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Customer engagement is at the top of the list for all brands. April is the perfect month to share some laughter with your customers and get to know them even better. Brands also use social media, outdoor advertisements, and other means to capture the eyes of new consumers as marketplaces become highly competitive. eCom brands have often witnessed massive sales during April. According to a source, the sale of non-food items in eCom stores grew by 21.1% in April 2016, whereas the Jan-March incurred an overall growth of 8.2%. In addition, another source stated that the eCom store’s traffic surpassed Black Friday sale traffic every day in April 2019. As per Adobe’s digital economy index, eCom sales were boosted by 49% in the U.S., compared with Jan-Mar 2020, before the restrictions of shelter-in-place. This report also stated that grocery sales on Instacart reached nearly $700 million in sales by the end of the first two weeks of April. Holy Moly! The surge in traffic and boost in sales was certainly a game-changer for brands. However, their attribution could go to the change in consumer behavior during the month. For example, consumers often search for gift or prank options on eCom stores during April fools month. Therefore, brands often try to provide the most suitable choices to their consumers during festivities or occasions. So, consumers often expect the following from eCom brands during April: 3 Things Consumers Would Expect from Brands in April More Mischievous Recommendations Consumers would undoubtedly expect product recommendations from brands just like any other day. However, they would want pranking, jokes, or humoring products, especially during April. Brands that offer the best mischievous recommendations would undoubtedly attract a goofy customer base, and the majority of them would engage with brands wholeheartedly. Even if consumers buy FMCG products, a laughable message card or coupons like “Haha” offering a discount would undoubtedly increase their loyalty to the brand. Bulk Availability of Foolish Products Gifts can be for an individual or a group of friends. On April fools day, people are more likely to spread laughter or pranks with more than one person. Therefore, consumers in eCom stores are likely to seek products with higher availability in their pin codes. Unavailable will cause a severe blowback to the brands, as consumers would find alternate options or eCom stores for making online purchases. Sponsored listings that meet the criteria of such consumers will also become favorable towards higher SKUs. Honest Response to Sarcastic Reviews and Ratings Brands should not become weary in the presence of higher sarcastic reviews or ratings that don’t match the review, as consumers are likely to plat it as a prank. At the same time, consumers would expect a swift response from retailers or brands on the reviews if it is not a prank and an honest review with a mistaken rating. Consumers checking product reviews and ratings are likely to read such reviews and make the final buying call. Therefore, brands are expected to provide a much more engaging response than “we are sorry to hear, or your concerns are duly noted,” Scaling the Business with mScanIt As mentioned before, April is a month for scaling business every day. Therefore, it requires a solution that can present a real story of the consumer sentiments, deep-dive into real-time insights, and provide accurate results across different eCom stores. mScanIt covers all such areas and more by offering analytics daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Moreover, it is the best eCommerce Competitive Analytics solution because it provides deep-dive into pricing insights, share-of-shelf, SKU availability, etc., which would come in handy even after the April fools month. Businesses across continents use the solution for mapping their and competitor products across eCom stores, pin codes, and cities. Conclusion April fools month is not just a business opportunity but also a chance for brands to increase engagement with their consumers. Moreover, customers expect eCom brands and retailers to bring exciting products, recommendations, sponsored listings, etc., on marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, etc. On the other hand, meeting the increasing consumer demand is one of the objectives of an eCom organization. Therefore, scaling the business would require a solution that can deliver meaningful insights and trends with peaking accuracy. mScanIt is the aptest eCom Competitive Analytics solution that can meet these requirements. So make your brand appointment with us to learn more about mScanIt.

A ‘Click’ is all that matters to begin a user’s journey on an app or a website. Click integrity is a component that essentially defines whether the click is legit or not. Click is a vital ‘attribution’ responsible for measuring the click-through rate (CTR) and an essential factor for ‘click-based’ campaigns. Click integrity is a pre-attribution check that helps block invalid clicks before they reach the MMPs, leading to bad installs. It also helps to reduce unnecessary click load on the Attribution Platform, thereby reducing the costs of Attribution Platform spending by Advertisers. So, it is a contributing factor towards saving on the marketing budget. However, fraudsters cannibalize a brand’s traffic, and the process is revocable through a few actionable measures. Furthermore, the invalid clicks pose the following implications: Implications of the Invalid Clicks Reliance on MMP Data The advertisers mostly rely on sources attributed through the MMPs. However, in the absence of a pre-MMP fraud detection mechanism, advertisers primarily depend upon MMP’s elementary fraud checks to ascertain the validity of a click. Having a single source for defining click integrity makes the advertiser more worried about campaign performance. Moreover, the assurance of the MMP doesn’t prove helpful because the sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) penetration is never caught. Untrustworthy Ecosystem Advertisers often mistake high-volume clicks to signify ‘amazing’ campaign performance/high CTR. However, upon reviewing the sources of ‘clicks,’ i.e., measuring click integrity, they often encounter ad fraud and inconsistencies. What happens next? The advertiser no longer trusts ad networks or affiliates and seeks alternative marketing strategies or advertising methods for acquiring users. The large-scale distrust of multiple advertisers directly impacts the overall ecosystem. ‘Double’ Payouts from Advertising Budget for Invalid Traffic Clicks are sourced to the MMP through multiple sources and activities. The advertisers make payouts to these sources. By the end of the day, the advertiser pays the ‘attribution’ cost on MMP and the ‘acquisition’ cost (CPC/CPI) to the source. Illegitimate sources steal the organic traffic and get paid for organically arrived users by firing fraudulent clicks. Does this make’ click integrity’ essential for you as an advertiser? So, what is happening behind damaged click integrity? To answer this, let’s go back to a more important question “What is the objective of the ad?” You’d get lower ad performance as an advertiser if you could not weed out the invalid clicks. Critical Indicators of Invalid Click Traffic Repeated/Multiple Clicks “Due to last-click attribution, fraudsters can easily capture the organic traffic by firing millions of repeated clicks in the background on a single device-id.” This means that a fraudulent source converts your organic traffic to inorganic traffic. The incrementality of these users in these cases will be ‘0’ as these would be coming from the source who has captured the last click Attribution, which essentially means that you are paying for your traffic. Click spamming skews the campaign performance and the advertising budgets as the fraudulent source gets paid for your organic traffic. The simplest way to identify click spamming would be to look at the CTIT and the Click to Install conversion ratio. Click-to-Install Time (CTIT): If you analyze the click-to-install pattern over a period, the CTIT curve would be a declining trend with 70-80% of the installs coming within the first few hours followed by a declining tail towards the end of the day. The time gap between click and install will not be very high for a standard traffic source. A typical user will click a source and then install an app. However, in an abnormal traffic source, you would see a large CTIT. It can’t be that a user clicked on an Ad, and installs are seen coming after a considerable gap or maybe after a day or even more. Click-to-Install Conversion Ratio (CVR): If the click-to-install conversion ratio is extremely low, i.e., less than <0.01% coming from a specific source/sub-source and sometimes more than that region’s population, this is a clear case of click spamming. Analyzing the Campaigns with anomalies like looking at long CTIT and an exceptionally high number of clicks with a scanty conversion rate of <0.01% CR is also not good enough!!! These invalid clicks should be blocked in real time to prevent organic traffic from converting to inorganic traffic. Invalid Devices Spurts of concentrated click traffic coming from invalid Make-Model, which don’t exist in the real world. The heavily correlated, linked clicks indicate that this behavior is identified and can be blocked in real time. This helps save the attribution cost as you weed out the bot devices. Invalid GEOs Proxies or VPNs are used to fake geographies. A high % of click penetration coming from a specific GEO location can be identified and blocked. IP Repetitions/Blacklisted IPs IP addresses are randomly allocated to users and are hobbled between users in a pool by Internet Service Providers. Extreme repetition or disproportionate IP addresses are generally not expected from clean traffic. However, Bots use servers, so spikes or clustering patterns are seen. The same IP addresses are repeatedly used across days for different SETS of device IDs. The IP addresses follow a pattern and sequence indicating fake clicks. These might come from VPNs, Proxies, Data Centres, or other sources. mFilterIt helps identify clicks coming from the blacklisted IPs and blocks the clicks coming from these blacklisted IPs in real time. Key Takeaways Based upon the integrity of the click, the click is sent either to the MMP for processing or gets rejected. It basically acts as a firewall for the install and post-install events and thus helps in weeding out the invalid clicks in real-time and thereby cleans the ecosystems. To conclude, click integrity filters invalid/malicious clicks from genuine clicks. mFilterIt helps the advertisers validate the click’s integrity and identify abnormal patterns such as repetitive behavior of Clicks, IPs and Device-IDs, Blacklisted IPs, Invalid Make-Models, and Invalid GEOs, which indicate BOTs and spamming behavior. Get in touch to learn more about the Click Integrity.

Digital ad fraud is a thing that didn’t drop just today. It has been surviving in the ever-evolving digital world and making its space in bits and bytes. While some cases have been there in the limelight, some are just well hidden in the systems. The last decade has made digital fraud, the perfect crime to do in silence. With everything tracked in spreadsheets and dashboards, there has been no crime easier to commit than this. The cybercriminals don’t even have to make bots and malware themselves. They can hire a person easily and all they need to do is rent their time on the botnets and pay for what they use like cloud computing. They can easily paint the picture of ads running and traffic generating when nothing is happening in reality. Fraudsters Who Became Celebrities Between 2003 till 2016 there was a splurge of celebrities in the cybercrime world who became famous for the wrong reasons. All the world could see was their fancy cars, homes, and yachts which attracted heavy traffic. But behind all this glam, there were some of the biggest digital frauds for which they had no fear of getting caught. Here are some of the examples of such cases that made a layman into a celebrity due to the digital fraud they have committed. Bot Traffic or Human Traffic: In 2013, a guy from the USA admitted his indulgence in buying many of the visitors to his websites. One fraud detection firm detected 94 percent of the visitors as a bot and the other detected approximately 74 percent traffic as bot traffic. It was surprising to see that despite all these findings, he was not concerned. Instead, he stated that if he can buy some traffic and it gets accepted then why not do it? He also highlighted the fact that advertisers pay only a little to get more traffic and results. And he got away with this scam by saying that the advertisers can go directly to the publisher if they want human traffic. But how does it affect the company? The bot traffic receives impressions which directly affects the click-through rates. Though, the campaign results appear massive in terms of engagement. However, that doesn’t imply actual human traffic. The false impressions heavily manipulate the metrics of the campaign and lower the value of ads which further results in loss of revenues. Traffic Manipulation Havoc: In 2003, some news articles allegedly brought a digital fraud of massive traffic manipulation in the limelight. The person behind the fraud became the traffic manipulation kingpin. He created browser extensions that generated a massive amount of irrelevant traffic by injection of ads. In the ad industry’s terminology, this is the term used for manipulation or fake views, clicks, and users. The key mastermind has also been sued for allegedly helping to force malicious software onto a PC. Despite such gruesome acts, his name has never been connected to a takedown of a high-profile name related to ad fraud. The line doesn’t end here because the traffic merchant’s shadow stretches beyond the operations of web extension. Sophisticated Scam: Another fraud celebrity made money – not just enough but lots of it by executing the most persistent and sophisticated digital fraud the internet has ever seen. The subscription trap is a scam where people are lured to buy a single free trial of a celebrity-endorsed product. But once the free trial is purchased, the customer unknowingly gets indulged into a pricey monthly subscription which is hard to cancel. But this was just one part of the big black hole created by Ads Inc. They later created a boiler room-style operation that convinced thousands of people to rent their personal Facebook accounts to the company. Ads Inc. later used this data to place ads for its flawed free trial offers. This strategy helped the company to run misleading ads at a huge volume, targeting people from all around the world in a sophisticated fashion. He also got away with it. Special Code: A ‘special code’ hit the digital market and created an avalanche of fraudulent views of video ads from companies like Unilever, Hershey’s, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, MGM, and Ford. The mastermind behind this is the owner of the 12 websites that were involved in the fraud and has earned revenue from fraudulent views. The ad platform was also provided by his company which is used by the sites in the scheme. Another master player in this fraud was a former employee of a massive ad network who ran a group of eight sites that were part of the fraud. And another group of eight sites that were consulted by the person. The last site identified by the researchers is owned by the co-founder of one of the 20 largest ad networks in the United States. The former mastermind was part of the industry and helped other insiders make tons of money with this scheme. He got away unaffected. Why do these fraudsters get away easily? The biggest reason that the fraudsters remain unaffected after committing a digital ad fraud is that there is globally no law to convict these fraudsters for this crime. Due to this, it is estimated that ad fraud will reach up to $68 billion globally in 2022 and will keep increasing aggressively. The Landmark Cases In 2021, Uber won over Phunware in a multi-million-dollar advertising fraud suit. There were suspicious practices that Uber noticed in Phunware ad activity in 2016. The Uber app installations that Phunware delivered came due to a fraudulent process known as “click flooding”. This means that a higher number of clicks are shown than the actual number. Some of the ad traffic also came from auto-redirects where the customers were taken to the app store automatically, whether the user had clicked or not. During an internal investigation, two of the former Phunware employees discovered that the company had also falsely billed Uber for non-delivered ad clicks. In addition to this, some of the ads run

Facts that worry brands, marketers, and advertisers. Brand safety safeguards a brand’s reputation and image by ensuring correct context or placements. Nowadays, it is a serious concern for advertisers. Misleading ads or ads without custom contextual targeting often get trolled on the web. The Most Concerning Brand Safety Issues Brands that use digital advertising face brand safety issues like incent/coupon fraud, non-contextual media placements, keyword bidding fraud, etc. The strain of this problem is dominant in the BFSI sector. A banking advertisement on a terrorism video can have serious implications like online trolling, negative press coverage, wrong cause funding, etc. Managing it has become crucial for ed-tech. Unmonitored ad placements on the ed-tech app/web can expose kids to unsuitable content. In 2018, a press release by Digiday’s AI company GumGum and Custom revealed serious implications of brand safety issues. 47% of companies suffered social media blowback, 25% received negative press, and 13% lost revenue due to brand safety issues. Additionally, 44% of companies and brands faced brand-unsafe imagery, and 32% reported that it resulted from videos. Our experts analyzed one billion frames within 25 million videos on YouTube. The research revealed that 14% (3.5 million) of the context was unsafe, and 7% (1.75 million) content was unsafe. While monitoring videos according to the GARM categories through our brand hygiene protection, we identified 10.5% Illegal Drugs Tobacco E-cigarettes Vaping Alcohol, 9% Terrorism, 6% Online Piracy, and other violations. On the other hand, correct placement of ads can lead to higher conversions, signing up for newsletters/loyalty programs, increasing social media followers, and building trustworthiness. Moreover, it will help brands to reap higher and recurring profits. Since 2018, marketers have started incorporating strategies like earned/influencer media, user-generated content, working with premium publishers, etc., to curb brand safety issues. However, the massive scale of such problems required a much more effective AI, ML, and manual monitoring solution for recognizing brand/ad placements. mFilterIt’s brand safety solution encompasses GARM checks and content classification under brand-safe or unsafe categories. These include contextual, content, and sentiment analysis. Blacklisting URLs can help to protect online reputation. On the other hand, whitelisting URLs helps to recognize relevant ad placements. So, the audience targeting of brands increases and enhances the overall ROI. Our brand hygiene protection recognizes brand infringement, brand safety (media), and Keyword Search Abuse. Implementing this solution will further improve ROAS. Should You trade between Brand Safety and Ad Performance? The rising concern about brand safety is important for marketers and advertisers. However, the dilemma lies in trading it off for a better performance campaign output. In August 2018, a survey across EMEA and the US revealed that 64% of marketers believed that problems related to it negatively impact the campaign performance, and 71% struggled to target “reachability” with the right context. Almost 2/3rd of marketers believe that it is okay to use unsafe brand environments to achieve campaign targets. However, the perception that brand safety protocols undermine campaign performance is completely misguided. Marketers need to look beyond the initial vanity metrics to realize that brand safety doesn’t come at the expense of meaningful results. Firstly, marketers should realize that incorporating a solution can enhance reachability by targeting the correct audience, even when a programmatic campaign fails. For example, a sports brand ad next to a cricket match would enhance conversions and clicks. Likewise, ad placements on pornographic, torrent, free music, or similar domains can tarnish the brand’s reputation, diminish profits, etc. So, optimizing campaigns without incorporating brand safety can have deadly implications. In November 2018, GumGum and Digiday Media surveyed hate speech (34%) as the most brand-unsafe element. Marketers who participated in it also revealed that disaster/tragedy, divisive politics, and fake (accounted for 39%) were elements encountered next to client’s digital advertising. It also showed that Facebook (-23%) was the least safe platform whereas, Linked In (+45%) was the safest platform brand. Brands that didn’t take measures to ensure brand safety have suffered social media blowback, lost revenue and received negative press. On the other hand, incorporating brand safety offers benefits like effective ad spending, increased ROI, enhanced brand image, etc. Takeaway It even protects against misinformation, data protection & privacy and recognizes correct ad placements on digital platforms. mFilterIt’s brand safety solution also provides great online transparency and reduces ad fraud. The solution also supports more than 50 languages, offers a global reach with regional capabilities, encompasses 96+ content avoidance categories, and has flagged 400+ million content globally. Get in touch to learn more about the Brand Safety.