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Brand Safety : A Paradigm Shift in the Digital Age

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Using specialised BOTs powered with AI and ML, real time digital policing is helping brands to safeguard their identity, reputation, and positioning. When we think of BOTs we associate them with all negative things happening around. For instance, fake engagements and snowballing of fake content. However, the reality is BOTs are also divided like humans as good and bad depending on what they are programmed to do. Digital is no longer a flirting affair for brands. It’s a serious commitment which not only helps in amplification and outreach but is also used to commerce as well as establish a direct connect with the stakeholders including customers. The D2C ‘wave’ is sailing only because of digital technologies. Today, even traditionally a B2B brand has a direct connect with the end customer. However, nothing is less of challenges and issues. Digital is an always changing space where every second has a new picture and map created by so many contributors together. Some make positive additions, while some nefarious urchins make regressive ‘contributions. In all this, a brand also becomes a party and many-a-times without their knowledge or approvals. But as they say ignorance of law is no excuse. Similarly, brands cannot just shed off the responsibility by acting proactively to safeguard their image, identity, and reputation. Fortunately, the thought has been steered and some proactive digital brands have already started looking for solutions which can effectively and proactively solve the problem. Brands are looking for solutions where they or someone on their behalf could police the entire digital universe and report for any brand thefts, imposters, scams, and other such activities being run in their name. Replicating things digitally is a cake walk. Additionally, there aren’t very stringent laws to tackle them. Even if they are, they aren’t easy to implement. This leaves brands in a kind of helplessness; at least what they feel. However, with the advancements in technology especially with the emergence of deep technologies, it has become to solve this problem very efficiently. We, at mFilterIt are using advanced and specialized BOTs who continuously monitor the web space and report any discrepancy or identity theft issue. These BOTs use some of the very advanced techniques like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for deep-link analysis, text, image and video processing, scenario analysis, contextual analysis and other important tasks that they have to do on-the-go to report for any Brand Safety issue. Brand Safety without the help of advanced technologies is impossible in the digital universe. Contrary to offline, where typically market research and auditing firms are engaged to do an on-foot reporting of similar issues in the physical world, a brand can leverage technology for achieving the same with utmost accuracy and coverage. There cannot be any manual intervention to succeed in Brand Safety in the digital world. A brand may have high value digital ‘enclaves’ which it can monitor manually, but even then, it’s not comprehensively done. Also, Brand Safety is non-negotiable. There must be zero tolerance from the brand regarding Brand Safety. It cannot leave even a single issue unattended, for which there must be first a comprehensive reporting system in place. mFilterit takes pride in filtering out the distrust in the digital ecosystem with a robust Brand Safety, Brand Infringement and Ad fraud solutions. We leverage latest technology and solutions and are today the bandwagon of digital policing in the complex web digital advertising industry. Brand Safety is an emerging area in Martech space, and every brand custodian is increasingly becoming interested in it. It is also bringing in different teams of a brand together which includes digital team, brand team, ecommerce team, legal team, CorpComm team as well as partners including agencies which are engaged for various roles. A brand, which is serious about its digital journey, will have to invest in Brand Safety Solutions and set very high standards to position as one with whom stakeholders including customers, partners, employees and even government have the highest level of comfort to engage. Otherwise, it will not be able to leverage the latent potential of digital which is making brands and businesses boundary less opening wide horizons of fortune empowering their journey of becoming sustainable unicorns and decacorns. Partner with us today to safeguard your brand to leave a legacy of trust and goodwill!

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Brand Infringement is the Gateway to Brand Safety

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Hands off my brand! The ever-expanding digital landscape invites for a major challenge and threat faced by the brands of today-Brand infringement. The pandemic has further accelerated the threat of this abuse where the consumer and brands are being victims of scams, impersonation, fraud among many such cases of abuse. Brand Infringement is an umbrella term that encompasses brand abuse when there’s an attempt to exploit the reputation or enjoy the goodwill of a brand for profit or any other malicious intent via fraudulent and unlawful schemes: stealing or using brand’s IP assets such as copyrighted works, patents, impersonating the brand, trademark stealing, counterfeit products and much more. Such instances of brand infringement have a direct consequence on brand safety for it hurts the reputation and legitimacy of any established brand. Ensuring brand reputation online is akin to using the Covid vaccine as a protection layer to protect your brand’s legacy in the digital world. Bad actors out in the market are always on the lookout to distort your brand’s reputation and online representation by misguiding YOUR consumers to benefit their motive. These fraudsters ride on consumer trust in the original brand to hoodwink them into buying the fake ones and eat the revenues of the original brand. Research suggests that brand infringement goes beyond simply using a brand’s name: Business name (44%) Web domains (44%) Social media (38%) Online marketplaces (38%) Advertising campaigns (34%) So what are the different ways in which your brand can be a victim of brand infringement, thus comprising your brand safety? Let’s have a look: Trademark and Copyright Infringement • Counterfeit /Replica Products Counterfeit or replicas are those products that are intentionally made to look identical to the original product that belongs to a third party. Such products have the original brand’s trademarked names, logos symbols and are used without authorization of the original brand. It is done with a motive to deceive the customer to believe that their product is genuine FMCG, Pharma, Content, Lifestyle are some sectors where counterfeit cases are rampant. Over 30% of online drugs brought are supposedly fake which is the reason behind the rising death cases in the country. A study also concluded that alcohol, Currency, and FMCG are the top sectors to see cases of counterfeit incidents in the last two years. A spike in cases being reported about fake hand sanitizers, masks, and PPE kits has been observed during the COVID crisis. In another such instance, a case against the largest e-commerce giant was registered for selling counterfeit products on their platform. Cybersquatting • Brand Impersonation Brand impersonation takes place in the form of a phishing attack where the criminals pretend to be representatives of a trusted brand or a company. They send out ‘official’ emails containing malicious content impersonating a bank or any other financial, government organization with the sole aim to gain access to the user’s personal data. Most of these fraudsters also call on behalf of the brand impersonating themselves as customer care representatives and asking for personal information. In a recent known case of a Paytm data leak, fraudsters got hold of the entire customer data. They then shared SMS on ‘behalf’ of Paytm asking users to complete KYC verification. Upon dialing the concerned number mentioned in the SMS, the ‘customer care’ representative asked users to download a ‘Quick support app’ through which they gain mobile access and ultimately rob the consumer of their hard-earned money. Typo-squatting • Fake Sites Typo-squatting essentially entails registering slightly changed variations of domain names of popular websites to divert traffic and reap the benefits of any established website. These scamsters rely on the small errors in spelling committed by the users and then present them with counterfeit products, or even worse, scams and viruses. In one such instance, Flipkart was caught in the whirlwind of fake sites. In 2020, fake advertisements did rounds on various mobile browsers which directed users to the fake Flipkart website. The site had a complete look and feel of the official website and it had products at highly discounted rates, thus duping the user with fake products. Repercussions Losing control of your IP may have devastating consequences for your brand! Revenue loss The title says it all. If a third party is selling products in your name, the revenue is landing in their account and not yours. Depending on the size, and success of the scamster’s business, your brand potentially stands to lose from a few dollars to millions. Reputation loss Consumers often cannot differentiate between a genuine and a counterfeit product. What if they end up buying a counterfeit product or any cheap knock-off, and when they want to contact customer support, there’s no one? Given the fact that it’s not your fault such issues are bound to come back and haunt you. Loss of trust Your brand name and goodwill speaks volume. It has your customer’s trust and they expect quality along with customer support. Your brand spends a lot of time making a name for itself and the same can be shattered with one bad instance. You might not realize the loss in monetary value at the beginning but in the long run, loss of trust impacts your top and bottom line altogether. In the age of social media, everything is a click away. Be it gaining reputation or losing it. Brands are accountable for their brand safety and upholding the trust of their consumers. Intellectual Property (IP) laws exist to ensure that the creator gets due recognition and financial benefit from their creations. Increased digital penetration and adoption have made things difficult to keep track of and protect your brand’s IP. Fraudsters are constantly copy-pasting your hard-earned work to benefit their motives which could have massive losses for your brand. Our Brand hygiene protection marries brand safety with brand infringement issues to give your brand comprehensive online protection. Talk to us now!

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How are Ad Fraud Masterminds Cashing in on the Crypto Mania?

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Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum If you haven’t invested in them, you must have heard of them! All of it (and more) have become the favorite of many. These currencies are heavily invested in, and cryptocurrency exchanges are helping the mass by facilitating the transaction. Cryptocurrency has attracted more eyeballs than the much-awaited Spanish show ‘Money Heist’ in today’s shared virtual world. A term once the prerogative of the ‘elite’ has now cascaded to the masses. Today, the ecosystem, which once had very thin liquidity, is rife with fraudsters and criminals. The advent of legitimate crypto businesses has enabled get-quick-rich schemes. With more and more people becoming involved in the roaring digital monetary mechanism, the cryptocurrency ecosystem has given birth to a new breed of scammers- the crypto ad fraudsters. Are you of the investors interested in buying a Bitcoin or an altcoin? Have you signed up on an exchange? If yes, you’re doing right. But did you happen to check if the exchange is a legitimate one? Fake Exchanges In one such instance, a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, BitKRX, was named to establish itself as the legitimate cryptocurrency arm of the trading platform in Korea-Korea Exchange (KRX). Given KRXs legitimacy and goodwill, BitKRX attracted a large pool of investors. People who (thought they) had invested their hard-earned funds via the platform (whoop!!) the money had vanished. “According to a report, 54% of attacks came from threat actors impersonating brands, employees, and executives on social media. Social media became a favorite attack vector, accounting for 47% of all attacks.” Word of Caution for investors: Always sign up on regulated exchanges. These exchanges have a legitimate online presence: social media, website, customer support. But, what if a fake website, fake social media, and fake customer support are all a set-up? Fake/Lookalike Website A well-known exchange runs an online ad to attract more people to its platform. (*Google has recently allowed crypto ads from exchanges based out of the US to advertise on their platform). Fraudsters also run the same campaign only with a minor difference with their landing page, taking advantage of this opportunity. Upon clicking the ad (which you assumed belongs to the fair exchange), it takes you to a similar looking, professionally designed website with matching details, customer support, and even (fake) social media pages. And once you sign up with all your personal information, including your private key, you may wake up to an empty bank account and zero digital assets. The legit crypto exchange will lose its brand equity where it had no role. The fraudsters duped the customers on the pretext of a legit platform! “Congratulations! You’ve won 6.999 BTC in a lucky draw. Access it now.” Read your mail. You check the sender; it says ‘(take any reputable) xchange.com. Excitedly, you click the link, and you’re redirected to a website that asks you to fill out all the personal details so that the currency adds the currency to your account. But, to facilitate the transaction, a certain amount has to be paid as the transfer fee. Fine! You’d do that, 6.999 BTC after all! And you’re done for good, literally! Did you happen to check the domain name? (We mean the spelling!) Phishing, Typosquatting In one such email scam, a specific crypto exchange targeted millions of mail ids with a similar monetary incentive. The mail read that they had won x amount of Bitcoin in a lottery, and the users can access it via a link. For the victim to withdraw the free Bitcoin, they had to add funds to meet the minimum withdrawal criteria! In June 2020, a notable France-based crypto wallet company’s database was hacked. Over 2 lakh mail addresses were put on websites under hacked databases. Fraud capabilities are endless! As an organization, you must constantly look for such scams and fraud, which may harm your reputation and compromise user safety. Fraud can hurt you at all the places you’re presently online and spoil your reputation, irrespective of your industry. What tools are you using to prevent your reputation and ensure Brand Safety while ensuring your user’s trust? Talk to us now!

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Are Your Affiliates Trustworthy?

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You’re a bank or a brokering organization. It’s that time of the year when you want more and more people to have their bank accounts with you. Or you want more and more people to sign up for a DEMAT account with you. What do you do? Simple! Set up a digital marketing campaign to reach out to your audiences, wherever they are. Look for affiliates who would help to support your ‘sales’. These affiliate marketing strategies help brands increase their sales, visibility, in exchange for a commission when the said objective is increased. It could either be a sales event, a form sign-up event or, in our case an account opening event. The brands maintain an infrastructure for such affiliate marketing program that tracks which affiliate delivered which web users to monitor their credit via an affiliate identifier. When the user clicks on the link provided by the affiliate, there’s a HTTP cookie set in their browser identifying the source though which the user landed on the site. Thus, when the objective of the campaign is fulfilled, which is asking users to sign up for an account with the said bank, the affiliates are rewarded. Simple enough? Absolutely! You spend some amount on these campaigns; on an average one lead acquisition costs around INR 1000. You pay a small commission to these affiliates who would bring customers to you and it’s a win-win situation. You have successfully garnered ‘X’ number of signups with a digital marketing campaign for account opening. But, do not celebrate just yet. You’re yet to be privy to one the biggest scams where all your money spent on these programs might just be a complete waste. mFilterIt got to a task of analyzing the ROAS for a financial institution who ran a campaign for account opening using affiliate marketing strategy. We found out that after spending lakhs of rupees on the campaign, the amount of leads that were acquired were in sync with the amount spend on the advertising. But, it still yielded on result in terms of revenue. How is that possible? Here’s how we figured another affiliate fraud tactic which not only plagues the online world but has now graduated offline. Let’s go back to an era of door-to-door sales. These salesmen convinced the offline user to buy the product, and upon the final purchase, the sales team received their commission. Similarly, what these fraudulent affiliates are doing is that they’re incentivizing their user. They go to random users in the market, ask them to open an account with the bank, and in return they’ll receive ‘x’ amount of money in CASH. Say, an affiliate earns INR 1000 per one account opening, he then incentivizes the user with 200 or 300 in exchange for him to open an account with the said institution. In this case, the end result is justified but post the account opening, there’s no activity which takes place from these accounts. More often than not, the kind of users of who open an account (given the fact that they’re getting INR 300 just to give their information) they have a yearly income of less than 3lakh rupees. Which means that quality of users who’re opening an account with you are not really your target audience. Which also translates into the fact that the amount you’re spending on affiliate marketing program is a complete waste of budget? But how are these fraudsters compensated? The fraudsters share their affiliate link via WhatsApp or mail, therefore when the user clicks on the link from their own device, it is understood that the traffic is diverted through the said affiliate and thus they receive their commission. So when the analytics are deep dived, one can see that the user is real, IP address is real, device is real yet fraud exists. Why? Because these new accounts are as good as dormant accounts and you’re paying people to acquire more such accounts. Ad Fraud detection is way more complex that merely detecting an act of fraud. One needs to analyze a campaign’s success and failures to further understand what helps in maximizing their ROAS. And that’s where we come to your rescue. We’re sure the above case must have piqued your curiosity to finally analyze your campaign’s performance to not only detect fraud but also to analyze ‘such’ ‘non-fraudulent’ activity. Guess who’s a pro at it? Talk to us now!

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Building a Trustworthy D2C Community Platform this Festive Season

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Old habits die hard. But the onslaught of a pandemic caused a significant change in habits and with new habits becoming the ‘new normal. This also caused a dramatic change in how brands reach their customers. The post lockdown scenario witnessed a significant surge in D2C brands setting up their online stores. D2C platforms have helped brands build a reliable and robust connection with their consumers. This power shift has caused a devastating effect on traditional retailers, with the retail graveyard getting more and more crowded. The consumers are online; that’s where a D2C platform becomes imperative for a brand to connect with their consumers directly. Studies have estimated that by 2024, retail-focused e-commerce will amount to $7 trillion in annual sales globally! Why? D2C methodology has become non-negotiable for brands and retailers as people will avoid walking into crowded stores. The joy and comfort of getting items delivered at their doorstep is increasingly becoming paramount, which means that the brand and customer relationship is now more critical than ever. D2C portals are no longer the prerogative of millennial buyers but have now transcended age, gender, location, and many such barriers. Therefore, building a brand’s credibility is naturally the next step for brands to increase their top and bottom line. Brands ahead of the curve are now building communities online to further their reach and establish trust with their customers. But, as the festive season nears, there are bad actors or maybe even competitors waiting to take home their ‘share’ of revenue and hurting your brand’s reputation. How? BOT Signups: Scammers use BOTs to sign up for such communities for various reasons. These range from potential cyber security issues to scams. In some rare instances, it could also be a regressive competition tactic to downgrade its reputation. Fake Offers and Coupons: Throughout the year, especially during the upcoming online festival sales season, fake offers and vouchers are spread like wildfire exploiting the power of chatting applications and other social media channels. These are hacks and click baits to generate traffic on poor and inappropriate websites and potential channels of installing malware on smartphones and laptops. Account Takeover or ATO Protection: Fake sites and forms are floated by scammers infringing the brand identity to disguise as an authentic brand outreach to its community members. They fill up details on signup, and scammers take over the account with genuine credentials. They can then consume the loyalty points and run a calling scam on behalf of the brand, sharing account facts like the history of purchase, etc., to establish a genuine and authorized brand representative for further cheating, which is usually monetary. Fake Engagements: BOTs are also being used for spamming with comments, likes/dislikes, etc., for changing the sentiment of an engagement. This spreads wrong information and risks losing potential buyers who research products and features by reading these comments. Database Collection: Fake look-alike websites are launched by scammers with subtle changes in URLs and very aggressive SEM (Search Engine Marketing). The potential community members search for the community portals and land up infringed websites where the scammers collect data for further frauds and scams. This database is also sold to tele-calling agencies, increasing the threat of unsolicited calls. The onus lies on the brand custodians and community owners to proactively safeguard from any potential harm to the identity and privacy of their community members. As responsible brands, it should be one of the critical focus areas of the digital transformation process of organizations to implement such systems giving communities confidence of engaging more openly and safeguarding the entire digital ecosystem.

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Is Ad Fraud Stealing Your Online Customers?

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Humans make only 60% of internet traffic The covid19 pandemic left a huge global impact. Industries tumbled, systems collapsed, the market hit an all-time low. People were confined within the four walls of their homes with laptops and smartphones as their entertainment and work needs. Mobile internet usage increased by 67% globally. Being locked down didn’t dampen our appetite for shopping. The Indian eCommerce witnessed a huge surge owing to the pandemic. The eCommerce industry, driven by mobile shopping, is projected to grow 21% annually over the next four years. Clearly, the eCommerce industry has by far been the biggest beneficiary of Covid19. This increase in online activity and ad spending has also led to an exponential increase in ad fraud in the eCommerce industry. Click fraud activity surged by 21% globally from March to May 20. Click fraud can be defined as the fraudulent clicking of PPC adverts (pay per click) to generate fraudulent charges for advertisers. One in every 10 clicks across eCommerce campaigns is found to be fraudulent. Business ads are deliberately being clicked to waste ad budgets. Fraudsters have a long-standing army of bots to disguise as humans and penetrate the campaigns affecting the performance and draining ad budgets. Studies have estimated that businesses lost $35 billion in 2020 on account of ad fraud and the figure is set to swell in 2021. App Install Fraud is another such threat that is looming over the eCommerce industry. There are a plethora of ways it takes place. Fraudsters redirect users to install the app from third-party APK stores thus Play Store statistics do not increase for the advertiser which in turn impacts the brand image and competitive advantage. Despite spending money on install Campaigns, the revenue is pocketed by the fraudsters. Certain app packages at APK stores also contain malicious codes that can alter the app’s behavior and harm the device. Can more damage be done? Fake engagements are being created through the pool of devices to give the impression of legitimate activity, also called Device Farms. Using Click spamming, these fraudsters are generating fake clicks in the background to capture organic app installs. Sophisticated forms of technology are evolving where bots mirror human behavior making it difficult to distinguish real users from fake users! In one such instance, we analyzed a leading online e-commerce portal. an ‘App Install’ campaign It was identified that nearly 55% of the inorganic installs were fraudulent. Deep diving further into fake installs, it was concluded that fraud is an industry menace. Non-play store installs accounted for 42% of the fraudulent activity followed by fake attribution at 25%. The platform had been spending on marketing for creating visibility of their app and had a healthy spend towards this channel but ROI’s with conversions was always a suspect, thus draining the ad budgets. The eCommerce industry is also marred with affiliate marketing fraud where brands pay their publisher partners based on the campaign performance and not the potential. Affiliate marketing has been a marketer’s favorite strategy to increase brand awareness and increase sales. The fraud rate in major partners was discovered to be over 50%. The potential loss of revenue can be gauged with the above figure. A quick shift to eCommerce has brought with it another most serious type of fraud- Account Takeover Fraud. Criminals gain access to genuine accounts by obtaining stolen passwords, personal information and leveraging this information to access eCommerce accounts. This mostly takes place via phishing scams on mails and SMS. Fraudsters disguising as brand representatives share malicious links which help them with users’ personal information. They then get access to the account and can make purchases, initiate fraudulent transactions, and can also lead to stolen identity fraud. All such issues have a negative impact on the brand thus losing reputation and trust amongst its consumers, apart from revenue losses. The digital landscape is ever-expanding along with the evolution in sophisticated technologies. Although traditional brick-and-mortar shops are to exist, eCommerce will be the go-to place for consumers. The criminals are always innovating new ways and techniques to defraud the system and infiltrate the ad ecosystem. ATO (Account Takeover Fraud) is expected to become rampant in the eCommerce space as real-time transaction approvals rise and data breaches increase. There is a strong need to have robust ad fraud prevention tools in place to analyze the transaction data, whether the data is genuine or fraudulent, in real-time. There’s a strong mechanism required to keep validating customers which may otherwise lead to financial fraud, identity theft among others. The new trend of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) trend further opens the door for these criminals to exploit the customers and system. BNPL fraud takes a longer lag time between fraud and fraud detection. The rising eCommerce fraud has brought to light major gaps in the digital ecosystem, where there is money, there will be a fraud. It is imperative to mitigate such threats and have a well-designed solution in place to identify and address all possible types of threat that not only affects a business but also damages its reputation. Online retail owners and platforms should analyze and monitor all relevant transactions at the minutest level to battle the threat. Ad fraud is real! The sooner digested and worked on, the better it will be in the near future. Awareness is the first step followed by a diligent fraud prevention tool in place.

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Tackling Brand Safety in a Mobile-First Environment

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Safeguarding a brand’s reputation in the smartphone industry There’s no denying that millennials and genz of today prefer communicating via social media, texts, and email to talking on the phone. This is now becoming pervasive across users of all ages, especially in the COVID-19 era. Phones today are no longer just smartphones, but they encompass all facets of life for a user. This is the new era of smartphone usage where the device is moving past the only communication stage. Smartphone applications are at the forefront of today’s users. Even businesses have acknowledged the rise of creating user-friendly applications to attract users. Today’s smartphones come pre-loaded with applications for easy access for their consumers, which define a brand’s reputation among consumers apart from other features. With the application, usage comes commerce. From social media to eCommerce, from gaming to education, users are constantly hooked onto their smartphones 24X7, thus giving the brand a medium to increase their awareness via leveraging the increased app usage. There has been a significant rise in in-app advertising, which contributes a majority part of a brand’s marketing mix, thus increasing the complexity of online marketing. With increased smartphone penetration, the upcoming 5G ecosystem, smartphones of today are the preferred mode of media consumption which clearly states that mobile advertising is garnering a lion’s worth of share among digital marketers and brands of today. Reports have indicated that India will have about 829 million smartphone users by 2022, thus paving the way for brands to target a vast pool of consumers. Another study suggests that brands are now investing 45-55% of their digital advertising budget on mobile advertising, while it is stated to increase by 70% by 2022. Amid this rapid evolution of smartphone usage and changes in communication methodologies, brands are now marred with the complex challenge of creating effective mobile advertising strategies that resonate with the users and ensure that the advertisements are delivered in a brand-safe environment. This is a crucial aspect because smartphones are no longer adult-owned devices but are being used by people across age categories and kids alike. Online gaming, eCommerce, education, More often than not, the smartphone, although being a personal device to a user, is also used by kids and other family members in the house. Online gaming, eCommerce, and the web are not private spaces, and users can navigate freely across digital mediums. The openness and unregulated dynamics of these mediums have raised brand safety concerns in recent years, keeping in mind when and where a brand’s advertisement appears. Consumers (including kids) are at risk of being exposed to objectionable content such as pornography, terrorism, sexual exploitation of children, fake news, hate speech, and much more. Not just this, there has been an exponential growth in incidents of app spoofing, hidden ads, hijacked mobile devices, and account takeover issues (ATOs). Statistics suggest that children spend more hours on e-gaming platforms, which exposes them to two main risks- unregulated processing of personal data and unintentional serving of age-restricted ads (condoms, gambling, and much more). More often than not, specific mobile advertising strategies adopt gamification features that attract children. Upon clicking the ads, they’re then retargeted to websites with objectionable content, or such links are malicious adware that hijacks the device. Scammers lure them on the pretext of awarding game coins and rewards if they download a particular app on their phones, and then these devices are used by scammers to create more significant frauds. This puts the smartphone brand image in jeopardy, for no one knows how the app came in the first place or the occurrence of the advertisement. Exposure to violence is another threat that becomes a safety concern. The mobile ecosystem may or may not ever be brand-safe. However, it is imperative to take due precautions to prevent the brand image from being tainted and deploy the right tools to ensure a safe advertising environment. Get in touch to learn more about brand safety and brand reputation.

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Is Clickbait the Reason Behind Your Under-Performing Digital Marketing Campaigns?

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One minute you’re deeply engrossed reading a dense political explainer on rumblings across the globe or simply scanning weather information for your weekend gateway. Before realization hits you, you’ve clicked on a headline that says, “Here’s how you can make $1000 every week”. Relatable? We’re sure it’s a relatable experience for every online user in today’s time. Such links are nothing but ‘clickbaits’, which attracts eyeballs and piques curiosity for a user with catchy headlines, often with defying logic, yet, such headlines still appeal to the user to click on them. Such links often contain misleading content or a pure waste of time, with the only aim to get more and more traffic. Apart from being the lowest form of journalism, marketing, and blogging, clickbait has become a pathway to digital fraud, impacting brands and marketers with skewed and untrustworthy data. But how is it affecting your digital marketing campaigns? Brands want to reach where consumers are; therefore, millions are spent on advertisements using Google, Facebook and Twitter, and other such platforms to place trigger-inducing ads. Companies leverage data to predict where the consumers are to place advertisements effectively. Now, is the data bogus or fraudulent? The information (read data) provided to you only contains fake clicks, non-existent traffic, or infected by bots? Brands that rely on third-party data providers to place their ads are rampant malpractices and fake data such as bots that mimic human behavior or device farms that create fake devices to generate -human-like- activity on non-existent devices. Such skewed metrics impact digital marketing campaigns, which drain resources on counterfeit users of zero value to brands. Welcome to the era of ‘Organized Marketing Crime.’ Clickbaits can range from a survey form to ‘spin-the-wheel of fortune game’, supposedly sponsored by a known brand. Sure, you’d like to try your luck if a reputed brand supports it. Oh, one can only imagine the repercussions! These links often contain malicious code which can harm your device, called ‘malvertising’. When clickbaits are in the form of a contest or survey, it asks the user for personal information such as credit card information, date of birth, etc., which fraudsters can then use to execute a financial theft or identity theft. From a brand safety perspective to skewing data metrics and ad fraud, the threats posed by clickbait is a matter of serious attention. How are you steering away from such issues? Do you have tools in place to protect yourself from such vulnerabilities? Talk to us; we may be the right team to help you achieve the most out of your marketing campaigns.

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How is ‘Vanilla’ Brand Safety Making Advertisers Inadvertently Anti-national?

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The simple technique of blacklisting keywords to place ads on relevant and appropriate content is not a foolproof solution. Ask any advertiser, “How do you handle Brand Safety?” Most of them will answer that they configure keywords by blacklisting the ones that are inappropriate or do not resonate with their brand’s image and philosophy. It appears very simple to handle. In reality, it’s not that straight. Recently, a client of ours, a leading D2C player approached us for a Brand Safety audit, though it was very confident of its existing solution. To their surprise, our tool captured a very damaging find. This was not any simple Brand Safety issue! In this case, we found that the ads of this D2C brand were appearing on a channel that was promoting terrorism in India. There were loads of videos spreading venom and talking anti-national. For any brand, this is the worst of their nightmares. Being a home-grown brand there was an added layer of patriotism and the brand felt like a ‘party in the crime’. Advertisers relying on rudimentary checks around Brand Safety become easy victims of the loopholes which are exploited by such anti-national and hatred-spreading, propaganda channels. Such channels are widely available on UGC platforms like YouTube. Let’s explain a bit further how does the basic Brand Safety check that comes embedded with such platforms fails content. Any such platform allows one to configure a blacklist keyword list, which blocks or filters any such channel/content meta-tagged to such keywords. In the above example, keywords like ‘terrorism’, ‘terrorist’, ‘war’, and a few more similar ones were already configured to be blocked. But the channel on which the ads started appearing was using description and keywords in ‘Hinglish’ (which is writing a Hindi/Urdu word in English script). The filter configured did not see anything wrong with the channel content and considered it among one of the potentially high-engagement content for the advertiser. Hence started showing ads on this channel. mFilterIt’s superior Brand Safety solution, which has been precisely and specifically developed to manage Brand Safety, gets deeper than a keyword. It does a ‘scenario analysis’ where it senses the contextuality of the medium (channel) as well as the content (message) and only then allows the advertisement to be served, even if based on target parameters, the channel seems to be one of the most promising to find the audience. While the association with adult and porn content is an increasing concern for ‘socially responsible’ brands, the increasing instances of advertisements landing on terrorist and anti-national propaganda channels is a bigger concern. It is making an advertiser inadvertently fund anti-national propaganda against the nation. This will not be tolerated by any brand as it not only risks their reputation but also the entire business operations could be jeopardized, especially when the IT and other related laws are becoming more stringent to tackle anti-national sentiments, fake news, etc., all over the webspace.

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How To Detect Mobile App Install Fraud?

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The total number of smartphone users in the world stands at 3.8 billion which is half the population of the world. With the pandemic hitting countries across the globe, the mobile industry witnessed a wave of change, from increased mobile usage to exponential growth in app installs. Brands and marketers saw it as an opportunity to get more customers, therefore mobile advertising spending has been projected to reach $368 billion in 2022. The share of app install ad spending is expected to grow by 30% by 2022 which is almost a third of today’s mobile ad spend. Due to increased mobile usage, there also has been an exponential rise in mobile app downloads. Studies suggest that mobile app downloads rose from 204 billion in 2019 to an expected 258 billion downloads in 2022. However, the one aspect which hasn’t been given due consideration/analyzed is how mobile app fraud has also grown in tandem with mobile installs, especially in the Covid times. As more and more users install and engage with mobile applications, fraudsters are leveraging this wide playing field to steal ad spends and drive fraudulent conversions. A study recently pointed out that 21.3% of iOS apps and 26.9% of Android mobile app installs are fraudulent. Other statistics suggest that an overall $25.8 billion has been lost to mobile ad fraud out of which 42% accounts for app installs farms/SDK spoofing, 30% for click injection the remaining 27% to click spam. Clearly, the problem is huge. What is Mobile App Install Fraud? A mobile app install fraud occurs when fraudsters generate fake downloads and installs using automated tools to trick advertisers and users. There are a plethora of ways fraudsters leverage to receive significant payouts from advertisers and marketers on the pretext of fake installs while marketers unknowingly pay millions of dollars in ad spend for installs that are not even genuine. One such technique of mobile app fraud is click injection. Fraudsters create malicious apps which are then published on major app stores which when downloaded generates a fake click. The clicks appear to be originating from the website of the malicious publisher. These apps then detect when new applications are downloaded on the device and then inject clicks after the download is completed and before the app is installed. In such ways, fraudsters receive money for every click and install by stealing genuine clicks and receiving payments on their behalf. Another technique used by fraudsters is ‘Device Emulators’. These devices are capable of mirroring every aspect of the original device’s behavior. Such devices are used to download and install applications in high volumes which create an illusion of new devices and legitimate users. Detecting Mobile app install fraud No industry is immune to fraud, hence it’s unavoidable. But to begin with, having the right attribution vendor is imperative. Apart from that, one can also pay attention to the following techniques to analyze mobile app install fraud: Non-human in-app behavior, commonly known as post-install anomalies Hyper Engagement- Multiple clicks from a single source Click to Install time outliners: Understanding the click which was meant to drive the install, either it was too early or too late. Events time outliners- Odd events such as installations at 3 am IP anomalies- Different IP addresses of the impression and then click Device blacklisting – Any install that takes place on a blacklisted device Fraud is a cyclical element. Fraudsters are continuously developing technologies to cheat the ecosystem whereas tech companies are constantly evolving to find ways to stop these fraudsters. Shockingly, 22% of fake installs happen in the eCommerce industry followed by the finance industry with close to 21% of mobile app install fraud. An average rate of fake installs generates up to $3 for the fraudsters. The sky is no longer the limit for the bad guys out there. Are you now questioning the data given to you for the installs that took place in your campaigns? Do you now question the marketing budgets set out for an install campaign? Worry not, we got you covered! Get in touch with our experts who will safeguard your budgets and maximize your ROAS by filtering out the mobile app fraud elements.

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