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Brand Safety

Brand Safety on Social Media: How Do You Do It?

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Digital marketers are increasingly concerned about brand safety in the wake of fake news and potentially offensive content. Innovations like social media platforms and programmatic advertising that has added efficiency and scale to digital marketing have also made it more difficult to control where your brand appears. Consumers are often in charge of social media environments, rather than publishers. Over the past few years, the use of social media has increased significantly. One in four consumers spends more than five hours a day on social media, according to a recent study. Facebook tops the popularity rankings, with 83% of respondents confirming they have an account, while YouTube is second. Yet video-based platforms such as TikTok, which recently reached one billion users globally, have emerged stronger from the pandemic. Despite this growth being great news for digital advertisers, there are substantial red flags. Content on these platforms includes text, audio, and video, often impacting brand safety concerns. Advertisers need trust, transparency, and confidence in their social media spending to be effective. Brand reputation is important Advertisers can reach young, vibrant users through platforms such as TikTok, who are highly engaged and have significant purchasing power. TikTok breaks down the traditional ‘bubbles’ of groups and friends, which allows brands to scale awareness fast and effectively, while streamers can attract large, loyal followings on platforms. Advertising on these emerging platforms, as well as on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can be challenging. Research states that over half (55%) of UK customers are unlikely to purchase a product advertised next to unsafe content on social media, while 35% will form an unfavorable opinion of a brand whose ad appears next to content that does not match the brand’s image. The measurement from a holistic perspective Although there are opportunities for companies willing to explore these new frontiers, caution is clearly needed. Making these spaces safer for brands should be a priority for the entire industry, so an industry-wide solution will be extremely effective. Standardized safety frameworks, such as those proposed by Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), aim to improve digital safety for both brands and consumers. Brand safety and suitability will be better defined through shared definitions for these newly developed platforms, so advertisers can pinpoint problems and develop solutions. The platforms themselves can be part of this conversation, and many are making strides forward by opening their platforms up to third-party measurement to safeguard brands. With third-party reporting, marketers can measure success across platforms fairly and with one source of truth. By analyzing viewability trends over the course of the campaign, marketers can determine when to refresh a creative. This is done by determining when users tend to lose interest and scroll away after seeing the same ad several times. Moreover, analyzing time-in-view data across a variety of platforms and ad formats and using quartile completion rate data on video ads can help advertisers determine where their call to action should appear, so their message is seen. From here, marketers could make better and more accurate decisions on where what format and what type of content to use for their ads. Moving towards the safety and suitability of brands On these fast-moving platforms, brand safety and suitability are the primary considerations. Brand safety and suitability can directly impact brand outcomes. According to a social study, nearly half of UK online shoppers (47%) feel more favorable toward brands whose in-feed social ads appear next to content that aligns with their brand image. This can only happen if the industry focuses on two things: brand safety and collaboration. Expanding brand safety coverage to social in-feed environments is a key focus, including developing capabilities around image and video classification, while developing a framework that applies across social networks. These two advancements will provide advertisers with the tools they need to navigate brand safety concerns, while appropriate placements will eliminate the need for overly cautious blocking. Rather than trying to police all content, brands should focus on placing their ads alongside content that complements their messaging and is relevant to their target audience by using machine learning solutions that can read complex text, audio, and video mixtures. Despite the sheer volume and complexity of video content, marketers should consider carefully their ad campaigns based on brand suitability and contextual tools when available. As platforms grow in popularity, marketers must be able to make their mark quickly and safely. Think about a Brand Safety Solution mFilterIt offers brand safety solution based on machine and human efforts to combat recurring online problems. It also provides brand suitability and infringement solutions. As a result, your brand will maintain its market reputation and credibility among the people who engage with it on social media. While social media advertising is a necessity of the hour, brand safety is of the utmost concern. A viewer wouldn’t associate an advertisement next to an unrelated topic, trend, news, etc. Engagement tracking on social media ads can also be used for sentiment analysis and responsiveness analysis. However, marketers and advertisers may have difficulty capturing these on programmatic ads. mFilterIt’s brand safety solution can ensure your digital assets are safe.

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Copyright Infringements

Copyright Infringements in the Digital World: Beware!

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It is easier than ever to start a business or brand using the Internet. On the downside, copying content or impersonating a brand is also easier than ever on the internet. It is projected that counterfeiting and piracy will cause the global economy to lose $4.2 trillion from 2017 to the end of 2022, according to a report. Despite the risk, many businesses are unaware of how copyright infringement occurs, whether they should be concerned, and how they can protect themselves. Determine your risk areas: A copyright infringement occurs when someone uses someone else’s intellectual property or copyrighted work without authorization. Examples include artwork, such as logos, designs, taglines, a song or video, and content on a website. We will however expand on that definition a little bit to cover a wider range of risks. A brand name, website URL, or product may also be subject to fraud. In order to build a customized plan to combat fraud, you should identify what areas of your business are most likely to be vulnerable to fraud. Domain Name Abuse This is simply a way to steal traffic and customers from your website. This can be done by using a different domain extension with the same or similar domain name, such as.net instead of .com, or by misspelling your website name. There is a high likelihood of this if you have a well-known brand name or increased traffic to your website. Counterfeiting It involves your website content being copied or imitations of your products being sold elsewhere. If your product is content or relatively easy to reproduce, counterfeiting is a possibility. Impersonation This is when someone creates fake accounts on social media or eCommerce platforms or a fake website that mimics the brand for the purpose of attracting customers. Although this case may overlap with the two above, Impersonators will specifically target customers using your brand. They may sell your product from their website as if it is the brand’s official website or publish content on fake social media channels claiming to be the official ones. The best offense is the defence: The following are some free tools and methods you can use: Use free e-commerce protection: When you sell on major e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay, or Alibaba, these companies provide tools for searching the web for suspected counterfeits. Leverage the power of social media: If your brand has a strong social media presence, your followers can help you identify infringements. Staying engaged and responsive to your followers on social media may lead to them reaching out to you for any suspicious cases. Understand the legal framework: Copyright owners can take legal action against anyone who infringes on their copyright. A copyright owner has the right to sue in a court with jurisdiction for civil remedies, including injunctions, damages, and accounts. Furthermore, no court below a metropolitan magistrate or a judicial magistrate of the first class has the authority to try any offense under the Copyright Act. Use detection tools: mFilterIt provides a complete solution for brand safety and brand infringement issues. By using open-source intelligence and keeping a detailed eye over digital space, mFilterIt’s Brand Hygiene Protection solution ensures brand equity at the lowest possible cost. Our tailored solutions prevent revenue loss and brand abuse by identifying and eliminating digital infringements and counterfeiting. Our capabilities help brands stay on top of their online presence. Any brand deviations are reported in real-time by the powerful deep penetrating algorithms. To ensure brand integrity, our impregnable shields protect the web and app assets of a brand. A deep view of the digital ecosystem scans Apps, Webs & third-party Play Stores to identify counterfeit apps. Get in touch with us.

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Marketing

Why Marketing Without Security Is A Serious Threat?

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Ad Fraud is not a term anymore that needs an introduction for marketers. There is frequent news about how fraudsters are evolving and stealing billions of dollars from marketers every year. As marketers are getting creative with their digital marketing efforts, fraudsters are also upgrading their fraud techniques. And as the fraudsters attempt to enter the new paid media realms like connected TV (CTV), the marketers have to become more vigilant. Meanwhile, the fraud security professionals have focused majorly on identity and payment fraud, the fraudsters have spread their horizons to trick the security professionals. They have evolved over time and came up with other forms of fraud methods like: Ecommerce Fraud Credential Stuffing Web Recon Malvertising Seeing the current threats from cybercriminals, it has become essential for marketers to collaborate with a holistic ad fraud detection and prevention solution. If you’re still not convinced, below we have covered the impact of ad fraud on vulnerable marketing and what is the solution. Impact of Ad Fraud on Vulnerable Marketing Lost Revenue: When the bots attack the marketing campaigns, an advertiser’s ad budget takes a toll. The advertisers are under the impression that their ad campaigns are attracting a load of traffic. However, the reality is that the traffic generated by bots is a waste. Even after investing a huge ad budget, the marketers neither get genuine traffic nor they are able to improve their ROI. Skewed Analytics: The success of an ad campaign is analyzed based on various metrics like site visits, clicks, and installs. However, when attacked by bots, these campaign data become skewed and give irrelevant data generated by bots from the campaign performance. This may further mislead the marketing teams into thinking their campaigns are performing well when in reality they are not. Poor Customer Experience: The brands attacked by the fraudsters do not just end up losing revenue, they have to deal with other problems related to the consumers. When the user clicks on a fraudulent ad, they have to incur problems like forced redirects or unauthorized malware installation. And, as a result, the consumer blames the brand for the inconvenience instead of considering it a fraudulent attack. Damage to Customer Trust: When a fraudster attacks a website or app, the consumer’s data is at risk. For instance, due to credential stuffing, the safety of the consumer’s account is compromised. The fraudsters hack their account to steal gift certificates and credit cards saved with the account. Furthermore, the brands lose time and money to invalid traffic while the genuine customers drift away upon feeling cheated. Holistic Way to Combat Ad Fraud Full-Funnel Model: For a marketing team, fraud detection must mean more than just eliminating fraud from ad campaigns. They must focus on other aspects like improved ROI and conversion rate along with cleaner traffic. To ensure this, the marketing team must focus on a full-funnel fraud detection model. This will help to eliminate the impact of sophisticated bots across the funnel. Real-Time Data Update: The marketing team must ensure to get real-time updates to take immediate action against ad fraud. With real-time ad fraud detection, marketers can optimize their ad campaigns before any serious loss. Due to real-time fraud detection, marketers can take an informed decision against fraudulent sources and protect their ad campaigns from the impact of fraud. Log-Level Data Analysis: To reduce false positives and take accurate measures against the sources of ad fraud, the marketers must have log-level data. By analyzing the log-level fraud data, the marketers can get an insight into the fraud sources, techniques, and how it is impacting their ad campaign. With the help of this detailed summary of fraud, marketers can take an informed decision for taking preventative actions. How mFilterIt can protect your marketing spends? To prevent wastage of ad spends on invalid traffic, our Ad Traffic Validation suite does deep checks to detect fraud at every stage of the sales funnel. Furthermore, our solution is equipped with features like real-time reporting and log-level fraud data. This helps the marketers to get a better understanding of how ad fraud has impacted their ad campaigns. Alongside this, we also ensure to do a transaction-level fraud analysis to detect fraudulent sources and blacklist them in real-time. Conclusion Ad fraud prevention is not a choice anymore for the marketing teams. No matter how much effort is given to optimize the ad campaigns, if the fraudsters manage to seep through the process, they can rip off all the ad spends. Thus, the marketing efforts must combine with a holistic ad fraud detection & prevention solution to ensure that the traffic coming on campaigns is – Clean Traffic AKA Real Humans. To ensure that your ad campaigns stay protected from ad fraud, get in touch with our ad fraud experts today!

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Customer Sentiments: A Boon for Sellers and Resellers

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Aware of your customers’ feelings? Try These Ways to Streamline Your Sentiment Analysis For Sellers The delivery was on time, or the product was as expected” such types of feedback reveal a lot about the brand and its authorized sellers. Such reviews state that you can trust me or what you see and read is what you can expect.” Such feedback also reveal that the customer can trust the seller, which is a serious relief, as third-party and many unauthorized sellers constantly sell counterfeits or duplicates on the eCommerce marketplace. Consumers feel relieved about product authenticity and start relying on the same brand products (sold by its authorized sellers) in future after going through the reviews. Customers across the globe share their experiences in form of reviews and ratings. These reviews can alter the intensity in favor or against a product, seller, or brand, and they can change their perspective as well as the final buying decision of the online shoppers. Capturing their opinions and the scale of their emotions in a given time frame, commonly known as sentiment analysis, enables them to find the root causes of problems. The holistic approach for figuring out the most and least mentioned aspects of the product listings on eCommerce platforms also gives insights into the probable intent to purchase, points of engagement, new market insights, etc. Such knowledge helps to boost brand building as the target audience gets further filtered, marketing/advertising practices become more customer-centric, and customer service becomes aware of the common pain points or queries. Besides this, brands can use sentiment analysis to boost customer engagement with their enlisted sellers across eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Bigbasket, Flipkart, etc., in multiple ways. 4 Ways Brands Can Use Sentiment Analysis for their Sellers Inform About Competitor Fallbacks Sentiment Analysis discovers the commonly spoken words for a brand and its competitors. Knowing customers’ pain points for competitive brands can prove useful in scaling up business by including them as advantages in the page description, marketing content in product pages, bullet points, etc., and tapping into higher market share. For example, if a brand can learn that its competition is facing delivery issues for a specific product on a particular eCommerce platform, your brand could use this information to gain competitive edge by informing its sellers and offering one-day, same-day, or next-day delivery options to its customers. Share the Practices of Other Sellers Brands want to ensure that the business runs smoothly by resolving customer, product, and seller-centric issues. By using the proprietary technology of mScanIt, it can discover the most appreciated aspects of its authorized and 3P (third-party) sellers and share the information with underperforming sellers, such as: Focus areas Content Examples Screenshots Sentiments It could also enable the underperforming sellers to resolve some of its ongoing problems and increase the intent to purchase products across multiple eCommerce platforms. For example, if a competitor seller is appreciated for the packaging, however, the brand seller has no mention about the same. It could inform its seller so that they can offer better packaging, which the customer appreciates and becomes a relevant theme of the eCommerce platforms. Pro Tip: “Analyzing sentiments using reviews and ratings of consumers helps in identifying their unsolved queries and evaluate their perception of the brand, seller, or product.” Provides Platform-Level Insights Brands increase the revenue of their product variants by placing them across multiple eCommerce platforms such as Lazada, Shopee, Tokopedia, Amazon, etc. Therefore, using Sentiment Analysis, they can gain insights into the customer perception of product listings across eCommerce platforms, and build their strategies, accordingly. Sharing platform-level insights with its authorized sellers would enable the brand to help them in many ways. For example, suppose competitive sellers of baby care products on Lazada have more mentions related to the product’s price, such as cheap, economical, promo, courier, etc. In that case, it can inform the seller about the same. The associated sellers can enhance their product descriptions, bullet points, titles, etc., and capitalize on the pricing aspect while avoiding MSRP or MAP violations. Recognize the Brands Perception Customers often leave feedback about brand/seller/product under reviews of eCommerce platforms. Knowing the customer’s sentiment intensity for the product listing can help to understand their needs, trends, demands, etc., and address them at the multiple levels, including at seller-level, to boost sales, revenue, as well as seller recognition. For example, one of our brands discovered 49% of positive sentiment intensity on the Shopee platform based on more than one lakh feedback. After carefully reviewing the analysis of the brand-level themes, delivery, quality, and packaging were the most talked about issues on the eCommerce platform. The overall sentiment score of the brand was between 0.18 and 0.5, with an average of 0.37. (The sentiment score is calculated in the range of –1 to 1.) The brand communicated its official sellers on other platforms to use this information while enlisting products. Also, the word cloud revealed “texture, effectiveness, and arrived” among the top three negative aspects and “packaging, delivery, and fast” as the top positive aspects. It could inform its upcoming sellers about the same and build a better brand perception on Shopee. Conclusion Brands across the globe have already realized the potential of eCommerce Competitive Analysis, mScanIt, powered by mFilterIt. The Sentiment Analysis dashboard of mScanIt can prove to be beneficial for gaining insights into the minds of consumers and discovering their emotions towards products, brands, and sellers. By realizing the pain points or positive aspects of the brand’s authorized/official sellers, competitive seller practices, or the themes triggering brand perception, brands can find triggers that can enhance customer journeys and seller perceptions. Schedule a demo with us to learn more about the advantages of using the mScanIt Sentiment Analysis dashboard for your sellers.

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What’s the Deal with Brand Safety in Advertising?

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Brand safety is the process of protecting a brand’s image and reputation from the negative or damaging influence of questionable or inappropriate content when advertising online. It is important to have a deeper understanding of the subject to ensure the business’s success. For many companies, programmatic media has already become a part of their digital campaigns. In order to implement this strategy safely and efficiently, brand safety and brand suitability are two of the most commonly used branding concepts. By using these approaches, companies can stay protected in the digital environment and get the best results. Many organizations are currently at risk of disappearance if they do not invest in these concepts. Thus, it is necessary to understand what they mean and how they can be effectively used to guarantee the protection of a brand’s name in the online world. In this way, you will be able to avoid the main effects of unwanted online advertising. The purpose of this article is to explore the importance of brand safety in advertising and the steps to be taken to make it positive. Assured reputation In this context, the term safety refers to the reputation of the company and its safety. That is, to avoid being associated with crimes, adult content, fraud, hate speech, division, and fake news, among other controversial factors. Modern advertising is largely programmatic and brand safety is emerging in this context. Based on segmentation studies, the software decides where to advertise. It is necessary to have protection measures in place to ensure that these systems do not place the brand in inappropriate contexts. Associated with the concept is the idea of brand suitability, which is referring to what environments a company really belongs in. This means places where prospects go and are associated with a positive image that is valued by prospects. Since it is so easy to create ads and spread them across the internet, we can understand how brand safety is important as well. This is a hard-earned process that will directly contribute to the long-term success of your company. Your ads are an extension of your brand, and your users will judge you by what they see. What is the importance of brand safety in advertising? Even though advertising is mostly automated, you should protect your brand at all costs by ensuring positive interactions with your customers. The constant and extreme scrutiny social media offers are like a two-edged sword: mistakes in PR will make you vulnerable, but good advertising will also reach a wider audience. The risk can be mitigated by ensuring brand safety, understanding its strategies and tools, and establishing a detailed implementation plan to protect your reputation. What are some common issues that could threaten your brand’s safety? Here are a few brand safety problems that could harm your brand’s reputation. Take note of these while using programmatic advertising: Poor placement of ads The placement of your ad will have a significant impact on how people perceive it. If you place your ads on non-reputable websites or platforms, it can reflect badly on your business. Additionally, if ads appear next to provocative content, a negative association may be created between your brand and the content. Click-through rates and conversions can also be affected by the poor placement of ads. Customers are less likely to trust a company associated with shady sites or objectionable content. Fake news There is a lot of fake news circulating on the internet in the current political climate. It could damage your business’s reputation if your ad is displayed on a website spreading fake news. The users who see your ad next to fake news may think that your brand is associated with this information. Consequently, sales may suffer. Extremism Advertisements on websites or platforms that promote extremist views can damage your business’s reputation. Users may assume your company shares the same views if your ad appears next to extremist content. Additionally, placing ads on your site could lead them to believe you’re funding extremist content. Those people will distance themselves from your brand, which means you’ll lose prospects and actual customers. Ensuring your digital assets are safe at any point in time should be the brand’s responsibility. There are a few reasons for this: Ensures success in your digital marketing campaigns Implementing brand safety measures will make your digital marketing campaigns more successful. This is because your ads are more likely to appear in front of consumers who are interested or engaged in your product/service. Protecting your brand will prevent you from spending money on ads that will never be seen by your target audience. When your digital ad appears alongside offensive content, it will turn potential customers away from your brand. As more people avoid your ad, you’ll see a lower return on investment (ROI) for your digital marketing campaigns. It helps you reach the right audience According to a survey, about two-thirds (66%) of all companies, and 71% of companies with revenues greater than $10 billion, cite digital advertising as a primary value. Programmatic ads that are placed in a secure environment are more likely to engage your target audience. A user will be more likely to see your ad if they aren’t offended by the content surrounding it. Creates a positive first impression Your ad is often the first interaction your brand has with potential customers. It’s important to ensure that you’re making a good first impression. If your ad appears on a website promoting extremism or other vices, it will negatively reflect on your brand. Your ad will likely be remembered for all the wrong reasons and will make users less likely to do business with you in the future. Making a good first impression in business is key to attracting new customers and retaining them. Remember that potential clients will feel more comfortable doing business with you if your first impression is positive. Prioritize brand safety in advertising A digital advertising campaign is a great way to reach potential customers and promote your

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customers

Listen to Your Customers: They Know the Best.

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How analyzing reviews helped an FMCG brand to optimize their packaging? In India, we have a saying, “ग्राहक हमारे भगवान हैं” which means “customer is our god.” Ratings and reviews are invaluable sources of getting to know your customers. The shoppers share their personal buying experiences through them. They share the qualities and experience they love with the product, things they are disappointed with, inform about unfocused or undermined USPs of the product, at times talk about better experience with competitor products and lot more. The information customers provide through reviews is invaluable for brands as it helps to understand buyer personas, find new trends, and resolve brand / authorized seller or product issues, influencing the buying decision of the on-lookers. Brands constantly need to weigh the value of their customer’s positive, negative, or neutral reviews to figure out the change in market perception, competitive edge, outcomes, and more. A couple of interesting facts that showcase the impact of reviews for eCom brands: 19-25% of customers believe in the authenticity of customer reviews, and a large proportion makes final purchase decisions based on them. 92% of customers stay away from brands with negative reviews. We also analyzed the impact of reviews on a few brands and discovered that packaging was a significant issue constantly faced by one of our FMCG clients. Our analysis revealed the following challenges: The Struggles of the Brand Even after over 50 years of serving their customers, the FMCG brand was having trouble assessing the challenges that people were facing in context to their products. They wanted to deep dive into the feedback by the customers to understand the market sentiment for their products. The lack of transparency in feedback, which in offline case used to be from the distributors, made it difficult for the brand to identify the source of issues, whether the production issues or the delivery issues. E-commerce platforms have become mediums, wherein brands can directly understand the customers’ feedback of the product, brand, or seller by analyzing the reviews and ratings section. Unfortunately, the rapidly growing rate of reviews on multiple product variants made it challenging for their marketers to develop a subjective view, and sight the biggest problem or categorically segregate the riveting pain points of the reviewers. This was the time when collaboration between the brand and mScanIt started. How Listening to Customer Helped them Grow? Our eCom Analytics solution, mScanIt was deployed and collected data from all of the areas that affect a brand’s performance. This information helps in understanding customer personas and scaling up the consumer base. Using these insights, brand could make more intelligent decisions based on the data, and eventually, propel the growth in terms of revenue. Let us explain the step by step approach: Our program gathered and analyzed consumer evaluations and ratings of a product, sorting them into categories such as delivery, taste/flavor, quantity, packaging, and availability. It further classified the comments and assigned a sentiment value (Positive/Negative/Neutral) to them based on the consumers’ purpose of leaving a review. We reflected this data on the dashboard & showed the complete listings and all the comments made by consumers. We also analyzed the word clouds of negative reviews fetched from the website. This way brand can notice the negative keywords being used for its negative reviews. Interactive Insights from this data are shown through charts, which helps the brand to understand the areas of improvement. Success Enjoyed by the Brand The brand witnessed huge success in terms of brand equity and customer satisfaction. The insights provided by our solution helped them create a strategy to manage product reputation. The issue with packaging was highlighted and corrective measures were taken resulting in drastic reduction of negative reviews. The competitive analysis helped the brand to gain a competitive edge. Our technology assisted the business in to get insights about the page content, convincing shoppers to buy their products. The accuracy of data is 92-95 percent. Furthermore, the firm was able to keep an exact account of its product feedback because of the real-time updates and daily reports it received. The dashboard of our solution displayed sentiment values, sentiment scores, and themes based on consumer reviews enabling them to create relevant strategy. Conclusion Ratings and reviews are fantastic ways to get feedback. Keeping an eye on ratings & reviews daily enables the brand to keep a competitive advantage. Besides this, mScanIt’s dashboard reveals key takeaways under the insights segment, allowing brands to take corrective measures at the right stage. E-commerce marketplaces have a high competition among brands. A single source of truth and trust that delivers insights into competitive intelligence metrics like share of shelf, stock availability, banner visibility, etc., can become crucial in making business decisions. Our eCom solution, mScanIt, is a one-stop solution for monitoring such metrics of your products vis-a-vis the top competitors and gain competitive edge. Get in touch with us to schedule a demo and avail the advantages of eCom Competitive Analytics for your brand.

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You Asked, We Answered: Most Searched Questions About Ad Fraud

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Whether you’re an advertiser, publisher, or user, it is natural to have questions about the growing threats of ad fraud. As the digital marketing world is moving ahead, the fraudsters are also becoming smart and coming up with new techniques to defraud marketers. Just like taking preventative measures against ad fraud is important, it is also essential to stay updated with the terms and techniques fraudsters are using. To ensure this, we have covered the most searched questions about ad fraud to help you understand the nitty-gritty of the techniques and tools used by fraudsters. Get ready to binge-read! What is ad fraud? Ad fraud is an attempt to defraud advertisers to steal money and manipulate their data with invalid traffic. The fraudsters usually use bots to perform ad fraud and trick the advertisers into thinking they are getting genuine users. As a result, the advertisers lose their ad revenue on invalid traffic. Furthermore, seeing the inflated traffic the advertisers think their ad campaigns are working and continue to invest in bot-impacted ad campaigns. According to a Juniper Research report, ad fraud is estimated to cost up to $81 billion by the end of 2022. What is bot traffic? Bot traffic consists of automated traffic coming from bots instead of humans. Every traffic generated from bots is not always fraudulent. Sometimes the search engines send bots to crawl the websites for ranking purposes. However, bot traffic is a concern when it is used as a carrier of ad fraud. Often called SIVT or sophisticated invalid traffic. The bad bots manipulate the data of an ad campaign and commit types of ad fraud like SDK spoofing, fake clicks, and fake installs. How to detect bot traffic? Some of the common ways to detect bot traffic that can be identified on websites, apps, and APIs are: Abnormally high pageviews Abnormally high bounce rate Inflated traffic from unknown locations Abnormal session durations High number of junk conversions What is Impression Ad Fraud? Impression means the total number of times an ad was displayed regardless of whether the ad was viewed or not. Impression fraud happens when the fraudsters create a fake website and list themselves on an ad exchange. When an advertiser buys an ad inventory on these websites, they generate impressions with the help of bots. The inflated impression numbers make the advertisers believe that their ad campaign is getting traffic. Wherein, the reality is that the ads are attracting bot traffic, and the fraudsters are getting money for invalid traffic. What is Ad Stacking? This is a type of mobile ad fraud where the fraudsters ‘layer’ or ‘stack’ multiple ads above one another in single ad placement. While just the top ad is visible to the user, the impression or click is registered for all the ads stacked beneath each other. This further lead to advertisers paying for a fake impression or click. What is VPN Proxy Click Fraud? A VPN is used to create a new IP address and mask the original location of a person. This is a strong tool for fraudsters to hide their tracks of ad fraud practices. With the help of a VPN proxy, they create a new IP address which helps them to keep themselves hidden from the ad fraud detection solutions. The fraudsters use this technique to mask their device location and commit fraud. What is Fake Attribution? A fake attribution is a practice followed by fraudsters to steal the credit of an organic install by reporting a fake click as the last engagement. Being the “last-click attribution”, the attribution platforms consider a fake click as an organic click. Usually, a fake attribution is triggered with a help of malware that comes along when a user installs an app from an unknown source. The malware helps to track the user’s activity and notifies the fraudster when the app install starts. The malware search for the relevant information and populates into a fake click report to register as the last click engagement and gets the attribution for an organic install or one generated by a media partner. What is cookie stuffing? This is a technique used in affiliate marketing fraud where a fraudulent affiliate fools the advertiser into thinking that they have sent traffic to their website. But in reality, they haven’t sent any traffic. This practice is also known as cookie dropping and is one of the commonly used techniques in affiliate marketing. By fooling the advertiser, they get the commission for sending a user to their website. Furthermore, the advertiser is wasting money and getting no users in return from their affiliate campaigns What is Ad Pixel stuffing? The technique of pixel stuffing happens when fraudsters place an ad or an entire website inside a frame of 1×1 pixel using an iframe. This makes it invisible to the human eye. When a normal ad runs, the impressions are tracked for the legitimate ad, as well as the ads that are stacked under the invisible pixel. In this way, the fraudsters receive compensation for those fake impressions. Furthermore, they also use bots to generate fake impressions with the pixel-stuffed ads and drain the advertiser’s budget on invalid traffic. What is Incent Fraud? This is a type of fraud where the fraudulent affiliates run non-incent campaigns on incent platforms. Due to this, they attract low-quality users that install only for incentives and have no interest in the actual app. This technique is usually used to increase the install volumes, fix low CR ratios, moderate the quality of user acquisition, or simply increase the margins. What is Click Injection? This is a sophisticated form of click-spamming which is majorly prevalent in android devices. When a user downloads a malicious app, they allow the fraudsters to detect when any other app is downloaded on a device. Once they know that, fraudsters trigger a click before an install is completed. As a result, the fraudster receives a credit for the install that appears legitimate and results in a CPI payout from the advertiser. What

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genuine-users

You’re Losing Genuine Users. Know Why?

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Imagine you’re running an ad campaign to generate leads for your clothing brand. You have also partnered with an ad fraud detection solution to detect and eliminate invalid traffic. However, one of your legitimate consumers raises a concern. Their card was blocked while making the transaction. Who could be responsible for this? You can blame the fraud detection vendor as they might have flagged a genuine consumer assuming it to be a fraudulent source. While ad fraud prevention is an essential element to eliminate fraudulent sources from ad campaigns, there must be a holistic way to differentiate between a genuine user and a bot without compromising the security of the ad campaigns. This mistake not only costs the brand their revenue, but also the trust of a legitimate user. Know how brands are impacted by this and what you must look for in an ad fraud detection vendor to avoid the case of false positives. What is a false positive? A false positive happens when a legitimate transaction is flagged as suspicious resulting in declining of payment or blocking of a genuine account. As a result, a request from a genuine customer is identified as a fraudulent source. This error happens when a non-fraudulent transaction is flagged by a fraud detection system resulting in the decline of the transaction. Why do false positives take place? The fraud detection systems are programmed to detect fraud patterns in a campaign. However, sometimes the system fails to accurately differentiate between a legitimate and a fraudulent request. As a result, the brand has to bear the collateral damage of false positives. To reduce the consequences of false positives, organizations have experimented with different approaches to try and differentiate between a legitimate and fraudulent user. Based on a checklist This list includes the details like IP addresses, email addresses, and Device IDs that have been identified and marked as either “safe” or “unsafe”. For example, if an IP address is flagged for being a source of malicious or fraudulent activity, then it will be “blacklisted”. Unfortunately, these lists are no longer viable to detect fast-evolving fraud. These lists require continuous refreshing as they get outdated in a short span of time. And these manually designed lists are often imprecise, corrupted, or at the worst expired. As a result, these reputation lists often lead to an increase in the number of false positives. Based on Rules The rules engines are software that is programmed to take actions based on specific criteria. For example, if a business has made a rule check to analyze the billing country and IP country. In this case, any mismatch will be an indication of a malicious account. These rules can be effective in some cases, but it has many limitations. The rules are highly reactive, and the results are based on past experiences. Furthermore, the rules are hard to manage especially in the case of large-scale data. As a result, the false positive number goes up. Based on Rule-based Machine Learning In this process, a training dataset is processed with the help of AI and ML. In this case, all the possible outcomes are programmed with the correct answers to train the algorithm. With the help of supervised machine learning, the brands can detect certain patterns and insights from a set of data. This is further used to make predictions about future outcomes. This is a strong tool for fraud detection, but it has its own limitations. For example, in SML the algorithms require a certain command to perform their tasks. This limits the ability to detect new and unknown fraud attacks. And as the fraudsters adapt to new techniques at a faster pace, it is impossible for an SML-based solution to keep pace. Why do brands need to act against false positives? Friction in users: Due to false positives, a genuine customer becomes the biggest victim. The most common case is when a customer attempts to pay to make a purchase, but for some unknown reason, the payment gets declined. A decline of a payment for an interested user can turn into a case of inconvenience and they drop out to purchase from a different brand or platform. Reputational damage: According to a report, 38% of online shoppers abandon their purchases when asked for an additional security check. They consider switching to a different brand when they experience poor service. Legitimate customers consider multiple layers of security and payment declines as an insult and often don’t take it in a positive light. Due to the inconvenience, sometimes they also end up spreading negative word-of-mouth which is a nightmare for the brands and tarnishes their brand reputation. Loss in revenue: Due to false-positive cases, not just the genuine consumers get impacted but also the brands. The brands lose the real customers and the potential revenue from genuine sales. In this case, the credit card companies have to bear the cost as they don’t get their fees. Questions to Ask your Ad Fraud Vendor to Reduce False Positives Do they analyze the entire lifecycle to ensure comprehensive protection? Do they look at all the possible types of fraud attacks? Do they identify and take preventive actions for new & emerging threats? Do they differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent activity in real-time? How mFilterIt ensure to reduce false positives? When detecting fraudulent sources in the ad campaigns, we expect an average of 4-5% false-positive cases. However, to ensure that the brand doesn’t have to lose genuine customers to protect its ad campaigns from fraudsters, our ad traffic validation suite ensures to focus on various parameters like: Deeper Fraud checks​ Evaluation for every data set to make a decision on​ Prioritization for sources that will convert ​ Able to detect sophisticated BOTS and emerging threats Analysis based on Behavioural and Deterministic data Conclusion A true ad fraud detection and prevention solution must be effective enough to help the brand in different parameters. A successful fraud detection will happen for a brand when it enhances the customer experience and nurtures them while keeping

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Why Should Brands Measure the SOS of Their Sponsored Listings?

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Share-of-Shelf of your sponsored listings on eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Bigbasket, Flipkart, etc., measures the percentage of your brand’s discoverability vis-a-vis the competition on paid keywords. Paid search is a massive opportunity for brands, as it allows them to rank ‘at the top’ for the specific keyword searches on eCommerce platforms. However, brands could get outbid on keywords by their competition, which impacts their rankings. Therefore, monitoring and measuring the SOS of the sponsored keywords has become vital for brands. Another aspect of measuring the SOS of the sponsored listing is knowing the brands with the highest discoverability. Through this, a brand can detect the focused or targeted keywords of its competitors. Moreover, the brand can also detect whether or it is discoverable on the most popular keywords? If it isn’t, then, the brand needs to check the Product Display Pages (PDPs) and optimize them with the most popular keywords to become discoverable on the eCommerce search engine. According to a report, the worldwide retail eCommerce sales from Amazon accounted for $468.78 billion between 2017 and 2021. In India, 47% of the digital advertising expense on the eCommerce industry was through paid searches. It means a significant proportion of paid search campaigns were running on multiple eCommerce platforms. Brands that ran campaigns on Amazon acquired a piece of the sale and increased their revenue. Therefore, becoming discoverable on eCommerce platforms certainly aids sales/conversions. Besides revenue, brands run paid search campaigns on eCommerce platforms to acquire higher traffic, increase the ranking, enhance visibility and brand awareness, etc. So, whenever their competitors have a higher proportion of the digital shelf, especially on brand-specific keywords, it is a problem that needs an immediate solution. How to Effectively Measure the SOS of Sponsored Listings on eCommerce Platforms? Top Product Results by Keywords Searches The positioning of a sponsored product listing on an e-commerce platform, based on keywords tells many stories to a brand. It could inform the brand that is bidding the highest on a specific keyword and the type of keywords (generic, competitor, and brand) that have the highest share of digital shelf for your brand vis-a-vis the competitors. Brands can use the information to detect the top performing paid searches of their competitors on each eCommerce platform in their respective categories. By evaluating the results of the sponsored digital shelf results brands can build strategies to get an edge over the competition. How? It can build campaigns around the most relevant keywords and attract a higher audience base. Moreover, it can use the keywords in the title of its multiple variants to increase consumer interest in the product and intent to purchase the product. Brands with the higher number of sponsored listings acquire a higher share of shelf for keywords. Moreover, the share of shelf for the sponsored listings is often calculated for the top ten search results and the top three pages. Therefore, building strategies around sponsored listings based on the SOS can boost the positioning of the listing and the visibility of the brand. My suggestion to the brand’s is to “use a keyword-mix which includes competition brand keywords, along with their own brand keywords, which is hardly practiced by most brands and would help you to acquire a larger Share-of-Shelf.” Share of Sponsored Listings on a Sub-Category Level Imagine you are a pickle manufacturer and are running campaigns on ‘mango pickle’ keyword of an e-commerce marketplace. Consumers use the same keyword from their respective geo-locations to buy the product, however, your sponsored product listing is at the bottom of page. Do you think they would make an effort to scroll down and add your product to cart, especially if you are a new brand? Most probably ‘No.’ Enhancing the page position of your brand’s products and thereby enhancing visibility of your sponsored listings is necessary to influence the buyer behavior towards your brand. It is possible by: Evaluating the overall SOS of sponsored listings at a sub-category level, Detecting & retargeting the top and most relevant keywords of your competitors under specific sub-categories, and Finding the top sub-categories that would increase the SOS of sponsored listings. By taking these measures, your brand can substantially increase its SOS of sponsored listings on multiple sub-categories. Besides higher revenue, your brand could enhance its consumer base and find new target audience in its niche. Recently, we shared a case study in which a brand used the strategy of monitoring competitor keywords. By doing so, it found that the SOS of its sponsored listings for competitor keywords was 5%; however, after gaining information on the competitor’s top performing keywords, it started bidding on some of them. Within a short span of time, SOS of its paid searches jumped to 14%. (Read more) SOS Overview of Sponsored Listings Monitoring the SOS overview of sponsored listings would give a clear analysis of the best performing brands based on paid searches. Moreover, you can evaluate the presence of your brand vis-a-vis the competition on an eCommerce marketplace through keyword bidding. As a result, you can find the best performing platforms for your brand. Additionally, your brand measured the share of shelf for sponsored listing using specific keywords. Therefore, you can find the best performing keywords of your competitors across multiple eCommerce platforms. By doing so, you can revamp the keyword bidding strategy to enhance your overall share of shelf for sponsored listings. You can even share the information across the organization using exportable reports through eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a., mScanIt’s dashboard. The actionable insights would enable your e-commerce managers to evaluate the platform-wise strategies and take measures for boosting the SOS of paid search results. Conclusion Share-of-Shelf of sponsored listings can bring insights related to products, brands, and competitors. Measuring the success of paid searches on eCommerce platforms through eCommerce Competitive Analytics is possible by deep-diving at a sub-category, search rank, overall, and other levels of SOS. The insights and intelligence derived through eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a. mScanIt, enables your brands to change your ongoing/upcoming advertising and marketing campaigns across multiple eCommerce platforms. For the

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DCB Fraud: A Distress for All

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Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) is a subscription model offered by carrier providers. The charge of the availed subscriptions is added to the monthly mobile bill or deducted from the available balance, and generally transactions are made using a single click. According to a source, the DCB market is expected to grow by 9% between 2018 and 2022. Offering convenience through this model has substantially increased purchases & eliminates the need to fill in card details and account sign-ups. The user is already using the existing carrier number. The estimate number of smartphone users in India would reach 1132.9 million by 2025. India’s Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPU) reached $3.9 by March 2021. Cybercriminals have been infiltrating mobile devices through general trojans, ransomware, password trojans, and others , with an average 93.93% of devices affected by general trojan malware. The Biggest Challenge of Operators Fraudsters use baits like malware/bots, Potentially Harmful Apps (PHAs), copycat apps, pirated content for downloading, etc., to acquire device access of unassuming device owners. Their two most crooked methods for DCB VAS frauds are iFrame and device farms. The bots/malware installed on the user device can even bypass USSD, CAPTCHA, and OTP & cause DCB fraud. DCB fraud means the carrier user is wrongly charged for subscriptions they have not made. Customers often disregard the charges, as they are minuscule, and rectifying them would take a toll of their time, with the added burden of talking with customer care, which often has long queues. End-user often becomes a victim of fraudulent charges. The mobile users who are victims of the unprovided/un-availed services blame the carrier providers for it. The operator must also answer to the telecom regulatory authority and face heavy fines or stop the services entirely. The lost faith in the carrier provider redirects revenue to competitors. Creates Complications for the Merchants Merchants suffer a loss of revenue if they become a victim of DCB fraud. They become as much liable as the MNOs, and in some instances, even more. Merchants often use marketing/advertising to increase their VAS subscribers. Unfortunately, fraudsters have found loopholes in their traffic generation methods. The actions of the cybercriminals lead to large-scale claims accumulated through defrauded customers, which evidently leads to fines, service cuts by the regulators & telcos, or suspensions. Regulators may adopt new methods for enhancing their payment security, which could diminish the VAS subscriptions, as consumers constantly face frictions and might even increase abandoned carts. Solution Against DCB Fraud mFilterIt’s DCB fraud solution offers a solution that helps brands across the globe to separate real users from bots/malware through our AI, ML, and data science. The solution validates the incoming traffic in real-time and safeguards brands at every step of the journey. It is an integrated fraud management solution for aggregators and operators. DCB fraud solution uses deterministic, heuristic, behavioral, and probabilistic parameters for classifying frauds. It eliminates frauds by risk scoring and real-time blocking. The live dashboard and real-time alerts optimize customer value management, enhance LTV, drive ROI, and diminish DCB fraud complaints. A Few Other Tips Don’t click on unnecessary URLs or visit suspicious pages/untrusted sources. Analyze the loss of partnership, revenue, and brand value caused by DCB fraud and take measures to overcome them by implementing mFilterIt’s anti-fraud solution for DCB. Take advice from our core founder and management team on the best practices or methods of implementing our solution and eliminating ad fraud. Conclusion The safety of the consumers also falls on the carrier provider in case of DCB frauds. Brands also lose trust, revenue, and customers if they cannot trust the carrier provider. The need to eliminate and restore the faith of the customer is now. This scenario is possible through DCB anti-fraud solution and implemented by global brands that want to keep their market reputation and sustain their market share. Moreover, the solution helps to detect and eliminate threats of real-time bot/malwares. Connect with us to learn more about the advantages of eliminating frauds in the DCB VAS ecosystem.

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