent activities. As an essential step in the fight against fraud, validate before collaborating. Trusted ad networks and ensured transparency in mobile ad transactions.  Here are some benefits of proactive mobile app fraud prevention:  Weed out fraud to improve ad campaign efficiencies  Enabling brands to take better-quality business decisions  Show funnel visibility & transparency basis performance  Optimizing the publisher ecosystem  Case Study: How FinTech App identified high volume of Fake Installs Problem Statement Fake app installs were significantly inflating the user acquisition costs and reducing the efficiency of marketing campaigns. They needed to identify sources of such fake installs and block them. High volume of fake install adversely affects the overall return on investment (ROI).   The Challenges Inability to accurately measure genuine user engagement and conversion rates. Due to a lack

Mobile Ad Fraud: Challenges for Advertisers in the USA Read More »

image

Ad Fraud Prevention across Programmatic advertising landscape in the USA

USA, Blog, Programmatic /

Programmatic has become the powerhouse behind ad placements in the U.S. However, alongside its growth, ad fraud has also skyrocketed, posing a significant challenge for brands trying to make the most of their digital ad spending. Ad fraud costs U.S. advertisers billions each year, and the automated process makes it increasingly difficult to detect and prevent.   According to mFilterIt reports, bot traffic remains one of the biggest culprits, making up an estimated 20-25% of programmatic ad impressions. Meanwhile, the ANA report says low-quality “made-for-advertising” (MFA) sites account for roughly 10-15% of programmatic spending, delivering little value as they exist solely to serve ads on poorly engaging or irrelevant content. Even the burgeoning Connected TV (CTV) sector isn’t immune, with up to 17% of CTV programmatic impressions deemed fraudulent. Ad fraud solution with integrated brand safety is the key to optimizing programmatic ad campaigns.  Are you aware of fraudulent or invalid traffic in your programmatic ad campaigns? The need for full-funnel protection with AI, ML-driven solutions, and real-time analysis, has never been greater.  Why is programmatic a black box?  Programmatic advertising is often described as a “black box” due to the complex, largely automated processes that operate behind the scenes, making it challenging for advertisers to see where their ads end up, how budgets are spent, and the actual impact of their campaigns.  Massive Volume Makes It Hard to Track: Massive volume of ad impressions served daily, programmatic operates on an enormous scale, making it difficult to monitor each ad placement. Ads are distributed across thousands of websites, apps, and devices, creating a web of tough placements to trace without advanced tools.   Viewability metrics Alone aren’t Enough. They don’t tell the full story. Many advertisers focus on viewability, but an ad might be “viewable” but still appear in an irrelevant or low-quality context, or worse, on a fraudulent site. Viewability is just the tip of the iceberg in determining if an ad placement is valuable.  CPM is not the true reflection of ad performance: A go-to metric in programmatic, Cost-per-thousand (CPM) doesn’t necessarily reflect ad performance. As they do not show the genuine engagement generated or conversions. Moving beyond CPM for ad performance measurement and focusing on true performance metrics gives a clearer picture of campaign effectiveness. Transaction-wise analysis is a major problem: Transaction-wise analysis can reveal which sources drive real value versus those that don’t. Programmatic transactions happen in milliseconds, and each one is an opportunity to optimize or lose value. Advertisers may be paying for impressions that don’t deliver ROI, amplifying the “black box” problem.  Need for AI & ML Tools for Better Transparency: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools can help analyze data at scale and are essential for breaking open the black box. Track ad placements in real time and identify patterns of low-quality or fraudulent traffic. Dig deeper into their programmatic campaigns, ensuring ads appear in relevant, brand-safe environments and that budgets are spent effectively.  Here are some additional reasons to consider programmatic advertising “Black box”  Fraudulent Traffic and Ad Waste: Click fraud, bot traffic, and ad stacking are prevalent in programmatic advertising. Without adequate validation, advertisers might pay for impressions that never reach a genuine audience.  Limited Performance Metrics: Programmatic platforms may restrict access to granular performance metrics, offering only top-level KPIs. This limits advertisers’ ability to make informed decisions and optimize campaigns effectively.  Complex Supply Chain: Programmatic advertising involves multiple intermediaries, including supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad exchanges, and data management platforms (DMPs). Each layer takes a portion of the advertising budget, but transparency on costs and value added by each is often missing.  Lack of Transparent Data: Advertisers frequently lack access to the complete data trail across the ad supply chain. This makes it hard to track where ads are being served, who is viewing them, and whether they are reaching the intended audience.  Data Discrepancies Across Platforms: Advertisers often face data inconsistencies between platforms (e.g., discrepancies between ad platforms and analytics tools). These inconsistencies make it challenging to evaluate ROI accurately.    High Reliance on Algorithms: Programmatic platforms rely heavily on machine learning algorithms for targeting and bidding. These algorithms operate as “black boxes,” with little transparency into how they make decisions or optimize for specific goals.  Brand Safety and Ad Placement Risks: Without control over ad placements, brands risk their ads appearing alongside inappropriate or harmful content, which can damage brand reputation. Solutions to ensure brand safety often come with additional costs.  Lack of Accountability: With limited insight into who is responsible for performance issues within the ecosystem, advertisers struggle to hold intermediaries accountable for missed KPIs or wasted ad spending.  A clearer view into the “black box” of programmatic advertising with mFIlterIt enables more transparent, performance-driven campaigns that truly optimize ad spending.  The Issue in Programmatic Advertising   Programmatic advertising faces a range of issues that can dilute campaign effectiveness and drain ad budgets. That includes:   Fraudulent Impressions: Bots or non-human traffic generate false ad views leading to fraudulent interactions, inflate metrics without engaging real customers, waste Ad spending and skew data analytics. Advanced fraud detection tools such as mFilterIt can effectively distinguish between legitimate users and malicious bot traffic.  Made-for-Advertising (MFA) Sites: MFA sites are created solely to host ads, with minimal, often low-quality content. These sites prioritize ad placement over user experience, resulting in low engagement and poor ad performance. Identifying and avoiding MFA sites helps advertisers focus on genuine, content-rich environments where ads are more likely to reach and engage real users.  Identify and weed out traffic from Invalid Geographies: Programmatic campaigns sometimes face issues with ads being served in locations outside the target audience’s region. Invalid geographies, where ads might not be relevant, can dilute the effectiveness of a campaign and waste budget on non-converting audiences. Geotargeting and refined audience filters can help ensure ads reach relevant locations.  Frequency Capping: Without effective frequency capping, programmatic ads may be shown to the same user excessively, leading to ad fatigue and negative brand perception.

Ad Fraud Prevention across Programmatic advertising landscape in the USA Read More »

Fraud Detection

Ad Fraud in the USA: Low ROI and high ad spend

USA, Blog, Brand Safety & Protection /

In the fast-changing world of digital marketing, the United States is the leading country in the rapid growth of advertising field. But as the saying goes every coin has two faces, this development is followed by numerous ad frauds. Ad fraud not only depletes budgets for campaigns but also undermines the sincerity and success rate of online marketing activities.   This blog post is about how the US has witnessed an increasing rise in ad fraud, why advertisers should be concerned about it, and possible mechanisms that can be used to shield advertising campaign budgets from further decline caused by this widely spread problems.  Rapid Growth of US Ad Landscape?  Since the last decade, the American digital ad landscape has experienced enormous expansion such as advanced technological strategies, wider internet access, and the advent of social media platforms.   According to Statista, Ad spending in the US market is expected to reach 421 billion dollars in 2024. In 2024, with a market volume of 143 billion dollars, TV & Video Advertising is the largest market there. When compared globally, the United States will be held for the most ad spending in 2024, 421 billion dollars. 82% of the total ad expenditure is predicted to originate from digital advertising in 2029 within the Advertising market. The projected average ad spending per capita in the TV & Video Advertising market is US $420.70 in 2024. In the United States, 87% of the revenue of the advertising market is predicted to be generated through programmatic advertising in 2029. The United States advertising market is inclining more towards personalized and targeted digital campaigns in order to track targeted customers to maximize its ROI.  Digital advertising has become an essential part of business marketing strategies due to the increased use of mobile devices which has led to online shopping trends among consumers. It offers marketers real-time campaign performance measurement capabilities that were not prevalent in olden times. As such they are now able to track consumer behavior or even target certain demographic groups unlike in other forms of advertising thus making them more attractive because they offer immediate results on the investment made by marketers.  However, this rapid growth in the digital advertising scene has also attracted cybercriminals who are interested in capitalizing on their gains by exploiting its vulnerabilities. Advertising fraud is a serious problem that harms ad budgets and distorts campaign analytics.  Ad Fraud draining the campaign budget of Advertisers in the USA  Fraudulent practices in advertising include many forms of deception intending to influence digital advertising metrics. Different strategies such as click fraud, impression fraud, domain spoofing, and conversions. Hence advertisers must pay for interactions without gaining any real value.  Financial Impact  The financial consequences of ad fraud are astonishing which results in the loss of billions of dollars in the US alone. Advertisers spend considerable amounts of money on ads for their campaigns but the result that they get is that some of the percentage is stolen by the fraudsters. This reduces both the overall effectiveness of their marketing efforts and undermines trust in digital advertising generally.  Distorted Analytics  The strategies used by the advertisers to measure the performance of campaigns are made unreliable. This can lead to unreliable decisions made by the companies as marketers might optimize strategies based on misinterpreted data which may result in further harm.  Brand Safety  Ad fraud harms brand safety by placing ads on fake and fraudulent sites. Apart from depleting ad spend, this kind of situation may also ruin a company’s reputation if its ads appear alongside offensive and harmful content. Therefore, maintaining consumer trust along with preserving brand reputation means ensuring your ads are displayed at reputed websites only.  Market Competition  Deceptive activities create an artificial demand for ad space that raises prices; thus genuine advertisers may have to spend more on ad placements. This practice is unfair to smaller brands and newcomers without substantial budgets.   How can advertisers protect their ad campaign budget from ad fraud?  By adopting protective measures, advertisers can counteract these risks and ensure that they get genuine value within their allocated budget. Some of the measures are as follows:  Utilize Advanced Fraud Detection Technologies  Machine learning and artificial intelligence are some of the tools that help in detecting and stopping fraudulent activities in real time. These solutions use big data analytics to identify abnormal characteristics or patterns that may suggest fraud, thus providing the advertisers with a vital cover against it.  Partner with Reputable Ad Networks and Verification Services  By working with reputable ad networks and third-party verification services, transparency and accountability in advertising can be improved. Such firms have appropriate measures for verifying ad interactions and ensuring that ads are only shown on authorized sites, thereby minimizing the chances of fraudulent activities.  Set Clear Contracts and SLAs  An agreement which has explicitly set defined terms of service (SLAs) for partners as well as ad networks will make sure that place is responsible. They should also have clauses pertaining to fraud detection and prevention specifying the obligations of all parties involved.  Engage in Industry Collaborations  To obtain access to shared knowledge bases, resources, etc., advertisers need to participate in industry-wise collaborations like Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAGs), and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). These partnerships develop benchmarks and best practices to battle against ad fraud and attain a safer digital advertisement environment.  Conclusion Ad fraud is becoming a common nuisance due to the increasing influence of digital advertising fraud in the US. As these activities greatly impact advertisers’ monetary, analytical and reputational phase, it has become mandatory for them to take precautionary measures to safeguard their business by using innovative technologies based on reliable resources and creating awareness through education.  Get in touch to learn more about ad fraud in the USA.

Ad Fraud in the USA: Low ROI and high ad spend Read More »

contextual-advertising

Role of Contextual Advertising in the USA Ad Landscape

Leave a Comment / Blog, Brand Safety & Suitability, USA /

The fascinating world of advertising is witnessing the rise of contextual advertising. Now, advertisers are reaching out to a more relevant audience with precise targeting and ad contextual relevancy. Relevant ad placement reaches the audience interested and views similar types of content. Let’s explore how the contextual ad landscape in the USA Contextual advertising in the USA ad Market The United States is the largest contextual advertising market worldwide. According to Statista, in 2023, contextual advertising spending was estimated at $227.38 billion on the global level. The ad spends are expected to further beyond two folds rise by 2030 approximately $562.1 billion. The use of AI and machine learning algorithms has led to wider acceptance of contextual advertising that improves targeting and upgrades ad placements. Huge amounts of data including content-based context, and user behavior are monitored to provide custom-made and relevant advertisements. Contextual advertising is witnessing a rise in demand for privacy-focused targeting solutions due to increased concerns over data privacy and regulatory scrutiny. Instead, depending on invasive data-collecting techniques, and a cookie-less ad ecosystem, advertisers are investigating alternate approaches to audience targeting. Benefits of Contextual Advertising Navigating the evolving landscape requires contextual ad targeting. Here are some perks of contextual advertising: Data Privacy Compliance Contextual ads are an alternative to behavioral ads that need to comply with laws regarding data privacy, including the CCPA and GDPR. Moreover, contextual ads don’t entirely depend on cookies or user-specific data, it is easier to deal with privacy requirements. It respects the privacy of users’ data and ensures your ad reaches a genuine and relevant audience. Targeting Desired Audience Another advantage is that it accurately targets the audience based on their interaction with the desired content. Depending on the interests and needs of the users, contextual ads help marketers by monitoring the context of a webpage, app, or other digital platforms to regulate their advertisements. Enhanced User Experiences The user experience is highly influenced by contextual advertising, rather than providing consumers with generic advertisements. They deliver ads that perfectly blend with the surrounding context, which results in a seamless experience. Impact of Contextual Advertising Contextually relevant ad placement ensures more engagement and efficient ad performance with better returns on investments. Market Expansion and Economic Effects The increasing dependency on digital content and the developments in AI and machine learning which improve the efficiency of contextual ad placements push forward the growth in the US market which has a major impact on the US. digital advertising business, which is among the biggest in the world. Improved Interaction with Customers Contextual advertising increases consumer engagement by displaying appropriate advertisements based on the content that customers are viewing. Based on the relevancy, it enables the rise in click-through and conversion rates. For instance, instead of a makeup brand ad, a protein shake advertisement on a fitness blog is more likely to attract readers’ attention and increase engagement. ROI and Cost-Efficiency In comparison to other digital advertising formats that entirely depend on user data, contextual advertising is more affordable. Advertisers can gain a higher return on investment (ROI) and accurate targeting at a much lesser cost by concentrating on context rather than custom-made user profiles. Brand safety and relevancy in Contextual advertising Contextual Brand Safety refers to strategies and technologies used to ensure that advertisements appear in appropriate and relevant content environments, thereby protecting the brand reputation. This approach focuses on analyzing the context of web pages and digital content to avoid placing ads next to harmful, controversial, or inappropriate material. Contextual Brand Relevancy enables AI-based contextual level targeting that focuses on elements, logos, faces, keywords, objects, sentiments, and more for brands to choose the right ads at the right place. We provide custom targeting and exclusion themes and accurate detection of unsafe content across a comprehensive set of brand safety categories as per the GARM guidelines. For Instance, your ad campaign is about a man’s fashion brand featuring offers, promotion, and image of celebrity actor Ranveer Singh. This sort of ad needs to feature videos that talk about fashion or feature the same celebrity. Identifying such relevant videos will help reach an audience with similar interests. By using PACE Brand Relevancy, you can identify the text, logo, element, and keyword using AI-ML tech and keyword search & analysis capabilities to fetch URLs of contextually relevant videos for ad placement. Conclusion Contextual advertising is not just a trend but a fundamental shift. It ensures that ad creative and placements align with the brand’s vision and help reach its target audiences in meaningful and effective ways. Brand relevancy solution empowered with advanced AI-based contextual level targeting identifies elements, logos, faces, keywords, objects, sentiments, and more for brands to choose the relevant content for ad placement across advertising platforms. Get in Touch with us to learn more about contextual ads.

Role of Contextual Advertising in the USA Ad Landscape Read More »

Scroll to Top