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ecommerce-intelligence

Why Do Rating Matter to eCom Brands?

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Online shoppers judge a product through its ratings and impact purchase decisions The first and only way to know about customer experience in an eCommerce marketplace is through ratings. They are eye-openers. Product ratings can make the customer interested in buying the product or scroll until a better product becomes visible. The importance of ratings is undermined by reviews, as they offer ‘textual’ feedback from online shoppers. However, many reviewers only submit product ratings and don’t write about their experiences. Brands have to incentivize customers to submit their feedback through offers, scratch cards, gifts, etc. Such customer experiences are also biased, as many brands clearly state, “give a 5-star rating and write a few words” in their lingo. Brands also run campaigns to acquire customer feedback on their products. They approach influencers to submit feedback on eCommerce marketplaces in text or video format along with the ratings. Moreover, they also ask influencers to create unboxing videos or product feedback for their Product Display Page (PDP). Implications of Ratings on eCom Products Customer’s Interest in the Product Let’s say an online shopper searches for ‘best smartphones under Rs 10,000.’ The top search results have a rating between three to five stars. Which one do you think the customer would likely prefer? While this is an open-ended and subjective choice, as it would also account for the brand, price, image, and other crucial aspects, the product’s rating will undoubtedly change the decision to visit the product page. The next step in a customer’s journey after searching for a product now depends on the ratings shown on the digital shelf. The product ratings are also displayed at the top of the PDP on most eCommerce marketplaces. It’s a signal to re-affirm the experience of online shoppers. Online Shopper’s Decision to Read Reviews If a product’s ratings are below three stars, an online shopper may not be interested in buying or even looking at the product. However, if it is between three and five stars, the decision to explore more about the online shoppers’ experience through reviews would substantially increase. Therefore, ratings have the power to impact an online shopper’s decision in two extreme directions. The need to have a positive rating is always a priority for eCommerce marketers. Online shoppers read more about the product if a product has a neutral or positive rating. It makes them more interested in the features or qualities of the product. It also removes their distrust of the brand, especially if they buy a product for the first time. Helps to Make Product Judgements A three-star-rated product informs online shoppers that the buyers could face problems and should not expect the best results. A four-star product rating states that ‘it’s almost up to the expectations given in the PDP.’ Now, it’s easy to know what to expect from a one, two, or five-star-rated product. Right? Online shoppers start judging the credibility of a product based on the rating. In most instances, people would always go for a four to five-star-rated product. (If you disagree, please comment and let us know your reasons). The eCommerce search algorithm understands that the highest-rated products under a category would interest a higher number of buyers. Therefore, most top search results include the best-rated products, which generally don’t go below three stars. Wrapping Up A product’s rating has a wide range of implications. They can either build an online shopper’s association with a brand or disassociate existing loyalists to competitive products. The need to have a positive rating for all eCommerce listings has become essential, as slight differences can alter customer buying decisions. Moreover, product ratings are a window into the customer experience. Poor ratings keep the customer’s interest in the product at bay, and good ratings uplift their enthusiasm to know more about the product. Our eCommerce Intelligence solution, mScanIt, enables brands to track their product ratings in real-time and measure their performance with the top competitors. The solution can also set alerts in case there is a sudden surge in ratings. Using the alerts helps brands to notify eCommerce managers to take swift action against an issue or find out the reason for positive publicity by checking the PDP.

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How Reviews and Rating Impact eCom Sales?

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According to a study, products with at least five reviews have a 270% higher chance of a sale.  The number of stars in the rating and shoppers feedback are vital for every eCommerce marketplace be it Amazon, BigBasket, Flipkart or any other. The heating up race to grab attention of buyers via multiple images, attractive prices, product comparisons, reviews & ratings are helping buyer to make more and more informed decisions. The customers feedback & reviews help buyers learn more about the product quality, brand, seller, features, benefits, etc. The sentiments and personal experience shared by the buyers makes reviews worth reading. According to research, about 91% of online shoppers read reviews before making a buying decision. The online shoppers want to know pros and cons of a product before deciding to buy. The negative feedbacks help judge the authenticity of the product, the core problems, irregularities, and more. On the other hand, positive reviews help build brand or product trust & credibility by stating the best features and clearing doubts about value for money. Why businesses need to assess customers sentiment? Reviews and ratings also influence marketing decisions. Brands often analyze the product with the worst feedback to find customers’ most problematic areas. Addressing customer concerns often helps brands to convert overall negative sentiment into positive or at least turn them into neutral. As a result, the new buyer decisions also get influenced in a positive way. The regular monitoring of reviews can help brands enhance their customer experience and develop new ideas or features. An evaluation of your brand vis-a-vis the competition can help to identify the most used words by customers for similar products on an ecommerce marketplace. This analysis helps in optimizing the marketing strategies. Brands need such analysis for optimizing the marketing strategies. Our solution mScanIt can even provide real-time alerts if the sentiment intensity is moving towards the extreme, keeping a tab on customer sentiment. Replying to customers reviews & ratings in real-time often results in a higher conversion rate. Impact of online reviews Boosts SEO and Product Discoverability Ease of finding the product listing on an eCommerce marketplace is crucial to product discoverability. Discoverability is directly proportional to Share of Shelf (SOS). So, when the keywords targeted by the brand appear higher, it enhances the share of Shelf. Most eCommerce marketplaces’ algorithm includes reviews and ratings to find out how relevant and popular the product is, before displaying the results to the online shopper. The targeted brand keywords used in the reviews also boost SEO. For example, a Bluetooth headset review would contain words like best Bluetooth, wireless, hands-free, etc., as part of the feedback. As these words are the SEO keywords, it might help the product become more visible in the top page listings. The product may also appear in the duplicate listing under organic search results of hands-free and wireless because these have been mentioned in the reviews. eCommerce marketplaces understand the importance of reviews and display them before the product price in search results. Products with reviews on the digital shelf listings often achieve higher conversion rates, depending upon the price parameters of the buyers. Products with good reviews and ratings on online shopping stores often boost their organic SERP on web browsers which leads to higher visits to the product display page, conversion rate, and sales. Additionally, they alter the Share-of-Voice of brands on Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines. Even if the product is new to the online shopping platform, lack of review will affect its sales unless it is of a well-known brand or much anticipated product. The businesses continuously engage in campaigns for acquiring product reviews as in most instances, people want to see the customer experiences of the same product from other online shoppers before deciding to purchase the product. Build customer trust and loyalty Products with reviews and ratings instill trust in a brand or eCommerce seller. The likelihood of purchasing an item from an online shopping store increases as the customer trusts the brand’s reliability and resolutions. Brands use eCommerce competitive analytic solutions like mScanIt for monitoring positive and negative sentiments with such tool they can evaluate customer reviews in their marketplace dashboard and send instant responses. Brands that proactively respond to customer reviews often witness higher conversion rates and sales. Simultaneously, they may boost customer loyalty and trust of potential buyers on the products, as they can see the resolution offered by the brand to resolve customer problems. The subjective view and understanding of the product usability also resolve frequent queries of the potential buyers, which once again impacts loyalty, trust, and the final buying decision. Help customers make final buying decision Many marketers believe that people spending a long time on a product page are probably checking the specifications, measuring pros & cons, and matching them with their needs before making the final buying decision. Reviews and ratings are opinions or comments given by product buyers and influencers which often include the brand name. The increasing number of brands mentions indeed impacts the algorithm of the eCommerce marketplace, especially while curating the best results for its buyers to boost sales. When the viewer read about other customer experiences, and name dropping of brands in reviews build a subjective opinion about the brand or product. Do you recall when ‘Realme was first introduced into the market, and people slowly forgot about ‘Redmi? Brands also use reviews for showcasing customer experiences to potential buyers or target audiences. You might have come across shopping ads on social media and search engines. Did you scroll past a new brand after seeing the reviews, or did you check out its product page? The length of reviews and ratings goes beyond the eCommerce sphere. Many websites have full-page articles and videos on products offered in online shopping stores. The brands also highlight ratings in product images to boost page time on their product page. Buyers sentiment matters! Reviews and rating could be a great tool to understand

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Know How Your Brand is Under Threat Due to Incent Campaigns

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Marketers have come a long way in the journey of advertising. In traditional advertising, marketers use mediums like television, radio, and billboards to advertise. These mediums were effective but had their limitations. With traditional advertising, targeting the right audience has always been a black box. Digital advertising came with a broader opportunity for advertisers. It has helped brands to reach the right audience and track the performance to optimize the campaigns better. As digital advertising broadened its horizon, many options came into the limelight. One of them being affiliate marketing. Let’s understand Affiliate marketing in detail: What is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is the method of marketing where an affiliate earns a commission from the advertiser against every action taken by the customer. Affiliates either run PPC campaigns to drive users to the advertiser’s website or use their audience or influence to increase the awareness of the advertiser’s product. The Shift in The Advertising World Digital advertising has evolved drastically over the past few years. Earlier digital advertising was limited to search and display campaigns. Today, marketers are broadening their horizons by considering varied advertising opportunities in the digital space. Many social media-based campaigns or incent campaigns have also emerged as a possibility for digital advertising. Incentivized campaigns are often referred to as a form of advertisement where every action is driven in exchange for a reward. For example, download an app and get Rs. 50 cashback. The loophole in Incent Campaigns Many affiliates run incentive campaigns to increase their revenue and fool the advertisers. They run incent campaigns on messaging platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp to reach a larger audience and make the advertisers think they are getting high traffic. Incent campaigns sound like a win-win situation for marketers as it helps them grab more users. However, in reality, only the affiliates win. How do affiliates keep you in the dark? 1. Showing High Installs The affiliates use incentive campaigns to lure users into installing the app in exchange for a reward. This way the affiliates help the advertisers get high installs and make them believe their campaign is performing well. However, the users installing the app are often interested in the reward instead of the app. The users often uninstall the app after a few days, resulting in a high uninstall rate and low lifetime value. In the end, the advertisers fail to connect with genuinely interested users and waste their budget on paying affiliates for installs that don’t add value to the business. 2. Faking Events To grab the interest of users, affiliates post offers with incorrect messaging. They often use shiny offers to lure customers into taking action to ensure they meet the KPIs. For example, “Make your first transaction and get Rs. 30 instant cashback”. Based on this, the advertiser makes the payment to affiliates based on events received. (In this case, making the transaction). However, the quality of users is low as they take the action only to avail the benefit. Real Case of One of the largest private sector Bank of India Incentivized campaigns were live on Telegram for one of the largest private sector banks in India where users were lured into downloading the app by offering them cashback. Users were also asked to do a 1 Re transaction so that publishers’ KPI could be met. Some of the messages we found on telegram groups: Solution Against Incent Fraud We at mFilterIt use our advanced brand hygiene protection solution to track the platforms running incent campaigns. Using our capabilities of AI, ML, and data science, we provide a transparent report of the affiliates running incent campaigns on Telegram and WhatsApp groups. Using our report, the brands can either penalize or block the fraudulent affiliate. Collaborate with Confidence Affiliate marketing is a strong channel of marketing to widen your audience reach. With the right partner to detect fraudulent affiliates, you can partner confidently and take your business growth in the right direction and leverage the benefits of affiliate marketing

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Why is Seller Analysis Important for eCom Brands?

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The eCommerce marketplaces have become hotspots for brands to ensure they capture the maximum market share through their omnichannel approach. To execute this, brands have two options, sell online directly or appoint authorized sellers. Unfortunately, there is one more category of sellers that are unauthorized or third-party (3P) sellers and they tap into the same eCommerce marketplaces and drive away the potential customer base towards their listings. The issue with third party sellers is that you can’t control them for the activities they are performing on the platform. To start with, they don’t necessarily provide genuine products of the brand. In fact, they continuously find ways to increase their financial base by enlisting counterfeit listings actively. Although the bigger issue with such sellers is that they continuously engage in Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) violations, which lead to many repercussions to brands, including damaged brand reputation, loss of genuine/authorized sellers, etc. The biggest disadvantage of MAP violations through unauthorized sellers is that it destroys the price parity of the brand and creates consumer distrust in the brand. Moreover, loyal consumers may ignore the brand’s product listings, opt for alternatives, or go to another store to find better products. When consumer’s product demand from authorized sellers is diverted on eCommerce marketplaces by 3P sellers, the demand and supply relationship between the brand and its sellers is also affected. This unexpected change in demand and supply often leads to overstocking, which is more dangerous in case of perishable products. Third party sellers also take the maximum benefit when brands run out of stock, and they scale their sales creating more damaging situation for brands. While these might seem concerning to you as a brand, the story doesn’t stop here. 3P sellers also engage in copyright and brand infringement by using images, content, or videos of genuine products to sell their counterfeits without the brand’s permission. The eCommerce marketplaces, like Amazon, Flipkart, Shopee, Lazada, etc., have also been flooded with sellers of lookalike products. What Should Brands Do to Monitor their eCom Platform Sellers? Monitoring sellers across eCommerce platforms to flag unauthorized sellers is challenging. To cater to this major issue of eCommerce players, we help them with our eCommerce Competitive Analytics solutions, mScanIt, to review seller activities in real-time. mScanIt has capabilities to perform Seller Analysis that reveals the stock availability of products across eCommerce platforms. Brands can use the list of sellers on each platform, the type of products they are selling, the stock availability of sellers, and more. Also, the solution can help brands in identifying which seller is winning the buy box. By reviewing these details in real-time, brands can detect unknown sellers and check out their activities on different eCommerce platforms. Simultaneously, a brand can view and compare the product availability of 3P seller’s vis-a-vis authorized sellers within a time frame. If the percentage of product available with authorized sellers is lower than the 3P sellers, consumers could opt for products from alternate sellers or even visit alternate stores. The scenario is persistently noticed in the FMCG industry, as grocery is an everyday need of consumers and is one of the categories with the highest demands since the launch of Quick Commerce (Q-Com) brands and apps. Brands can leverage mScanIt to inform their Key Account Managers or Category Managers to report 3P or unauthorized sellers. Doing so would diminish the chance of MAP violations and effectively maintain the product price of different variants under multiple categories. Moreover, brands can know the exact sellers of their products functioning on eCommerce platforms. It would likely avoid copyright, trademark, and content infringement. Conclusion Seller analysis is an important facet of E-Commerce Competitive Analytics. Brands need to analyze the activity of their sellers to check their stocking needs. Simultaneously, they need to know the sellers active across E-Commerce platforms like Amazon, Blinkit, Flipkart, and others. The seller analysis is also important for eliminating counterfeit, unauthorized, or 3P sellers from the eCommerce platforms, directly impacting the trust between a brand and its consumers. Schedule a demo with us to learn about the advantages of the eCommerce Competitive Analytics solution for your brand.

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Challenges In Programmatic Advertising: Know How You Can Combat Them

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Programmatic has brought a revolutionary change in digital advertising. With its complete automation process, it has made it easier for advertisers to get the best place for their ads. However, every change comes with its own set of challenges. It is a challenging decision for an advertiser to make a move toward the big and promising world of real-time bidding advertising. All the things are shiny, but certainly, some red flags can be avoided to get the best returns on the ad spends. Programmatic advertising has portrayed itself as the best solution to traditional advertising. However, some challenges make it hard for advertisers to trust the ad-tech ecosystem blindly. We’re here to spill the beans on how these challenges are directly impacting your ad campaigns and what you can do to protect them. Read along and ensure that your brand doesn’t have to be the victim of fraudulent practices and other limitations of programmatic ads in the future. Programmatic Advertising – Challenges & Solutions 1. Lack of Transparency Due to programmatic advertising, many publishers have emerged that attract a large audience. Though the ideal goal of an advertiser is to reach a wider audience, these publishers cause a major concern for brand safety. These sites are usually low-quality and spam sites which redirect irrelevant traffic to the campaigns and impact the brand reputation. In addition to this, lack of transparency in the programmatic also impacts the decision of ad budget allocation for an advertiser. As they are unaware of the real impact of the ad campaigns and where their ads are showing, they are unable to decide which campaigns are genuinely performing better. Solution To solve this problem, mFilterIt’s ad fraud solution ensures that your ad campaign doesn’t consist of fraudulent and invalid traffic. We detect the sources of the malicious traffic and blacklist the fraudulent IP addresses to prevent the impact on future ad campaigns. 2. Viewability Issues As defined by the International Advertising Bureau, ad viewability is a standard metric to measure viewable impressions. According to them, an ad is considered viewable when it appears at least 50% on screen for more than one second. This is a quantifiable metric to know the percentage of ads that are viewed by real people. However, in programmatic advertising, many factors impact the viewability of an ad. Some of the factors are audience targeting, platform choices, and context which determines that the ads are shown to the right audience in real time and place. Solution Our Ad fraud software ensures that your digital ads are viewable to the targeted audience. Our solution also detects the ad placements on brand unsafe placements, masked websites, and sets of devices used for ad impressions. 3. Advertising Fraud & Bot Traffic According to a stat, “37% of ad buyers are worried about ad fraud”. And it has become a serious cause of concern in programmatic advertising. In the programmatic ecosystem, the landscape is littered with abusive vendors, non-human traffic sources, and click bots. And it’s an escalating problem because if you are basing your Return on Investment (ROI) on soft KPIs like impressions or views, then it is quite easy to fake fraudsters. In 2021, the traffic coming from bad bots accounted for 27.7% according to Statista. If taken the right measures to detect and prevent ad fraud, advertisers can get access to more accurate data and get a greater return on their ad spends. Solution To ensure that your ad campaigns are not impacted by fraudulent traffic and other ad fraud techniques, partner with an ad fraud detection tool provider like mFilterIt. Our fraud prevention and detection  ensures to detect bot patterns and other fraud categories in your ad traffic and takes preventive actions to provide cleaner traffic. 4. Impact on Brand Safety  Beyond the viewability issues and ad inventory problems, one of the biggest challenges with programmatic advertising is its impact on brand reputation. Beyond the revenue, if a brand’s reputation comes at stake, it can create havoc and ruin its image in front of its consumers. Apart from checking the quality of your traffic, a brand needs to ensure some additional things like: Where are your ads placed? What is the tone of your ad content? Is your content promoting anything illegal, scam, or fake? These checks are necessary to ensure that your ad doesn’t hurt the sentiments of your consumers and place you as a brand involved in illegal acts. Solution Keep a check on the placement of your ads and ensure that they are not showing on websites promoting violence, pornography, terrorism, fake news or hate speech. Conclusion Every revolutionary idea has its share of pros and cons. While Programmatic advertising comes with the above-mentioned challenges, it also comes with a plethora of benefits that can make a difference in the digital advertising space. To enjoy the best of both worlds, advertisers can take small steps to protect their ad campaigns and brand reputation. And while they do their part, an ad fraud prevention and detection solution provider like mFilterIt can help in making programmatic advertising a fraud-free space for your digital ad campaigns. By eliminating ad fraud in the programmatic space, advertisers can leverage the benefits of reaching the right audience and getting better returns on digital ad campaigns. Get in touch to learn more about programmatic advertising.

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ad-fraud

Are Your Digital Ad Campaigns Safe from Sophisticated Bots?

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The digital world is evolving rapidly, and marketers are moving from traditional platforms to digital platforms. But in this growing digital ecosystem, someone is hiding behind the screens to disrupt your growth. Behind all the pros of digital advertising, a manipulated truth is that marketers are unaware of who is coming to see their ad campaigns. To throw light on this, ad fraud solution providers have come into the limelight to validate how much invalid traffic is coming to the ad campaigns. However, just when the marketers were ready to combat ad fraud, cybercriminals expanded their fraud zone with sophisticated bots. Unlike the general bots, the sophisticated bots can replicate human behavior and hide easily behind the cloak of genuine traffic resulting in manipulated data. This again makes the marketer’s ad campaigns vulnerable to ad fraud. What is the solution?  Advanced Problems Need Advanced Solutions Once a sophisticated bot penetrates your digital ad campaign, it will not just impact one KPI but also manipulate your entire sales funnel and manipulate the data. For example, if you’re running an impressions campaign then first it will inflate the number of impressions with bot traffic. And once that is done, they will impact your hard KPIs like lead, conversion, or install. The result is that you not only waste your ad spend on invalid traffic but also open the gateway to your brand assets for the sophisticated bot army to attack and destroy. Thus, it is important to get a full-funnel ad fraud detection tool instead of a solution that covers just one KPI. Know in detail about the different types of sophisticated bots that are hard to detect on the web and app. And for the advanced solution, stick with us till the end of this blog. Sophisticated Web Fraud Techniques That Are Hard to Detect Imperceptible Window To improve the CTR of the site, the  fraudsters open the advertiser’s landing page to a zero-sized pixel. However, the end-user is unaware of this and when they visit the website it is registered as a click in google ads platform. The advertiser ends up paying for these clicks/visits which were not even seen by the user. Example of Page View Fraud In the above case, the user didn’t click on the advertisement, but a click has been registered. As the window size is imperceptible for the user, they are unaware of this case. Generally, it is difficult to detect these anomalies without the help of advanced data analytics capabilities. Cookie Stuffing Cookie stuffing is organic theft where a website drops one or more third-party cookies onto a user’s web browser. An Iframe of ‘0x0’ pixel is used to dropping a cookie to hijack the organic user. These malicious cookies thus incorrectly attribute the organic traffic to the fraudulent affiliate. In the above example, we have incorporated a mFilterIt pixel which drops a randomly generated cookie whenever a user visits the advertiser’s website for the first time. Upon the return of that user, the same cookie value indicates the return of the same user. We also observed that despite faking or rotating the IP, the bot device is returning the same cookie within a gap of a few minutes. Bot User Fake users or Bot emulated users usually don’t have any mouse movement or touch interactions. They are also programmed in a way where they don’t react to the advertiser’s landing page. In this case, where there is no user interaction, we use the capabilities of Machine learning algorithms combined with captured values like configurations, plugins, device settings, canvas fingerprinting, etc. This helps to analyze the bot patterns and cases where the clicks bots are happening at a high probability. With the help of AI, ML, and data science, we detected approximately 32k such cases just in the pilot phase. Sophisticated App Fraud Techniques That Are Hard to Detect Click Spam Click spamming starts when a user downloads an infected app on their device – or visits an infected mobile website. These infected apps are usually downloaded outside the walled gardens of the Play Store and IOS app store. The infected app has built-in code which is programmed to create clicks on ads or allow external devices to click within the app. The app works normally on the user’s device, except for the tiny code running click-spam activities in the background. This fraud technique generates click spamming from the user’s device without their knowledge. And the advertisers are under an impression that the clicks are generated by real users. Example of Click Spam In this case, clicks and installs are high whereas the conversion rate is as low as 0.01%. This is a clear case of click spamming. These clicks were generated in a time period of 9 days from Thailand. Surprisingly, the total clicks are equivalent to the population of the country. This kind of CTIT curve is often overlooked by the attribution platforms due to the clicks being refreshed in the background. At mFilterIt, we track the click patterns in case of click generating from the same device ID. Event Spoofing Event spoofing is one of the advanced fraud techniques used by fraudsters to manipulate the install data of advertisers. In this case, the fraudsters programmed bots that can fire fake clicks in the background to capture the events. This eventually leads to an event being spoofed and attributed without a legitimate install. This results in the advertiser believing that a legitimate install happened. However, in reality, no event has occurred. The events like bookings, purchases, signup, registration, etc. are required to be analyzed thoroughly to identify in-app fraud. Example of Event Spoofing In this case, the CTIT is distributed within a few minutes, which is unusual. The normal traffic pattern is spread over as the conversion time is usually not in the control of the publisher. mFilterIt’s Full-Funnel Model – Our Advanced Solution How We Protected a Global Pharma Player Across the Funnel A premium pharma company noticed that their impressions were high, but the number

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Can Ad Fraud Detection Stop Your Brand’s Growth? Know the Truth

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Ad Fraud is a term that has shaken the entire digital advertising ecosystem in the past decade. Every year, fraudsters are becoming sophisticated and smart in stealing revenue from advertisers. Whether it’s advertisers, publishers, or ad networks, no one is safe from the threats of cybercriminals. The legitimate publishers get their genuine clicks stolen by fraudsters. Whereas the ad networks have to see their performance suffer and campaigns fail. And the worst of all happens with the advertisers as they pay for both invalid users and organic downloads. In this fight between the fraudsters and the digital marketing ecosystem, myths make the advertisers question the ad fraud detection vendors while the fraudsters feed on their money. Here is another myth that is making noise lately. In this blog, we are busting this myth with some facts which will help you understand the importance of an ad fraud detection software. What is cooking? In the digital advertising world, publishers are spreading the word that they are not able to scale an advertiser’s business due to ad fraud detection solutions. However, the reality is different Publishers lose a high percentage of their revenue due to ad fraud detection solutions. For instance, if an ad fraud preventive service provider detects 70% of fraud coming from a specific source, then that particular publisher receives a payout on just 30% of the genuine traffic by the advertiser. Publishers & MMP union Some of the renowned Mobile measurement platforms (MMPs) also offer ad fraud detection services clubbed with their attribution services. They claim that they will detect fraud in the data attributed by them to an app advertiser and ensure that they receive clean traffic. However, there is a catch. The MMPs bill the advertisers based on the number of attributions. Hence, if the MMPs detect a higher number of frauds on the attributed data, they will lose revenue. Therefore, to ensure that their revenue is not impacted, the MMPs detect 10-12% of the fraud and the rest of the fraud remains undetected. This benefits the MMPs and the publishers as they can claim higher payout from the advertisers. As the MMPs detect low fraud, the publisher encourages the agencies, advertisers, and other stakeholders to use the MMP ad fraud detection as it will eventually benefit them. This is similar to a situation where the culprit is telling to choose where to go and file a complaint to keep themselves safe. And listening to this, the advertisers fail to detect the real fraud and end up losing huge revenue. What do advertisers miss? Real % of Fraud: Due to less fraud reporting by MMPs, the advertisers remain in the dark regarding the actual fraud numbers. This further affects the performance of the ad campaigns, and the advertisers end up losing money twice to invalid traffic. First, they lose money to the invalid traffic before ad fraud solution. Later, they end up losing money on invalid traffic that is not reported by the MMPs. Growth Opportunities: The advertisers use an MMP to measure the performance and get analytical data for their campaigns. However, due to less fraud reported by MMPs, the marketers stay under the impression that their campaign performance is good. Furthermore, as the marketer takes decisions based on this skewed data, they end up investing more in the wrong campaign. This further hampers the overall growth of the business. mFilterIt Vs MMPs In comparison to the fraud detection done by MMPs, we ensure holistic protection of advertisers from ad fraud. Our ad traffic validation suite enables: Full-Funnel Protection MMPs can detect the general bots, but they often miss to detect the signs of sophisticated bots in an ad campaign. As sophisticated bots can easily mimic human behavior, they are hard to detect and require an advanced solution. With our full-funnel approach, we detect sophisticated bot patterns in real-time to help advertisers take immediate action to curb the impact. Detect New Bots Across Domains Every day a new bot is coming, and it is hard to detect across all platforms and domains. MMPs often lose the time to respond to the threats as their systems and rules are updated once in 6 months or a year. Whereas we detect a new bot on any campaign, we ensure to flag it across all the advertisers/campaigns. This results in the protection of ad campaigns from the impact of the new bot. Proactive Reporting The attribution platforms provide a late ad fraud report to the advertisers. This means that if the ad fraud is detected by the 20th of a month, then the advertisers will receive the report on the 28th of that month. This further delays the process of taking preventative measures against fraudulent sources. Furthermore, it also affects the invoicing and closures at the end of the month, and even after taking so much time they fail to detect the right number of fraudulent sources. Whereas we provide D-1 data, which means that if the fraud is detected by the 20th of the month, the advertiser gets the report on the 21st of the month. This helps the advertiser to understand the possible impact of the ad fraud and take preventative measures immediately without wasting further ad spends on irrelevant traffic. Early reporting also helps publishers to optimize better and reduce the threat of fraud. Forget the Myth, Believe in Facts With the fast-growing world of digital advertising frauds are making their every move smarter, more discrete, and an illusion to the naked eye. To ensure your marketing efforts are not wasted, it is important to fight against fraudsters with an advanced ad traffic validation solution. A reliable ad fraud detection and prevention solution will help to detect fraud in real time and provide holistic protection against sophisticated bots without impacting your growth. The only party affected is the publishers as their pay-out decreases when an effective ad fraud tool is in place. It’s time to believe the data, not the myths. Get in touch with our experts for deeper insights. Reach out to learn

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Amazon Best Seller: What it Takes to Get This Badge?

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Most online shoppers searching for a product on Amazon consider the best seller as the most reliable product in terms of quality and usage. The shopper believes such products would have the highest positive reviews and ratings and would match the expectations mentioned on the product page. The best seller badge on Amazon is given to a product with the highest sales volume in a certain time period.  The badge is often given to new products every hour. The best seller badge further helps to achieve higher sales more easily. In addition, the product appears in the top ten search results and, therefore, acquires higher visibility than its competitors. Getting the best seller badge would require increasing the visibility of products so that more customers can find and purchase the product. The product discoverability and position on the search rank can get enhanced by optimizing the page title, images, and description. They play a crucial role in convincing the shopper that the product is worth it’s price. The story doesn’t finish here. Amazon also has a Best Seller page, wherein the top selling products under a category are shown along with their ranking. The product with the highest rank often appears more times than others on the organic and sponsored search results of Amazon. Sometimes, the products from this list also become visible on unrelated keyword search results as well. Therefore, achieving the best seller badge is often a priority of ecommerce managers and retailers, as it helps to boost sales. How to Get the Amazon Best Seller Badge? Rank Higher on Organic Search and Sponsored Keywords Product visibility on ecommerce marketplaces influences buying decisions. The product with the highest search rank on organic and sponsored keyword search results would appear before its competitors. Most customers often go for a product appearing in the top ten results. Achieving a position in the top search results would require keyword optimization, title enrichment, and more. Measuring your product’s performance against the top competitors in the ecommerce marketplace helps to find new areas of improvement and, ultimately, achieve the goal. For example, if you measure the performance of a product’s title with its top competitors and find that their title performance is higher than yours. Now, your ecommerce brand marketers could look at the competitors’ page titles and find factors influencing the performance. Our ecommerce competitive analysis, helps brands to find areas for improvement. Brand marketers use the insights to enrich the product page title and increase the search rank on keyword search results. Find the Category in Which Your Product Can Give Tough Competition A product on Amazon can be a part of multiple categories and choosing the best one makes all the difference in the world. At times, you might be tempted to enlist the product under an irrelevant category because they offer the lowest competition. Enlisting a product in such a manner can signal wrong message to the online shopper and make them disinterested in it. As such, the best way to get the best seller badge is to find a relevant sub-category or niche offering the lowest competition. Your sales might slightly get affected, but the chances of shoppers bouncing off your product page would significantly decrease. Moreover, you could keep the best seller badge for a longer duration under the chosen category. But seasonal products like gift items, come under an exception to this guideline, as their sales don’t depend on category. Sometimes, sellers can achieve high sales and the best seller badge by placing seasonal products under an irrelevant category. Set up Promotions for the Product that You Want to Sell the Most Deciding the product that you want to sell the most on Amazon is not an easy choice for eCommerce managers. However, once the decision is made, the next step is to set up promotional campaigns such as ads, discounts, deals, etc., to boost sales. Display ads on eCommerce marketplaces grab the attention of even the browsers and turn a few of them into customers. Similarly, discounts or limited-time deals entice online shoppers to buy the product. Eventually, the increase in sales through the promotions helps the product get the best seller badge. We would also suggest you run promotions under categories wherein Amazon’s private label brand has the least competition, as they undoubtedly have the upper hand otherwise. Getting the best seller badge would become much easier under such categories. Our solution, mScanIt, also enables global brands to achieve real-time actionable insights on product promotions at category, platform, and other levels. Finding the ongoing product promotions of the competition becomes much simpler with our solution. Implementing mScanIt’s actionable insights into the campaigns has also enabled brands to achieve higher sales. Conclusion It’s easy to say that all it takes to achieve the best seller badge is high sales volume, but attaining higher sales requires a lot of effort. Keyword optimization on product pages and finding the correct category are just a few methods for increasing visibility and sales volume. As the best seller badge is given to new products every hour, it has become essential to have a solution that can find tracks metrics affecting eCommerce marketplaces. mScanIt, powered by mFilterIt, is a new-age technology that helps brands to track product prices, product page scores, etc. Evaluating the results of own brand’s products versus the top competitor’s listings helps brand marketers take measures that can enhance the search rank and visibility, directly impacting sales. Get in touch with us to know more about the advantages of mScanIt for your brand.

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Out-of-Stock: Just Lost Sales or More?

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The number of shoppers on established ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart is in billions. And thus, the movement of products in terms of sales is at large scale compared to any mom n pop shop. This large movement of products often lead to problem of out of stock (OOS) which can happen due to negligence at multiple steps of the value chain. Brand stakeholders and ecommerce retailers understand that the OOS is going to remain an ongoing problem. The increasing number of visitors to online shopping stores often impacts product demand. eCommerce managers use the best measures to forecast their product demand percentages before informing their authorized sellers of the inventory. Unfortunately, determining the exact product demand is a slippery slope for eCom managers, as the customers’ needs continuously change. The inaccurate forecast of product demand is also linked to other reasons. For example, if your brand is running an online campaign for a specific product and delay in informing the authorized retailers about increasing the inventory of the product. Under such circumstances, the retailers would update the stocks per the previously stated demand. A similar situation could arise if the brand stakeholders delay informing the retailers about updating the stocks of specific products. The unavailability of products on an ecommerce marketplace could also be linked to technical issues, non-compliance with a product page guideline, and other reasons. Although the stockouts reasons are concerning enough for a brand’s stakeholders, the repercussions are equally damaging and sometimes irreversible. OOS not only causes lost sales but also leads to lost customer loyalty and lower visibility on ecommerce marketplaces, to name a few. 3 Biggest Repercussions of Stockouts on Ecommerce Marketplaces Customers opt for an Alternative Product Shopping became easier with the introduction of the ecommerce marketplace. With the launch of quick commerce platforms like BlinkIt, Dunzo, and Zepto, even delivery has become faster. The ecommerce stakeholders continuously work on identifying and resolving the customer’s problem; however, OOS is an ongoing problem. Online shoppers have limited reactions whenever a product becomes out-of-stock. The online shopper may click the ‘notify me when available’ button or buy a substitute. As far as I know, the probability of waiting for a product, especially if it is grocery, is far less than most of the other categories. For example, the likelihood that a customer waits to buy brown bread of a particular brand when it is available is meager. The scenario is more common in quick commerce apps, especially when offering instant home delivery. Under this scenario, the brand has lost sale to competitors and will experience the same until the product become available. Brands Witness a Shift in Loyalty Once an online shopper buys a product and becomes exceptionally satisfied with it, the inclination to buy it repeatedly increases. Such buyers are often referred to as loyalists. But, when the product becomes unavailable on the ecommerce marketplace, one of the subsequent choices of the loyalist is to find a substitute. After using a competitor’s product, the loyalist may change their opinion about the previously bought item and compare its qualities with the new one. As a result, the brand’s loyal customer base shifts to competitors if the product is OOS. Brand stakeholders must expect a higher shift of loyalists towards their competitors if the product remains OOS most of the time. Hampers Search Ranks Significantly Products that become out-of-stock are removed from the search results of ecommerce marketplaces because they spoil customer experience and hamper sales. Instead, new products acquire their search rank and increase their visibility. On Amazon, even if an ecommerce manager updates the inventory, it takes 24-48 hours to review the changes and make the product listing visible to buyers. Re-acquiring the top search rank for the product listing becomes challenging, as the customer’s loyalty has shifted to a competitive product and the consumer’s interest in buying the new & regularly available product has increased. The search rank on ecommerce marketplaces depends on product purchases, best seller, SEO, and other factors. The search results algorithm of the ecommerce marketplaces recognizes the new products attracting the customer’s attention and its visibility as well as search rank improves significantly. Moreover, customers that had the product in their cart but faced stockouts during the final step of the purchase journey often leave negative reviews and ratings. Such feedback further hampers the search rank of the product listings and makes acquiring a high position on keyword search results more challenging. Conclusion We agree that the biggest issue of stockouts is loss of sale, but it also has many other repercussions. It shifts the customer’s loyalty to the competitive brand and hampers the search rank. Inaccurate demand forecasts, sudden demand surge and delayed reporting by inventory managers are the most prominent factors leading to OOS. Ensuring the correct availability of products with authorized online retailers requires diving deep into the stockout vs. stock availability percentages of your brand. It requires identifying the change in these percentages at SKU, platform, variant, and other levels every month . Such in-depth analysis enables brands to diminish their stockout percentage and enhance customer experience. Connect with us to learn the advantages of using our e-commerce competitive analytics solution, mScanIt Ecommerce Analytics Solution, for predicting your product availability at minuscule levels.

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How to Keep Your Brands Safe Online: Problems and Solutions

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What are the threats to your brand online? In what ways can image security and ad safety be incorporated into your brand protection strategy? Over time, your new business will develop a reputation. Sadly, one of the risks of business success is the possibility of plagiarism, hacking, and data loss. Once you become a household name, consumers are more likely to purchase your well-established brand. With fame comes responsibility such as fending off counterfeit criminals who seek to capitalize on your brand name. This article discusses how digital images and digital advertising can hurt the reputation of your brand. Furthermore, we demonstrate how a combination of security against image theft and contextual targeting can provide robust security. What is brand protection? Brand protection is a security measure to guard against pirates, counterfeiters, and intellectual property infringers. You can use it to protect your company’s image, reputation, and revenue. Intellectual property (IP) includes creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, as well as symbols, names, and images used in commerce. Brand infringement or brand abuse results from this unauthorized use. It can take various forms, ranging from counterfeiting to copyright infringement to brand impersonation. These tactics are designed to accomplish the same goal, which is allowing bad actors to exploit your brand’s reputation for their own benefit. The obvious consequence of this is the loss of revenue. What is arguably more important is that it can lead to trust erosion in your brand – and this can be devastating and lost lasting. Why protecting your brand online should be a matter of concern for you? Despite its widespread nature, brand abuse is well-established due to the rise of the internet. According to recent statistics, the global counterfeit goods market is estimated to grow to 2.8 trillion dollars by 2022. Through online shopping and auction fraud, UK residents alone lost £69 million last year. Because of the impersonal nature of online shopping and the internet’s global reach, fraudsters have been able to reach millions. Buying a product or service before e-commerce usually meant inspecting the product or speaking to a professional in person. It’s clear, though, that in modern times, we feel far more comfortable basing our buying decisions on what we see on screens with global retail e-commerce sales going from $1.34 trillion to $4.28 trillion by 2020. Can we really blame a less risk-aware shopper for clicking on the ‘buy’ button if the listing on a well-established e-commerce platform shows the correct logos, colors, designs, and sizes of a well-known brand? Digital images are used to abuse brands In order to convince online shoppers that a product is authentic, digital images are crucial. In a study, for example, 90% of shoppers rated the quality of photos as extremely or very important in their buying decisions. Figures like these highlight the importance of professionally taken images when it comes to building trust. Moreover, the threat goes beyond e-commerce listings. A fraudster could easily create a fake social media account, or even an entire imitation website, with high-quality, official brand photography freely available online. There are 137 million fake Facebook profiles, 5% of all Facebook profiles, and three billion phishing emails that typically send users to scam websites every day, which shows the scope of the problem. Damage to digital advertising Digital advertising is also a potential threat to your brand’s reputation – as reported by 99% of advertisers. Programmatic advertising has nearly eliminated human intervention in the ad-selection process. This complete automation has, on the one hand, improved efficiency for advertisers. On the other hand, it has resulted in a reduction in quality control, leading to big problems for both advertisers and publishers. Poor placement of ads Badly placed ads have become a common occurrence due to the ever-increasing complexity of online advertising. Only 2.8% of participants felt the last digital ad they saw was relevant, according to a study. It usually involves an ad showing up next to inappropriate content, and while it’s possible to find humour in unfair placements, there’s also a much more serious side. In a study, 70% of UK and 62% of US consumers said they would stop using a brand’s goods if its ads were near unsafe material. Ad placement, therefore, plays a critical role in the success of your advertising and, in turn, the protection of your brand. Errors in retargeting In retargeting, cookies are used to target users who have left a website without converting. You may have noticed that you were being retargeted online after searching for something one day and afterward seeing it everywhere. In some cases, digital advertising can be extremely effective, but it has some flaws. As an example, you may have rethought your decision since you visited the website, or you may have already bought the product in a store. It could even refer to a personal or sensitive product that you would prefer not to be reminded of. In either case, the outcome results in a disgruntled user, which is bad for advertisers and publishers alike. Bad ads Although bad content can have a detrimental effect on a brand’s digital ads, it can also work in the opposite direction. Ads with poor quality can be equally damaging to carefully curated content. In the digital world, the term ‘bad ads’ refers to digital ads that create a bad user experience. They may contain offensive or inappropriate content, advertise fraudulent products or services, or spread malware through a practice known as malvertising. Ads that do not work are problematic. Google alone removed and blocked 3.4 billion bad ads in 2021. Such an issue presents a real threat. Programmatic advertising’s anonymity allows bad actors to distribute this type of ad without being detected, so it’s imperative that you take the necessary security measures to protect your brand. Secure images to prevent brand abuse Securing all imagery associated with your product or service is an essential component of any brand protection strategy. The right protection prevents

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