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Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic Advertising Trends Shaping the Digital Industry

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Like always, new technological developments continue revolutionizing the way we conduct business online. However, at the same time, growing concerns around privacy and the subsequent moves by tech giants to address said concerns are also influencing how online businesses reach out to their consumers. While trends like the declining use of third-party cookies and the rise of stringent privacy laws may make it seem like it is the end of the road for programmatic advertising, the reality is quite the contrary. Sure, these things have a direct impact on the way programmatic advertising is used, but their influence will simply mean that advertisers will have to get more creative with their approaches. In fact, since these changes have been in the works for some time now, advertisers are beginning to adapt. It is clear that despite the changes in privacy laws and the decline of cookies, programmatic advertising is here to stay. However, for marketers who want to keep reaping the benefits of this amazing advertising technology, it has become imperative to keep up with the current trends. That’s exactly what this article is about. We will cover some of the most significant trends surrounding programmatic advertising. Let’s jump right in: Top 7 Programmatic Advertising Trends 1. In-House Programmatic Run Many ad agencies and brands are expected to stop outsourcing their programmatic ad management and pull those operations in-house. The trend has been prevalent for the last few years, with more companies focused on squeezing out the maximum possible ROI from ad investments (more on this later). With lower spending on the management aspect of advertising, this move, when executed correctly, can provide a significant boost to ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). For those working in an in-house marketing team, this will mean developing new skills just to stay relevant in the industry. That said, those who can adapt proficiently will find themselves in an advantageous position, having learned a high-value skill for the future. 2. Rise in First-Party Data Solutions The European Union introduced the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR in 2016. The legislation is aimed at protecting the online privacy of individuals. In 2018, the USA introduced its version of GDPR, known as the California Privacy Act. Since then, many countries have introduced laws that prohibit or heavily restrict the collection and use of third-party data. These legal frameworks all prevent the tracking of online user data without getting clear consent from the user. Major tech companies like Apple, Firefox, and Google have stopped supporting third-party cookies in their devices and browsers, and the trend is expected to continue. For programmatic advertising, these developments all point in the same direction- the use of first-party data solutions. There have been some attempts to facilitate the same, like Google’s now defunct Federated Learning Of Cohorts (FLoC) and Interactive Advertising Bureau’s DigiTrust service, but they have not seen a lot of success. Currently, the Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 or UID 2 framework is the most successful attempt to facilitate the collection and sharing of personal information with user consent. However, it is safe to assume that more and better solutions will start populating the marketing landscape soon. This is because first-party data is a superb alternative to third-party data. It does not invade anybody’s privacy and gives advertisers access to users who have given their consent. Sure, the volume of data available will diminish, but marketers can expect great improvements in quality. 3. Growth of CTV Digital TV Research estimated that OTT (over-the-top) streaming revenue in the US was nearly $157 billion in 2022, and this number is expected to increase by another $17 billion by the end of this year. Some estimates predict that online video streaming revenue will hit $750 billion by 2031. Don’t let the recent relative decline in the user base of giants fool you into believing that the popularity of streaming services is dying. A close observation of the current trends in the industry shows that the reason behind this reduction is that the market is being populated by new players every year. With each passing day, users have more streaming options to choose from. For programmatic advertisers, this means that the popularity of connected TV (CTV) programmatic advertising is only going to grow. It is estimated that this year advertisers will spend $26.92 billion on CTV programmatic ads, an increase of over 14% from last year. With that said, there is still a lot of room for growth in CTV advertising, and advertisers that jump in now are expected to be poised to enjoy an early mover advantage. 4. Rise in DOOH Ads This year, digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertising revenue in the US is expected to be around $2.94 billion. To put this number into perspective, it accounts for nearly a third of the total out-of-home (OOH) revenue in the US for 2023. With the absence of COVID restrictions and the rising number of digital screens across locations with high foot traffic, DOOH spending is only going to increase in the coming years. While programmatic technology does not have a large share of the market currently, current trends indicate that this will change in the future. The many advantages associated with DOOH, such as no invasion of user privacy, the unobtrusive nature of ads, and no resistance from ad blockers, make DOOH an excellent opportunity for advertisers to reach their audience. Not to forget, with video and audio capabilities, DOOH placements offer a lot of creative freedom to advertisers that can create memorable DOOH experiences with virtually no extra resources. The best part is, that the same ads that are created for DOOH placements can work well on other platforms, such as YouTube. When used correctly, DOOH ads, in combination with other digital ads, can deliver significant improvements in top-of-the-funnel metrics such as brand awareness, recognition, and recall value. 5. Focus on ROI will increase As mentioned earlier, because of the declining use of third-party cookies, the way programmatic advertising is implemented is set to

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How Lead Validation Can Optimize Your Lead-Generation Process? – Know in Detail

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Having a sound digital growth plan is perhaps the most surefire way for any modern business to succeed. Today, companies have several methods to generate leads at their disposal. They enjoy room for experimentation and finding a lead-generation tactic that suits their needs and abilities. However, success with online lead generation heavily depends on the quality of leads. If a business manages to generate a large quantity of leads but the leads are fake or irrelevant, it can quickly lead to a different outcome. Bad leads don’t only result in wasted marketing spend, they hurt your business in other ways, such as: Wasting your sales team’s time on leads that won’t convert. Similarly, a lot of company resources may be unnecessarily allocated to chasing dead-end leads. Bad leads mess with the marketing campaign’s performance data. This limits your ability to optimize your campaigns. In fact, bad leads may sometimes lead marketers to make decisions that actively cause waste of ad spend. If a business has been a victim of a type of fraud that uses stolen personal information, they unknowingly start contacting the leads. This may be seen as a nuisance by some recipients who, in extreme cases, may take legal action against the business in question. A lot of bad leads are generated as a result of lead generation fraud. Being aware of the different types of lead generation fraud and how they are carried out is the first step toward protecting your business against bad leads. Techniques used to commit lead generation fraud This year, the total global digital ad spend is expected to cross the $600 billion dollar mark. From a fraudster’s perspective, this translates to a handsome incentive to get creative and look for new ways to scam advertisers and make some quick money. Here are some of the most popular techniques used to commit lead generation fraud: 1. Bot Fraud Bot fraud is most prevalent in the case of cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-lead (CPL) lead generation campaigns. The fraudsters operate large networks of bots that they use to commit click fraud. However, the use of bots has been recorded in cases of social media fraud (generating fake engagement or followers). In other cases, bots have been used to fill fake information into lead generation forms. The ultimate objective of using bots is to generate a fake lead and attribute its credit to the fraudsters who get paid by the advertiser. Bot fraud is one of the oldest techniques used by fraudsters and has evolved greatly over time. Modern-day bots are backed by complex algorithms that enable them to emulate human behavior and scam advertisers. 2. Device Spoofing Device spoofing is the act of using one device to impersonate many unique devices. Fraudsters use a device to generate fake engagement or a fake lead by clicking on an ad. In some cases, fraudsters use a fake form to collect relevant personal information from real users. They use bots to fill in fake information in a lead generation form. They are credited for this bad lead and get paid. Then, they use different browsers and reset their device’s operating system (OS) to make it appear as a new device. The same device is then used to perform actions that lead to payouts. This process can be repeated indefinitely. Modern fraudsters use sophisticated techniques to execute device spoofing, enabling them to get past the security measures adopted by lead aggregators and affiliate networks. 3. Incent Fraud Many advertisers offer incentives or rewards to generate leads. For instance, a banking app may offer some cashback to first-time users. While often effective, incentive-based campaigns can quickly become victims of fraud, especially when the business is partnering with affiliates. Many affiliates use incentive campaigns to maximize their earnings unethically. Affiliates advertise the incentive associated with installing an app and don’t talk about the app itself. This may motivate the wrong kind of people to download the app, who may uninstall it after receiving the reward. This results in a waste of spend for the advertiser but the affiliate ends up making money. In other cases, affiliates use platforms like Telegram to promote applications with incorrect messaging to lure users to fill the lead or sign up for the app. 4. Fake Accounts using disposable numbers/emails Many fraudsters use disposed phone numbers and email information to create fake accounts and commit fraud. This doesn’t just lead to wasted ad spend and skewed metrics, in some cases, it also leads to a bad experience for genuinely interested leads. Fake accounts can also be used to commit referral fraud at such a large scale that it prevents genuine users from getting the benefit from such a campaign. How Lead Validation can protect your ad campaigns? For a long time, advertisers had limited ways to combat lead generation fraud. They had to depend on the tools and features offered by affiliate networks and lead aggregators and manually look for instances that looked like bot activity or fake account activity. This was time-consuming and was not really a foolproof way to protect against fraud. Fortunately, things have changed. These days, advertisers have access to sophisticated ad fraud solution like mFilterIt’s lead scoring tool. It uses AI and ML capabilities to identify instances of fraudulent activity in real-time in the CRM and mark their junk. This information can help avoid wastage of ad spend and even improve the ROI from your lead generation efforts. Way Forward Ad fraud is the harsh reality associated with the ease that comes with generating leads online, and prevention is the only cure. Understanding lead gen fraud and how it can be prevented is not optional for modern marketers, and the same is true for having a robust ad fraud detection tool. Protect your campaigns and take action today.

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A Mirage in The Desert of Digital Advertising: Will You Find Your Way?

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Imagine strolling through a desert, thirsty for genuine leads and conversions. Suddenly, an oasis appears—a multitude of clicks, installs, and engagements. It seems like your marketing efforts are paying off, but is this mirage too good to be true? There are masterminds in the digital ecosystem that are going beyond the thinking capacity of advertisers to steal their money. They are becoming deceptive with their actions and weave a well-planned plot to ensure that the advertisers are unaware of the reality. As a result, the advertiser often believes what they see and continue investing ad spends on these “painted ad campaigns”. Though it gives high traffic, the advertiser’s ROI remains low. But let us throw some light on this cleverly created web of using the case of publisher A. Click Spamming: A Mirage of Good Traffic In the ad traffic mix, advertisers see some good traffic sources directed by publisher A. The advertiser trusts publisher A, and the publisher gets their payout. However, the reality is a bit twisted which advertisers often miss. In reality, the advertiser is paying for its organic traffic. To keep the advertiser in the dark, the publisher uses the technique of click spamming. Using this ad fraud technique, the publisher fires random clicks and steals the last-click attribution of the genuine source which is also known as ‘Organic poaching’. Despite the fraud happening in the background, the advertiser sees “unsuspicious traffic” in their ad campaigns. To make it more believable, the fraudulent publishers also use click spamming to meet hard KPIs like purchases. This leaves the scope of doubt for advertisers and the publishers get their payout. Bot Traffic: Orchestrators of Deception Too good to be true things are often questionable. Therefore, the publisher puts some stale traffic in their basket using bots. They inflate the ad traffic to meet the set standard of bringing high traffic. However, the abnormal patterns of bots/fake devices are recognizable. This keeps the advertiser under the impression that the incoming traffic is not 100% clean. While the advertiser successfully eliminates the invalid traffic with an ad traffic validation partner, the publisher still wins. Incent Traffic: Smokes and Mirrors The above cases were just the tip of the iceberg. After the publisher has successfully moulded the advertiser’s mind by showing both organic and bot-driven traffic, they take the final step of their illusion game. To hit that last pinnacle of trust of the advertiser, they run incentive campaigns. They put the advertiser’s campaign on incentivized platforms in order to meet the soft KPIs. Usually, the click-to-install/action rate is high in incentive campaigns. However, the lifetime value of the user is often low as they install the app to avail the benefits associated with it. Therefore, the quality of traffic is low. How To Come Out of This Mirage? Advertisers can take action against bot traffic with a basic ad traffic validation partner. They can help to evaluate the quality of traffic based on bot-pattern-based analysis. However, these validation partners often fail to detect sophisticated patterns like click spamming and incentive fraud. These fraud techniques impact the quality of events and eventually, skew the analytics of an ad campaign. They create a “good traffic scenario” for the advertiser to stay unaware of the reality behind the smoke screen. Therefore, to combat sophisticated fraud activities, advertisers need an advanced ad fraud solution that is capable of detecting invalid traffic across the funnel and going beyond the traditional methods of ad fraud verification. mFilterIt – Your Mirror of Reality Arm yourself with mFilterIt’s ad traffic validation solution that helps advertisers detect abnormal ad traffic in real-time across the funnel. Using the capabilities of AI, ML, and data science, we provide full-funnel transparency of the ad campaigns for advertisers to make effective business decisions stay clear of the mirage, and see the reality behind this web of deception. Way Towards a Transparent Digital Advertising Ecosystem In the ever-evolving digital landscape, ad fraud remains an ongoing battle for businesses. By demystifying its dark art, recognizing its perpetrators, and embracing innovative defence strategies, you can protect your advertising investments and navigate the digital realm with confidence.

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Decode the Fraud Series: Cracking Down on Click Spamming?

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While online fraud perhaps started with email spamming, it has come a long way. Today, ad fraud takes many forms, and it costs digital advertisers several billion dollars. The lure of making quick money has motivated modern fraudsters to employ sophisticated techniques to commit fraud. Ad fraud techniques such as domain spoofing, cookie stuffing, ad stacking, ad injection, geo masking, and many others are just a few of the many techniques employed by modern fraudsters. Ad fraud is a serious problem that drains budgets and can cause long-term damage by skewing campaign performance data. Awareness is the first step for any advertiser looking to protect their ad campaigns and the budgets associated with them. This article will help you build this awareness. In the subsequent sections of this article, you will gain an in-depth understanding of one of the most prevalent click fraud techniques- click spamming. Let’s dive right in: What Is Click Spamming? Click spamming is a click fraud technique that involves the generation of fake clicks on ads or app download links. With click spamming, the clicks generated often come from genuine devices with authentic devices and user IDs. Click spamming can take many forms. Some of the most common ones are: Click Flooding- Fraudsters generate several fake clicks on ads within an app. Generating Fake Impressions- Fraudsters use a mobile app to generate fake views on videos in the background. The user is often unaware of this activity. In some cases, the app may place multiple ‘hidden’ ads within the ad interface and get credit for authentic impressions when a user views them. Organic Poaching- Fraudsters use malware-laced apps to claim credit for authentic app downloads. How Does Click Spamming Happen? Click spamming activity usually happens in one of the following two ways: 1. Click Flooding and Generating Fake Impressions: To execute this type of click fraud, the fraudster first places a utility app on the app download store. Examples of such apps may include a torch app or a calculator. However, this activity is not limited to utility apps and has been observed in games and other types of apps. Once a user has downloaded the app, it continues to run in the background. Without the knowledge of the user, the app’s in-built features generate automated clicks on ads. Similar techniques are used to generate impressions and views. 2. Organic Poaching: With organic poaching, the app downloaded by the user generates a number of clicks within the app. In some cases, it may be designed to enable an external device to click within the app. This goes on until the user downloads a promoted app or makes an in-app purchase. When they do, the credit is stolen by the fraudsters using organic poaching. While the obvious impact of such click fraud activities is the lost ad budget, there is a deeper, more serious problem. Click fraud can distort advertisers’ analytics, compromising their ability to make informed decisions. Access to data, the ability to test different ads and audiences, and the ability to optimize campaigns are perhaps the most pressing reasons to use digital advertising. Click fraud prevents advertisers from enjoying the full benefits of this access to data and associated benefits. Difference Between Click Spamming and Botnet Activity Click spamming and botnet activity have a few similarities and are often confused with each other. Both involve generating a large number of clicks on mobile apps, mobile landing pages, and web pages. However, the key difference lies in the source of the clicks. How To Identify Click Spamming in Your Ad Campaigns? Click spamming can be difficult to detect. This is because the origin of the clicks is an authentic device with a genuine device ID. That said, detecting click spamming isn’t impossible. If your ads are receiving a lot of traffic from a source, but the conversion rate is unusually low, it may be a sign of click spamming. To be sure, you can: Look into the publisher app. If the app does not have a lot of downloads but is generating a disproportionate number of clicks, consider it a red flag. It is also worth watching out for apps that haven’t been validated by Google’s Play Store. However, do you remember that there may be some genuine apps that have chosen to forego the validation process to protect their code? If you suspect a conversion, check the time between a click and a conversion. In most cases of organic poaching, fraudsters claim a conversion sometime after the click has been generated. How To Stop Click Spamming? Once you have identified sources of fake clicks, you can simply block them. However, doing this at scale every day is often not practical or effective. Manually tracking click spamming activity can be time-consuming. Moreover, the process is prone to human errors that may lead you to overlook important sources of clicks. Similarly, in some cases, wrong judgment may lead advertisers to block genuine sources of authentic conversions. The most reliable way to fight click spamming is to use an ad fraud solution like mFilterIt. mFilterIt uses its AI and ML capabilities to pinpoint verified instances of click spamming and also identify human-like traffic sources. This paints a transparent picture of your campaign performance and allows you to block sources of fraudulent traffic. Conclusion Click spamming is a serious fraud issue, but the unfortunate reality is that it is not the only one. Click fraud and other forms of online ad fraud are plaguing ad budgets and campaign reports. While this means that some advertisers will continue to struggle, for smart advertisers, this presents an opportunity to get ahead. Think about it, simply by using an ad fraud tool, you can improve campaign performance and the accuracy of your attribution sources. Get in Touch to learn more about click spamming. 

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The Rise of Direct Carrier Billing Across the Global Payment Ecosystem

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The global digital landscape is evolving swiftly with high rates of mobile penetration across the world even among the unbanked population. This has led to rapid changes in digital consumption patterns which fuel the need for swift, seamless, and secure payments. Rising to the occasion is Direct Carrier Billing (DCB). It has the upper hand compared to other payment modes. The ease of transaction via DCB is what is leading the global market penetration. It is set to experience significant growth. The key highlight of this rise is the African region which is estimated 84% rise in revenue in 2023. But still, ensuring secure and seamless DCB transactions remains a cause of concern. Let’s take a closer look at how various regions flourish with Direct Carrier Billing. The Global Prospects of DCB Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) has emerged as a powerful and convenient payment method that is rapidly gaining popularity across the world. In coming years, the DCB market size is all set to expand and grow at a notable CAGR of 13.13% in 2030 and is estimated to surpass US $115.72 billion by 2030. So, what’s propelling DCB? The answer is quite simple – need to make quick payments without any KYC or OTP. All it needs is a mobile phone and an active mobile number for billing. This has helped DCB find its foothold among the unbanked population in regions such as North Africa where internet penetration is limited and in the APAC region where high media consumption rates are driving DCB growth. According to research, 49% of DCB growth originates from Asia Pacific regions. But the challenge is the fragmented market and competition from digital wallets. Emerging DCB Markets: The emerging market geographies make up almost 60% of the DCB market value. Surprised? Don’t be. Factor in the high penetration of mobiles compared to emerging market’s unbanked population, then the number will look quite obvious. Carrier billing is the most prominent means of online transactions among the unbanked population. People with pre-paid can simply top up and begin spending. For Postpaid users, it could also be the source of credit with buy now pay later as the operator’s monthly bill. The key emerging market for DCB is the Middle East & Africa, where half of the population is unbanked, reaching as high as 70% in countries like Morocco, and in Central & South America, nearly 40% of the population is unbanked. This can translate almost directly into growth rates. End-user spending via carrier billing is expected to grow fastest in regions like Latin America with a rapid CAGR of 41 % by 2025. The Asia region (excluding the Far East & China), Africa, and the Middle East are not far behind, growing the second fastest at 24% CAGR to 2025. A secure environment is also essential for expanding DCB into new markets, particularly in emerging economies where DCB has the potential to revolutionize access to digital goods and services. These markets may be more vulnerable to fraud, so implementing a secure payment system is critical to ensure that DCB is seen as a trusted and reliable payment method. The DCB Ecosystem MENA (MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA) The region is one of the fastest-growing DCB markets in terms of mobile connections, with a big percentage of the population owning mobile phones. In a survey, 19% of consumers from the MENA region used cashless payment options last year. This is quite significant as the use of mobile payment methods is on the rise in the region. Another fact that came out of the survey was that 64% of consumers used one digital payment option at least. This also includes DCB (Source: FinTech News 2023). This highlights how payment systems are being adopted by the region. The emerging markets, such as ticketing, online gaming, and physical goods, have a projected YoY growth rate of 31%, 57%, and 40%, respectively, for the next four years. It is a sector already showing signs of high potential. This year will close with $7M in ticket sales in Africa and the Middle East region. Specifically, these categories will represent an expense of $86M in 2022. Credit card ownership in these countries is not widespread with only a small percentage of users. Therefore, options like DCB come along as a reliable and practical solution. SOUTH AFRICA The region spent about $89 million for digital content and services in 2022 via Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) with a year-on-year growth rate of 16% and above. Between 2022-2026 it’s all set to reach $159M in 2026. (Source: “DCB Evolution and Trends 2022-2026” by Telecom) DCB spending in South Africa represents around 15% of the global market in Africa and the Middle East, placing it as one of the most relevant countries by billing. South Africans currently spend an average of $4.2 per month on digital content. By 2026, this average figure will reach $5.5/month/user. The digital market is largely the one that most stimulate users when it comes to paying for their purchases through the operator. The most popular content paid with DCB is, in order, video games, videos, and music. ASIA-PACIFIC It is estimated that the Asia-Pacific direct carrier billing market will grow at a CAGR of 14.52% during the 2019-2028 period, with Japan currently leading the adoption of this mobile-based digital payment mode. One of the biggest reasons for the stupendous growth of DCB is a steady increase in the usage of mobile phones and smartphones in the region. Developed Markets Even in geographies where a high percentage of the population is banked, DCB provides opportunity. Looking at younger generations, there is lower credit card adoption, and as an age group who grew up with mobile phones, DCB is a more natural option. In the United States, only 50% of Gen Z have a credit card. Even among the card holders, the use is far less at 1.5 cards on average as compared to 4 credit cards for the average American. Win-Win for businesses, direct carrier

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From Vulnerability to Vigilance: Navigating Brand Safety in 2023

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Ensuring brand safety in the online ecosystem is becoming a growing concern for modern brands. A large chunk of marketers has started recognizing the threats against their brand’s safety. Misinformation, wrong messaging, bot traffic, and “algorithms” are just some of the many serious threats facing brands these days. In a survey of over 600 leaders at top brands, agencies, and media buying companies, 40% expressed that they expect threats to their brand safety to grow in 2023. While that is an alarming number, the good news is that the awareness needed to push back against such threats is increasing. As online fraudsters become more creative and innovative with the techniques, they use to commit fraud, advertisers are also becoming more cautious. If you are one such advertiser, this article is for you. In the upcoming sections, we will discuss how advertisers and brands can prepare themselves to face and triumph over the ever-evolving brand safety issues in 2023. Without wasting any time, let’s jump right in. Why is Brand Safety Essential for Brands in 2023? Brand safety is important to every single stakeholder involved in the advertising supply chain. Starting from the ad networks to the publishers, it is important to do their part in maintaining brand safety to ensure that their customers, the advertisers, continue trusting them with their ad budgets. That said, there is no denying that brand safety incidents have the biggest impact on advertisers and brands. In worst cases, brands may experience permanent, irreparable damage to their brand reputation. Paying attention to brand safety and protection isn’t just important from the point of view of preventing a negative impact on brand reputation. There are many positive benefits of actively pursuing and monitoring brand safety. Some of them are: For a Positive Brand Image Brand safety threats can take many forms. One of the most daunting ones includes instances where a brand’s ad is published on websites that host questionable or extremist content. Having a brand’s ad published on websites that engage in fraudulent activities can also cause significant damage to the brand’s reputation. While most stakeholders are aware that in most cases, advertisers have little control over where their ads are displayed, the same isn’t true for modern consumers. They may be quick to think that the brand in question supports the views or activities found on the publishing website. This, if not monitored and avoided, can cause serious damage to any brand’s reputation. This isn’t an imagined threat. The world’s biggest brands have experienced such a threat to their brand image and have used their position to transfer some of the consequences to publishers like Google. Unfortunately, smaller brands don’t enjoy the same luxury and thus, they must proactively protect their brand’s reputation against such a threat. To Make a Strong First Impression Brand reputation incidents can hurt any brand. However, established brands have a history associated with them, along with a loyal audience. These elements can prove advantageous and contribute towards a quick recovery after a brand reputation incident. However, upcoming brands don’t enjoy any such advantages. Even a single brand reputation-threatening instance can prove fatal for new brands trying to make a name for themselves. While that is the worst case, even in less extreme scenarios, emerging brands can expect their advertising costs to spike significantly after even a minor brand reputation incident. This is because in order to recover from such an incident will involve rebuilding the brand’s reputation from scratch. This may prove to be an undertaking that may demand a higher-than-usual investment in terms of the advertising budget. Key Considerations to Implement Brand Safety Now that we have established the importance of ensuring brand safety, you may be wondering what you can do to ensure the same. Here are actionable steps you can take to ensure your brand’s reputation is not under threat: 1. Set brand safety guidelines Defining brand safety best practices will enable you to understand actionable steps you must take (or avoid) in order to protect your brand’s reputation. To that end, you should consider defining guidelines that outline what ‘brand-safe’ content is, and what isn’t. You should also have clear guidelines outlining the kind of content that you never want to be associated with your brand. Most advertisers try to avoid content that talks about military conflict, drugs, arms, crime, death, and hate speech. While these can act as a good starting point for defining unsafe content for your brand, remember that this list is not exhaustive. You may want to add or omit certain types of content based on your brand’s preferences and audience. 2. Create a list of blocklisted sites Once you have identified what type of content you want to avoid, it is time to identify websites that are known to publish such content. This will be your own list of blocklisted websites. You can instruct publishers to never publish your content on any website in this list and ensure your brand does not appear next to questionable content. To make sure that this exercise has a positive impact, it is important to understand that it isn’t a one-time undertaking. It is recommended that you revisit this list from time to time and update your list. 3. Collaborate with a Brand Protection Partner Any smart advertiser can understand that as important as their list of blocked websites is, it can never be complete. There will always be questionable websites that you may not be aware of. However, just because you aren’t aware of such websites, it doesn’t mean that their potential to hurt your brand’s reputation is any less than others. So how do you protect your brand against threats that you are not even aware of? With the help of a brand protection partner like mFilterIt’s brand protection solution. Such a solution ensures that your brand protection infrastructure is bulletproof, with no missed instances. Let’s find out how this is made possible. How can mFilterIt help you protect your brand reputation? As mentioned above,

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Fraud Exposed Series: Unmasking Device Spoofing and Its Impact on Advertisers!

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Your ad campaign data is probably skewed. The platforms you think are driving results may be delivering numbers, but there’s a chance they may be only delivering numbers. The reason? Ad fraud. Ad fraud takes many forms, and device spoofing is one of the most common ones. Spoofing allows fraudsters to hide behind a veil and carry out fraudulent activities. Unfortunately, because of the lack of awareness and ability to detect device spoofing, advertisers lose millions of dollars to ad fraud. This article will solve both of those problems. In the upcoming sections, you will learn what device spoofing is, how it is carried out, how it impacts advertisers, and how you can protect your business from mobile ad fraud that uses device spoofing. Let’s jump right in and start with the basics. What is Device Spoofing? The word “spoof” literally means “hoax” or “trick”. Device spoofing is the act of tricking advertisers by presenting a device as a different device. Let’s understand this with a simple example. If you are running an ad for app downloads, you are only interested in traffic coming from mobile devices. With device spoofing, fraudsters can present a server in their data center as a mobile device visiting the publisher’s website and clicking on your ad. Fraudsters employ a variety of technical processes to achieve this. One such method is known as User Agent (UA) spoofing. The User-Agent string of every device carries many data points that are used to identify the device. These include the device make and model, processor information, location information (based on IP address), and information about the operating system running on the device. UA spoofing allows fraudsters to falsify this information. Most advertisers also use a technique called device fingerprinting to identify the devices clicking on their ad and subsequently accessing their website or landing page. This includes going beyond the UA string and looking at additional information to identify devices. This may include GPS information, caller ID, and other technical device information like unique Android/Apple ID, graphic card information, etc. However, using techniques similar to UA spoofing, fraudsters can fake almost every piece of information associated with a device. Surprisingly, UA spoofing is a useful tool in software development circles. Developers employ it to test their applications on different devices without actually having to access them on other devices. Unfortunately, this means that UA spoofing is a relatively easy undertaking, especially with the right developer tools. Even fraudsters with limited resources can use this technique to commit mobile ad fraud. What’s more alarming is that this exact method can be utilized to get around a large variety of online security protocols. This means that the use of device spoofing can be used to conduct a variety of fraudulent activities including, but not limited to: Advertising click fraud Malware injection Spam attacks Account hijack Card fraud Online advertisers are one of the biggest targets of device spoofing-led fraudulent activities. How does device spoofing impact advertisers? As mentioned earlier, committing ad fraud using device spoofing is relatively easy. There is device spoofing software available on the dark web. One can obtain such software for as little as $130. Combining the abilities of this software with a VPN network, fraudsters can easily commit thousands of dollars worth of fraud in a matter of a few hours. This has made committing ad fraud so easy that many fraudsters use this method as simply a way to make some extra cash. However, this can mean a collective loss of billions of dollars in ad spending for advertisers. Alarmingly, this loss isn’t the only negative impact that advertisers experience because of device spoofing and fraud. Besides the obvious loss, device spoofing also messes with the data advertisers use to make campaign-related decisions. For instance, running an app promotion campaign and seeing a lot of traffic from iPhones may motivate you to push a larger percentage of your budget on App Store advertising. However, if a certain percentage of this traffic is fake, then this decision will not deliver the results you may be anticipating. This, in turn, can lead to more wastage of ad budgets. In other words, device spoofing results in the loss of advertising budgets and leads advertisers to misjudged conclusions that subsequently lead to bad decisions. Why is it essential to take action against device spoofing? Device spoofing, and ad fraud, in general, must be stopped to ensure advertisers continue to place their trust in digital advertising. This is necessary to ensure authentic publishers can thrive online. Online advertising presents a lucrative opportunity for advertisers of all sizes. It’s a technology that supports small and local businesses and enables large businesses to expand quickly. It levels the playing field and enables small advertisers to compete with the giants of their industry. If ad fraud isn’t controlled in time and advertisers lose their trust in online advertising, the future of digital advertising will indeed be bleak. Device spoofing is a useful technique that is being misused to conduct fraud. Since it is relatively easy, it presents a lucrative opportunity for those with questionable ethics and a will to make quick money. We’ve already discussed how device spoofing results in a dual loss for advertisers. However, another party this practice hurts is authentic publishers. Because some publishers with malicious intent, it becomes difficult for advertisers to trust any publisher or advertising network. Practices like device spoofing pose a big threat to the overall reputation of the digital advertising industry. How to protect your app from device spoofing? Putting a stop to device spoofing is necessary for advertisers. Unfortunately, there aren’t many manual ways to track instances of device spoofing and avoid fraud. Advertisers will need to depend on an ad fraud detection. Using such a tool to track and block ad fraud isn’t just more convenient. It ensures that your ads and your app are completely off-limits for fraudulent traffic. For you, this means better use of your ad budget and access to more accurate

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Ad Fraud: The Digital Advertising Industry’s Biggest Battle Yet to Win

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That’s the estimated amount of money advertisers are expected to lose this year because of ad fraud. While ad platforms are getting better at detecting such fraud, fraudsters are also coming up with more innovative, hard-to-detect ways to commit fraud. These days, fraudsters employ a variety of sophisticated techniques to fool advertisers. Even modern ad fraud bots have become sophisticated. These bots have authentic user/device IDs, that can perform complex actions, and mimic human behavior almost perfectly. Entire communities of cyber criminals, backed by handsome development budgets, are engaged in ad fraud. Using Google Ad Traffic Blocking is a good way to protect your ad campaigns, but it is not enough. Let’s understand how: Loopholes In the Google Ad Traffic Blocking Google Ad Traffic Blocking allows you to block ad traffic from specific sources. This means you can block traffic from known sources of fraudulent traffic. While this sounds great in theory, this strategy has a number of problems: – The list of sources of fraudulent traffic is constantly growing. Nearly half of the traffic on the web is bot traffic, and bad bots account for 39% of this bot traffic. As you’re reading this, there are hundreds of fraudulent websites being created. By the time you add new websites to your ad traffic blocking list, new ones will already be in operation. – Many advertisers depend on their Google Analytics data to detect fraudulent traffic sources and use Google ad blocking to prevent their ads from appearing on these websites. This isn’t a sustainable strategy. It is almost like you are paying the ad platform to learn about fraudulent traffic sources. Depending on the size of your ad budget, such a strategy can potentially cost you thousands of dollars every month. – The combination of Google Analytics and Google Ad Traffic Blocking only works for sites using simple bots. It is much more difficult to detect the activity of sophisticated bots manually. – While Google does not release how it tracks fraudulent clicks, many experts believe it uses IP addresses. If that is the case, fraudsters can simply change their IP address and avoid being included in the Google Ads exclusion list. Marketing professionals and ad platforms realized long ago that they must evolve to put an end to ad fraud. To that end, there have been a number of innovative attempts in recent years. Let’s examine some of these and determine if they are truly effective. Methods Used by Marketers and Ad Platforms To Combat Ad Fraud 1. Ads.txt Ads.txt is a public text file that allows publishers to identify themselves as authorized publishers and prevent spoofed inventory. Unfortunately, the use of Ads.txt did little to stop ad fraud. Besides major sellers like Rubicon, most publishers also allow other “resellers”. You can find these resellers in almost every Ads.txt file. These resellers are not required to disclose the names of the advertisers, they are selling their traffic too. This means that they could be reselling the same traffic to you and some other parties. Moreover, fraudsters have found many ways to conduct fraud using Ads.txt files. 404 bot is one of the most famous instances where fraudsters have launched entire bot networks designed to surpass ads.txt protection. 2. Play Protect Play Protect was another initiative by Google, designed to potentially prevent the release of fake and malware apps on the Android Play Store. Play Protect scans applications for malware and other threats before allowing them to become available for download on the Play Store. While this effort did stop some obvious forms of malware and fraud on the platform, it has not been very effective. The proof of the same lies in the fact that there have been many cases of ad fraud on Google’s Play Store and even Apple’s App Store in the recent past. 3. Fake Account Prevention Just like Google ads face issues with fraudulent publishers, social media platforms are plagued by fake accounts. The issue got serious attention when the Elon Musk-Twitter deal almost fell through because Twitter (allegedly) failed to disclose the real number of fake accounts on the platform. Social media platforms claim that they routinely run checks and purge fake accounts on their platforms. However, new fake accounts pop up just as quickly as old ones are removed. While it is true that creating fake accounts is relatively difficult these days, it is still easy enough to be done at a scale. Why Is Ad Fraud Hard to Stop? Ad fraud is hard to stop for multiple reasons. For one, there are significant monetary benefits associated with successfully committing ad fraud. This motivation makes fraudsters stay committed to finding new ways to steal advertisers’ money. Another hard reality is that some ad platforms may let a small percentage of bad traffic through to inflate numbers. After all, the only one losing money because of ad fraud is the advertiser. Finally, as fraud techniques and bots become increasingly sophisticated, detecting, and preventing fraud will only get more difficult. So, what are advertisers supposed to do? Should they accept that they cannot do anything about ad fraud? Quite the contrary. Just like fraudsters have committed teams and communities constantly finding new ways to commit fraud, you need a team on your side that is committed to preventing said fraud. mFilterIt’s ad fraud detection tool enables the detection and prevention of invalid traffic in real time. In other words, with mFilterIt, you can not only identify bot traffic coming to your ads, but you can also prevent its impact, essentially saving your precious ad budget. Our tool employs AI, ML, and data science capabilities to detect and prevent ad fraud. Conclusion Ad fraud is constantly evolving, making it incredibly difficult to detect and prevent. However, combating ad fraud isn’t impossible. Advertisers need to go beyond traditional methods to survive in this ever-evolving digital ecosystem impacted by malicious elements like bots. With an advanced ad fraud solution, advertisers can ensure that sophisticated bots cannot sneak under their noses pretending

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The Power of Perception: Navigating Brand Safety in the Era of Fake News

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Fake news is no less than a plague in the online ecosystem. The list of people and organizations suffering from fake news seems to be growing indefinitely. However, digital advertisers have been a part of this list for some time now. That’s right. Even if your brand has nothing to do with politics or the ongoing current events, if you are engaged in digital advertising, your brand may suffer harm because of fake news. More specifically, fake news can lead to long-term reputation harm for brands. If that sounds alarming, it is because this is an alarming matter, and in this article, we will be diving deep into the details. Let’s start with the basics: What is Fake News? While there’s no fixed definition for fake news, the term refers to any piece of misleading information. When you search for the term on Google, the first result comes from a Wikipedia article dedicated to the subject. The article mentions that making ad revenue is one of the top reasons to use fake news. Here’s the extract, verbatim: “Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity or making money through advertising revenue.” So now we know that fake news can hurt a brand’s reputation and has something to do with advertising. Let’s dig deeper. How can fake news impact the brand’s reputation? If a brand’s advertising/messaging appears on a website that peddles fake news, the reputation of that brand may diminish in the minds of its consumers and prospects. Not surprisingly, this sentiment is not limited to fake news. If your ads are appearing on websites that publish hate speech content, conspiracy theories, and other forms of skewed information, you may be unknowingly causing damage to your brand reputation. This trend is not just limited to sentiments. It is causing real and serious damage to brand reputations, which is hurting the bottom line of advertisers. Over 80% of UK consumers surveyed say the ‘responsibility of ad placement lies equally across the supply chain.’ These consumers have also stated that they will stop buying from brands with ads next to hate speech, fake news, violent content, and even controversial political views, among other similar topics. Alarmingly, less than half of digital advertisers have clear guidelines to avoid advertising next to misinformation or hate speech. How might you be funding fake news/misinformation? Consumers hold brands responsible for vetting where their ads are appearing. This is because many consumers (correctly) believe that the ad budgets allocated to these websites keep them alive, enabling them to continue spreading false information. This means that if your ad appears on a website that publishes fake news, you may unknowingly fund its efforts to spread the said fake news. Global Disinformation Index (GDI), in 2019, estimated that around $235 million of ad budget is given to websites that publish and spread fake news every year. Considering that nearly 500,000 new websites are popping up on the internet every single day, the above number has undoubtedly inflated exponentially in the past three years. Nearly a year ago, GDI published another report about how ad tech giants are serving ads to (and thereby funding) websites that spread misinformation regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The same companies were also named in a more recent report about ad tech companies funding websites that spread misogynistic disinformation. While GDI does not name advertisers in their reports, most consumers on the web aren’t aware of how digital advertising works and blame advertisers for funding the spread of misinformation and fake news. There is a gap between consumers’ expectations and what is being achieved with brand safety best practices. How to Combat the Impact of Fake News? Every entity involved in the digital advertising supply chain has the social responsibility to ensure they do not knowingly or unknowingly support the spread of fake news. So what can advertisers do? For starters, advertisers using platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing can manually check where their advertisements appear. All these platforms allow advertisers to customize their placement lists, so you can simply remove the problematic websites from your placement lists. You can also add known publishers of fake news to a blacklist. It is also a good idea to start working on company-wide guidelines designed to avoid ad placements on fake news websites. However, if you are using third-party ad platforms, then manually vetting every publisher can be unrealistically time-consuming. This is where brand safety can come in handy. mFilterIt’s digital brand protection solutions help advertisers advertise in safe ad placements. The solution uses the capabilities of AI and ML to validate the content beside which the ad is placed and ensure it is GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) compliant and contextually relevant.  Conclusion While fake news may seem like a problem that has nothing to do with brands, the case is quite the contrary. As brands continue to spend their advertising dollars without vetting publishers, the monetary incentive for publishers to publish fake news and hate speech is only going to grow. Brands must take a stand against the spread of fake news, realize their role and responsibility regarding the same, and employ relevant solutions that enable holistic brand protection. Get in Touch to learn more about the Brand Safety

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Stay Safe Online: How to Protect Your Website from Domain Infringement

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Business websites first came into prominence in the 1990s, and the internet houses billions of websites, webpages, forums, etc., that pertain to brands all over the world. Any typical brand website has content such as blogs, product descriptions, podcasts, white papers, reports, case studies, videos, images, etc. However, this proliferation of content also faces the challenge of website copyright infringement or domain infringement, etc. You may not realize the full value of the content on your brand website until you get complaints such as illegal or unsuitable content emerging on your website or customers being duped by a website that looked almost like a replica of your brand. After having spent a lot of time and money building the website and original content on it, it is unacceptable for any business to suffer from impersonation through either domain infringement or website copyright infringement. Not only that, scamsters can imitate your website design and imagery or logos on it to create a duplicate website that could be stealing the traffic meant for your business. The first thing to prevent such occurrences is to put a legal disclaimer on your website to highlight that all content is the intellectual property of the business. Various types of website copyright infringement and website trademark infringement risks can target brand names, website URLs, logos, designs, taglines, brand songs, and even product design that can be subject to IP theft. That’s why it is important to identify the most vulnerable areas to such domain trademark infringement and protect digital brand. Types of Threats on a Brand’s Domain 1. Domain Name Infringement: Domain infringement is the technique wherein imposters use a domain extension to create a website that has the same or similar domain name. for instance, one might have a “.com” address and someone might create a .net copy. Alternatively, misspelling the website name to make it look identical is a common threat faced by reputed brands with heavy web traffic. 2. Counterfeiting: Counterfeiting is achieved by creating a duplicate website of a brand by copying content from it to sell spurious or counterfeit goods. Despite all the quality check mechanisms, billions of dollars of potential revenue are lost by companies due to such digital counterfeiting. 3. Brand Impersonation: Social selling and brands engaging with their audiences through social media platforms, has become the common practice for all modern brands irrespective of their size or industry. Fraudsters take advantage of this and often indulge in brand impersonation to attract customers looking for the actual brand and its products/services. They can damage the brand’s reputation by creating fake social media pages claiming to be the official representatives of the brand, and such practices are also carried out on e-commerce marketplaces by them. How to protect the brand from Domain Infringement? Social media community watch – Brands that are great with social media presence are capable to engage their audience to capture a superior response and loyalty from them. There is a very high chance that the audience members would notify the marketers if they spot any fake page, website, or social media profile in their brand’s name or even a lookalike. Taking legal steps – Website copyright infringement is a serious offense, and companies suffering from it can take punitive legal action. Marketers need to understand the legalities and what options are available to a business if a violation of the Copyright Act is noticed. Using an infringement identification tool – Apart from the manual efforts, it is essential for brands to partner with an advanced and automated solution to combat the ever-evolving threats. With an AI/ML brand safety tool the brands can identify the anomalies with accuracy and take immediate action. mFilterIt’s risk assessment solution uses open-source intelligence capabilities to scan through the web including the dark web and identify infringement cases and takedown them immediately to protect the brand digital presence. Way Forward The limitless market access available through online platforms and the business growth opportunities on digital media are immense. However, brand infringement is a perennially looming threat that can affect any brand’s reputation, revenue, and consumer trust if it is not detected in timely and appropriate action is not taken to protect the brand. Go ahead and adopt a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach by deploying market-leading end-to-end brand safety tool to prevent domain infringement and advertise fearlessly in the digital world!

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