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An Era of SMS Fraud

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In an ever-evolving mobile communication ecosystem, text messaging has revolutionized the way in which people and businesses communicate. From a one-on-one communication perspective to a comprehensive mobile marketing platform for businesses, over 18 million texts are sent every minute, which keeps growing every day. The growing success of SMS (Short Message Service), MMS mobile marketing platforms has lured cybercriminals to take advantage of users and expand the SMS threat landscape. “Your bank accounts have been temporarily suspended. To unlock your card, click here-” The message captures the user’s attention immediately and an instant reaction will prompt them to click on the said link. Such messages are socially engineered attacks that are referred to as ‘Smishing’(SMS phishing), much like an email phishing attack, which tricks the user into providing information that benefits the fraudster. Despite having spam filters on mobile devices, such messages can bypass security walls to enter your device. “Congratulations! You’ve won a gift card worth Rs.2500 on a recent payment of your credit card. Click on the link to claim the reward” Such messages have a higher open rate as people are misguided into thinking that the sender is the bank and the prize being offered is legitimate (owing to rising online transactions in the wake of COVID-19). Given the nature of SMS, dangerous URLs are disguised as harmless web pages. In an era of one-click marketing where the goal is to garner response through a direct reply or clicking on a link to complete the survey and take home a coupon, fraudsters use it to their advantage using the same technique. Thus, the SMS threat landscape expands as users click the link without verifying the URL and sharing their information. In other instances, the text directs the victims to a website on the pretext of a small gift in exchange for survey participation. The website asks for credit/debit cards, personal details, or bank account numbers to cover the shipping charges, and the victim falls prey to such schemes’ by divulging the details without a second thought. The entire notion for fraudsters revolves around incentive-based fraud which rarely raises suspicious eyes. In a recent incident, fraudsters targeted PayPal users by sending SMS which said that their account had been ‘permanently limited’. In order to verify the account, the user had to log in using their PayPal credentials to get it up and running again following the link shared on the SMS. The webpage had all the elements of an authentic PayPal website, only with different URLs that went unnoticed by victims. Another payment processor, PayTm, has also been a victim of SMS fraud. All mobile marketing platforms and businesses are in a tough spot as such frauds are an inherent risk to their brand reputation and revenue streams. Protection against SMS fraud is an important element of not just brand safety but also an important application of mobile security and data protection. All such personalized messages, and branding content that looks legitimate can be a sign of SMS fraud. Fake branding is a scammer’s favorite weapon to trick people. It is important to have tools and measures in place to verify the authenticity of the texts and always be cautious before clicking on any unwanted link to keep trouble away.

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Top 5 Warning Signs of Ad-Fraud You Cannot Ignore!

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Every business dedicates significant funds towards digital marketing campaigns for lead generation, awareness, and a great ROI. However, little do they notice that despite spending tons of money, earning thousands of impressions, it’s never enough. Sometimes, it’s not the inefficiencies or bad UI/UX of the website, a larger issue haunts the marketing department – Ad Fraud.   Studies estimate that a global loss from ad fraud in 2020 was $35billion and is estimated to cross $50 billion a year, by 2025. For businesses, marketers, advertisers, using an ad fraud detection solution aren’t a bone of contention anymore, it has now become imperative.   The question still stands, how do we ensure that businesses are bulletproof to ad fraud? The answer is Earth-shattering- YOU CANNOT. However, remaining vigilant to the warning signs of ad fraud can significantly lower digital spending and help businesses save more by spending less.   Top Warning Signs of Ad Fraud 1. Inflated Clicks Do not celebrate if you suddenly witness an exponential rise in click volume with a minimal to negligent change in conversions. More often, these repetitive clicks can be from the same IP address. There are chances that the clicks can be coming from areas that were outside your target audience. Say hello to bots disguised as humans.   Businesses need to ensure that they have traffic monitoring solutions in place along with other tracking solutions to analyze the lead origination and conversion. 2. Traffic vs Engagement A campaign’s effectiveness can be analyzed with the key metric being engagement.   Ad Campaigns help in driving traffic to a page but any traffic without significant engagement is a sign of ad fraud.   Monitoring solutions help advertisers analyze visitors’ engagement with content on a page, the time spent on the website, and other metrics which paints a better picture of the value being created by any campaign.   3. Drained Budget Red flag! Red flag! Red flag! Where did the money go?   When you have a drained budget and nothing to account it for, it’s clearly a sign of an ad fraud.   For instance, cases of ad fraud have become rampant in the music industry. Fraudsters are stealing chunks of money from music streaming services by setting up an artist account on a platform and uploading fake tracks. They then deploy a bot to stream those tracks on repeat, thus cutting the artists and producers out of profit.   4. Abandoned Shopping Carts More often than not, ad frauds are only looked at through the prism of impressions and clicks. But there’s always more to it. An unusual spike in abandoned carts is a sign of an ad-fraud. When there’s a large volume of incoming traffic onto a website (could be bot traffic), one may unknowingly block authentic purchasers (if there’s a viral moment of good marketing or any flash sale.   Keep a close check on all the abandoned carts. 5. An Unusual Trend There are times when advertisers fail to notice changes which are potential signs of ad fraud. Have you witnessed a drop in conversion rate but the ad spend remains constant? Or how about selecting a location as your target audience but a majority of the traffic witnessed from a location far beyond your imagination? Anytime a predictable spend is not performing or producing ROI, it should be a matter of concern.   All such nuances should be a subject of constant vigilance in digital advertising because just like technology, ad fraud is evolving at a grand scale. No business is immune from it, and it’s a costly problem that continues to grow.

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brand-infringement

Brand Infringement Increases the Risk of Account Takeover Fraud

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Fraudsters create fake ‘look alike’ websites to capture data of subscribers/users to capture data for Account Takeover fraud. In a recent monitoring scan for one of the leading e-commerce portals, we found more than 30 fake websites (in this case marketplaces) created to fraud genuine subscribers/users which potentially increases the risk of Account Takeover fraud. This technique is increasingly becoming widespread where an ordinary digital user falls into the trap and hands over critical information to a scamster who misuses it. How does it work? A fake marketplace is created using exact elements of the genuine one making it difficult for an average digital user to make any distinction and become suspicious. The fake marketplace has the same logo, color scheme, fonts, listing style, and even the same product details to make a user believe that it is the authentic one. Since over 85% of users access the internet using a smartphone, the complete URL address is hidden as mobile browsers do not have space to show the complete link name. The fraudsters typo squatting the URL name so that a user is confused and there is nothing to doubt. After the fake marketplace opens in the browser, the user is allured to sign in or fill up a form to avail of great deals, enter into a competition, etc. The user taking things at face value enters the details and starts dreaming about the reward promised. Meanwhile, the fraudster celebrates by getting all the details which include password, mobile number, and other account information shared over this infringed identity. Now it can log into the genuine account and also change critical information like mobile number and email linked to the account. Now the account is completely in control of the fraudster who can buy products, possibly also use money in wallets linked to the account, redeem points earned, and much more. At times, especially in the case of OTT accounts, the fraudster can simply share the account details for other devices. All this would be happening in the name of a genuine customer, who will get no alert as all the mediums have been reconfigured. What does it result in? One can understand that due to Account Takeover fraud, the personal details of a genuine user are compromised, and the fraudster can ‘enjoy’ the benefits of a subscriber/user without becoming one. This is itself very damaging. But what does it translate into? Here are some of the implications of an account takeover fraud. First and foremost is the financial loss which can happen in many ways to both the parties – subscribers as well as the marketplace/platform offering services and products. The subscribers’ existing balances could be used to make purchases, etc. Nowadays, many platforms are offering a pay-later option. This would increase the liability of a user without actually buying anything. Hence, the transactions would turn out to be disputed where either or both the parties will lose money. The second major issue is a breach of trust and privacy. A user shares very crucial information including card details, passwords, etc., with a platform in all trust and faith. While the user is at fault for not perhaps being extra cautious, it’s primarily the duty of the platform that it doesn’t get infringed. The data could be abused as a scamster would get to know a lot about the behavior and profile of a user by checking the transaction history. Imagine someone buying an airline ticket for a particular city, and then receiving a call about being offered services while in that city. The user may feel excited that some AI-powered application is proactively offering the best of the experience. But it could be a scammer duping of money in the name of advance booking of any service typically required while traveling to another city. The marketplace will also face serious credibility and reputation issues resulting in paying subscribers signing off from it. Even a subscriber who may be spending just Rs 1,000 pm with the marketplace, would result in a substantial LTV loss by disengaging. This means a perpetual opportunity loss. As growth continues to drive from non-metro cities and towns which has been repeatedly shown as a trend by all major eCommerce marketplaces in the country, it is highly likely that the awareness about such issues will be next to negligible. This could be easily trapped by the fraudsters. Even the regulators cannot shy away by running very ineffective campaigns to increase awareness about such scams. The regulator and the cybercrime apparatus have also become effective and more proactive in their stance where such frauds become difficult to thrive. We have seen in cases like unauthorized card swipes, etc., banks do not take responsibility and shed off by excusing behind the awareness drives and ‘buyer beware’ principles. Brands (marketplaces) that are concerned for their reputation need to proactively create multiple layers of protection where brand infringement becomes almost impossible. This will result in users only engaging with the real platform where information exchange and transactions can be done without any worry. Are you unsure of any brand infringement case about your marketplace or other consumer-facing digital assets? Connect with us today and we will help you get the right picture.

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smartphone-industry

Is Smartphone Industry in India Ready for ATT Implications by Apple?

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In India, we only have approximately 3% of iOS users. However, it is expected that Google will also eventually follow the pursuit taking away the monetization layer from the OEMs. ATT or App Tracking Transparency has already started nightmares in the advertising industry, especially performance marketing globally. The US, ME and other major markets of Apple have already become challenging for ad platforms and app publishers. In India, it’s not a big issue as we have a substantially lower iOS base with an overwhelming majority on Google Android. However, it’s not something that the smartphone OEM must ignore. The Centre of ATT implementation by Apple is that if a user doesn’t opt for tracking of a particular app, the app makers won’t be able to get a lot of information. It starts with IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) and mandates that app makers cannot use other data such as web browser configurations and properties, user location, user network connection, among others which further reduces the risk of app fraud. This takes off the power of any app to uniquely identify a user, which means it cannot point to very targeted and personalized ads. While the privacy of a user remains at the core of this decision, it also allows Apple to ‘monopolies’ control over personalized advertising. Apple would not be dependent on app-level to get the personal attributes of a user. This will take the user journey back to Appstore giving Apple greater control over how it wants its user to discover content including apps. This means instead of apps being able to take advertising campaign calls directly, they will have to route through Apple. Globally, we are seeing a paradigm shift. Everyone in the value chain is realizing that sustainable monetization remains in advertising. So, whosoever, controls it makes the most out of it. For instance, airtel has also forayed into advertising recently. Though subscriptions for content are growing, they will hit a plateau very quickly, meaning expansion of the base beyond a point can only be through ad-supported content. This will change the way users are discovering content at the moment where OS doesn’t have much play. So, when a user gets into Netflix, iOS or Android doesn’t have any control over what content should be served. This also means they are blank about the ads that could be relevant. Google has mostly followed iOS in every possible journey. There is no doubt Android will also not bring in this change. It has already been enabling users to control permissions since Android 6.0. The more a user can define what to allow and whatnot, the lesser will be the visibility of an app about the user. The Indian smartphone ecosystem needs to act now. To create a system that can help them monetize through advertising and other services where personalization is the key, smartphone OEMs need to create a common currency, which strikes a balance between privacy and personalization. This cannot however be done by the OEMs alone. It must involve other partners, especially the chipset makers. Together they can create a system that can give control to the OEMs so that they aren’t able to lose the opportunity of personalized advertising. We all know how stressed the smartphone OEM industry is going financially. Even after being in the Indian market for over 6-7 years, many of them are yet to register profits. The rising competition, heavy marketing costs, unfavourable duty structure, increasing component cost, are all making the profit margins wafer-thin for the industry. It is very important for the incumbents like Samsung as well as young brands like Realme, and all in between, to leverage advertising opportunities. However, for this they shall have to prepare themselves, perhaps jointly, to be able to create a controlling, balanced mechanism that strikes a chord between privacy and personalization. Otherwise, they are going to be caught unaware when Google will also follow the path. It has already begun its cookie less endeavor, and, in all realistic probability, it will follow iOS in ATT as well. That will be catastrophic for the smartphone OEMs on Android, which other than Apple, everyone is. We at mFilterIt have come up with a framework on this issue that will give greater control to OEMs so that they become the most trusted partners in the advertising value chain and advertisers confidently and preferentially spend through them. While we have initiated the process, I will be very happy to discuss this with a larger smartphone OEM ecosystem. After all, we are committed to ‘Adding TRUST to digital’.

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identity-theft

Explainer: Identity Theft and How Does it Target the Banking Sector?

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With a rise in internet penetration and the adoption of digital means, sophisticated forms of crimes have taken shape in the banking sector. Scammers and fraudsters leverage a plethora of schemes to conduct financial fraud. One of the most pervasive forms of fraud is ‘Identity fraud’, which equally affects customers and banks. A study estimates that 45% of adult internet users in India faced identity theft in one way or the other in 2020. Identity theft does more than compromise customers’ bank accounts. It costs them untold hours that force the customers to change their account passwords meticulously and contact customer care to have the charges revoked. The sophistication of such fraud attempts has forced financial institutions to address identity theft as a top priority. There are varied forms of identity theft and fraud in an online ecosystem that can wreak havoc on the financial status from both the bank and customer’s perspective. Let us understand them in detail and how it targets the banking sector. Types of Identity Theft Fraud 1. Phishing Scammers often send emails and pop-ups that appear from legit banks and credit card companies. The content of the message contains a link that, when clicked, directs the user to a fictitious site created to convince the users to reveal their personal information and banking details. The links direct to an exact-look alike site of the official bank site. 2. Account Takeover Fraud This type of fraud entails when someone else gains access and takes control of your accounts without your knowledge/permission. It can then be used for fraudulent transactions, gain access to other accounts and vital information, transfer money, undertake scrupulous exchanges. Research cites that account takeover fraud accounts for 53% of total frauds online. 3. Senior Identity Theft One of the most prevalent forms of fraud, the scammers target the elderly citizens (most vulnerable to cybercriminals) and trick them into divulging crucial information. The scammers call to ask for passwords and personal details to access the accounts by posing as bank officers and trustworthy allies. 4. Biometric ID Theft Another sophisticated form of fraud, Biometric ID theft, involves stealing or spoofing a user’s physical or behavioral traits to unlock a device- for instance, voice recognition or facial recognition to unlock the device or tap into other devices. This form of theft is a goldmine for hackers, for they get access to digital wallets and additional important information. 5. Synthetic Identity Theft One of the faster-growing forms of fraud, Synthetic Identity theft, is a highly sophisticated crafted fraud that uses personal consumer data (Aadhar card numbers, PAN card, birthdays, addresses) to create new fictitious identities designed to look like actual users with good credit history. The scammers opt-in for numerous financial frauds, opening new bank accounts, applying for loans, defaulting on credit card bills, all on account of a real user’s name, birthday, and address (among others). There is a big playground for hackers and scammers to steal identities and commit identity theft fraud on the pretext of a real user. Apart from opting for fraud solutions, it is imperative to keep a check and monitor the accounts for any suspicious activities.

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Ad Integrity is No Longer an Issue Native to Digital-First Industries Only

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mFilterIt started its journey with a leading online travel portal as its customer. Today, it has a diverse basket representing different stages of digital evolution. The pandemic has indeed brought digital to the limelight. The above word cloud showcases mFilterIt’s customer engagements that represent a diverse pool of industries using our solutions to validate the digital user and the behavior. This was not the case before. Earlier, ad fraud & brand safety were seen as issues concerning only a few industries like eCommerce OTT, among other digital-only / digital-first sectors. With digital becoming an integral medium or channel of outreach, business, and engagement, all sectors are increasingly becoming conscious of the channel’s challenges. Contrary to the offline channel, the patience for online to show results is minimal. As a result, without making ourselves much aware of the channel and its channels, brands start spending to expect specific results, ranging from acquiring users, making a sales transaction, re-engaging, cross-selling, or simply viewing an ad. In addition to their organic efforts, brands invest in performance-driven marketing activities to maximize the impact of their advertising so that as many potential buyers see a campaign (an ad). There is expected behavior (action) from a user who engages with the campaign. This could be a click, purchase, install, or anything as per the campaign’s objective. (Read a case study about a leading pharma company in India that uses mFilterIt to validate its returns on inorganic spending.) The intent of using mFilterIt across these sectors is the same: establishing the integrity of the advertisements and validating results from the ad campaigns in terms of the reported user behavior. However, each sector has its nuanced flavor. Working with such a diverse pool of clients has helped mFilterIt build a sector-specific knowledge pool that further optimizes the results. For instance, our lead validation tool to verify the genuinity of leads received through a digital campaign validates leads conforming to IRDA guidelines for the insurance sector. It is advisable for every brand joining the digital medium to promote business, acquire leads and transact business, and have ad integrity and performance validation tools in place right from the beginning. There is an approach adopted by a few where they go with the hit-and-trial method and keep on optimizing the spending as per the results of the previous campaign. While it’s an excellent strategy to adopt a data-driven approach, the flip side is that by then, a lot of damage is already done, and now a brand has to spend additionally to undo the impact, which often is irreversible or creates a new set of challenges. For instance, if there is no monitoring of brand safety, it will consume the campaigns in all possibilities on obscene or undesired content sites. The performance results will only show low CTR, which obviously will happen as the campaign isn’t reaching the right audiences. As a post-mortem analysis, a new strategy can be implemented to increase the CTR. Still, the damage that the brand would have undergone by associating with unwanted content will go unnoticed. For adequate integrity and validation solutions, it is essential to have the right blend of technology and domain understanding. mFilterIt, through its comprehensive customer cloud, has acquired knowledge about the nuances of very niche segments. This blend helps it to develop particular algorithms to maximize the results for advertisers and its partners. Hence, it can customize its technology with particular domain requirements. Are you a digital advertiser in BFSI, Automobile, FMCG, Education, OTT, Government, or any other sector? We have purpose-built solutions for you that help you achieve integrity and validation of your digital journey. Contact us today.

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Brand Safety and Celebrity Endorsements

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A close eye on Brand Safety can help brands as well as celebrities to leverage associations more effectively. Celebrities have their own lives.  They have their own thought process, value systems, and opinions which at times could go against the positioning of a brand they are endorsing.  Also, celebrities are high-interest people, and any action or posture they take, especially after the advent of social media, in all probability also makes the associated brands a party to a possible controversy. Similarly, sometimes a brand gets into serious trouble and the celebrity also starts trending on social media for negative sentiment.  In recent times we had two very widely talked about situations where brands and the celebrities endorsing them postured in opposite directions.  One was when Sourav Ganguly had to undergo heart treatment while he endorses a particular variant of Fortune edible oil which talks about its positive impact on health, especially the heart of a person. At the same time Akshay Kumar, not only features in ‘unlock’ campaigns of the government but also endorses Dabur Chyawanprash as an immunity booster where a specific campaign talks about the protection offered against COVID-19 by the chyawanprash by having 2 spoons of it daily, has also tested positive as per media reports of April 4th. In both situations, the celebrities have fallen to medical conditions which the products they are endorsing claim to offer protection against.  Similarly, some celebrities could be in the midst of any controversy making it difficult for the brands they endorse to manage the situation.  They cannot disassociate themselves and at the same time, they don’t want to harm their brand reputation. Close monitoring of Brand Safety over digital mediums can be an effective way of handling such situations where the damage control can be activated instantaneously helping a brand to minimize the impact.  In such situations, the brands can quickly get a complete view of where such campaigns are appearing which they may want to put on hold for some time till the issue is resolved or goes off the radar of ‘digital miscreants’ who always keep on looking for such issues to start conversations and threads on social media, like Twitter. Likewise, celebrities must understand the brand safety of any brand before they decide to go about endorsing it.  There could be some aberrations that the celebrity can ignore, but if it finds that a brand is habitually putting its brand reputation at risk, the celebrity should choose not to endorse it. This will also add to the reputation of the celebrities who will not be seen as endorsing just for the fee they get. Medical conditions can change at times for anyone including celebrities.  At the same time, there are proven clinical reports for brands to make their claims which they do through ads in which celebrities humanize them.  But we have to understand that most of the claims are not for 100% results.  There is always an iota of opposite behavior expected in terms of effect and results.  Also, the product that is being positioned for protecting against a medical condition never offers umbrella protection. It can at best protect from a few causes, while there could be still a few that may land a person, including the celebrity, in the same medical condition. From a brand reputation management point of view, brands, as well as celebrities, need to have a real-time view of what each other is doing which could attract negative attention from audiences on digital platforms like social media.  Both must have mechanisms in place to monitor each other and pause the association in the interest of long-term association with each other as part of any potential crisis management. Brand Safety solutions can give this real-time intelligence to brands, agencies managing them as well and celebrities to derive maximum out of the association and create a complimenting synergy between the brand and the celebrity.

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Brand Safety is an Ethical Responsibility of the Brand Towards Its Stakeholders

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“Congratulations! We’re calling from WhatsApp and your number has won a lottery of 25 lakh!” Does this message or call sound familiar? Welcome to the internet or online fraud world, which costs individuals lakhs of rupees. Such scams are continuously evolving, and India alone has witnessed 65% of businesses losing money on account of online fraud. According to NCRB’s Crime in India report, 2019, fraud made up over half the cybercrime cases in the country. In one such case of a cyber scam, fraudsters use WhatsApp to con people off their money. These scammers call themselves representatives of WhatsApp and Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian adaptation of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’) team and inform the victim that their number has won prize money by participating in the quiz. Not only this, but it also informed the victim that names such as Mukesh Ambani, Narendra Modi, and Amitabh Bachchan are funding the prize money. The victim is then asked to deposit somewhere between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 as tax money or processing fee at SBI bank to enable the KBC team to send the prize money of Rs 25 or Rs 30 lakh. Thousands of individuals have fallen prey to such scams. In the quoted incident, the scammers are banking upon the trust and reputation established by these brands (WhatsApp, Reliance, Amitabh Bachchan, SBI). Companies who only look at this issue from a prism of brand protection miss one central point, ‘Customer is God’. In such scenarios, their customers are being defrauded, phished, and even sold counterfeit goods that they think come from their trusted brands. The internet user base stands at 624 million in India, and India is also WhatsApp’s biggest market with 340 million users. Now, one can only imagine the vastness and extent to which these frauds have penetrated the market. The anonymity being offered by the internet presents an advantage to criminals for they use fake trademarks, tags, emblems, and even bogus certification labels to convince the victim of the genuineness of the brand, often referred to as identity theft or infringement, which again becomes a significant issue for a brand. This also brings to light another component of brand safety, keeping the above incident in mind- privacy. What measures are taken by a brand to ensure that consumer data is held safe and their privacy is honored? With scammers having access to their victims’ personal information and databases, does this not become a significant aspect of brand safety for companies? Brand safety — keeping a brand’s campaign and reputation safe from online frauds and scams — has become one of the most critical components in the marketing industry today. In these incredibly challenging times, brand owners should step up to the plate by deploying necessary brand safety measures- tools to analyze the content and intention of these scams’ fraud detection mechanisms to ensure that they are getting visibility into the threats against the brand. A scammer is doing this under the garb of a brand. This is one of the ‘safest’ frauds for any scammer. A scammer has nothing to lose. The identity created online is fake, and it reaches out to people in the name of a reputed brand. Such fraud happens because everyday internet users entertain such messages only because they have confidence in the brand being infringed. In the example shown in this writeup, the fraudsters use a mix of endorsers who have emotional, social, and business appeal. Such a mix makes the possibility of someone falling to it high. A brand has to act responsibly and ensure its brand cannot be misused or abused by scamsters digitally or otherwise to fraud people who have high esteem for it. Brand safety may not be perceived as having a direct impact on the Balance Sheet and P&L statement (though it has). However, brands must ensure the safety of their name and other trademarks and set it out as a practice of business ethics – a set of principles governing the conduct of a business. The current situation presents a ‘dream opportunity for scammers and a nightmare for brand owners’ to identify these threats in real time. Absolute brand safety lies in the blending of protective elements. Stay vigilant! Check out how we at mFilterIt help you achieve Brand Safety. Do you want to know more about our Brand Safety solutions, fill up your details, and we will reach out to you 1 business day.

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inorganic-engagement

Is Maharashtra the leading location of your inorganic engagement? It could be the BOT traffic

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Some specific campaign analysis showed that Pune is contributing over 40% of the traffic within Maharashtra which is attributed to it being the den of VPNs and Proxy Servers used for BOT traffic. Maharashtra has the highest internet population in India. Many times, marketers while reviewing the performance of campaigns take it as an expected behavior seeing Maharashtra contributing maximum to the traffic for this reason. However, there is a catch. For many campaigns we analyze to validate the Genuity of engagement, we see Maharashtra leading the traffic source. On a double-click analysis, the concentration of engagement within Maharashtra spots to Pune. In many cases, Pune contributes over 40% of Maharashtra’s traffic. The reason for Pune emerging as the hotspot of engagement within Maharashtra is because it is the den of VPNs and Proxy Servers in India. Consequently, whosoever is running BOTs to jack up the performance to make bucks without delivering any real value, will be using these proxies and tunnels to show them up as users from India. So, a quick check for analyzing the genuine engagement for inorganic campaigns could be to compare the proportion of traffic from Maharashtra with that of an organic campaign. A deeper level would be to further check on Pune specifically. This will be the first indication that the campaign is heavy on BOTs and an advertiser is losing money without any ROI. Compared to a few years back, the awareness about ad fraud has increased and organizations plotted through the digital learning curve have started realizing this as an increasing challenge, which they shouldn’t shy about; rather fight back. This can also be validated by the pattern of inbound requests we receive at mFilterIt. (You have a request, simply signup here, and our specialist will contact you within 1 business day) Some 3 years ago it was only digital native organizations and sectors like eCommerce, and since 2020, we have received interest from a wide spectrum of industries like BFSI, Auto, and FMCG, among others. The recently released FICCI-EY report on the M&E sector shows the Internet population spread across India which is defined as the composition of unique visitors from each of these states/clusters. Cross-analyzing this with mFilterIt’s ad fraud rate across these states/ clusters, we see that it’s an omnipresent challenge though translates into different volumes basis the internet population. This means the volume of fake traffic for Maharashtra (including Goa) would be much larger than the BOT-driven engagements in Himachal Pradesh (including Uttarakhand). Whatever the ad-fraud rate is, we are already conceding that almost one-third of the engagement is not with real humans. While the internet population is still not evenly spread across the country and is exhibiting the same pattern of physical infrastructure development, which is skewed to larger cities, ad fraud (BOT) has already spread across the country without much of an uneven spread. This is an alarming sign as all major sectors of BFSI, FMCG, auto as well and eCommerce are focusing on expanding digitally through the country. For instance, in this interaction with NDTV, Sandeep Aggarwal, CEO, and Founder of Droom expects 6% of the total automobile market to shift online by 2025 from the present 0.7%. Similarly, banks are trying to adopt digital banking fast and minimize traditional banking operations. Again, eCommerce players are expanding beyond metros and Tier-1 cities and towns leveraging the expansion of broadband across India as well as strengthening logistics footprints. The point to ponder is whether any company adopts the favorite strategy of focusing on key markets defined by top 10 or top 50 cities, or it wants to expand beyond metros, it will interface and engage with BOTs while discovering real users (internet population). Advertisers and their partners would find going deep into the country digitally is quite difficult as there isn’t much data available to understand the behavior of users over digital. This means the vanity metrics cannot be relied on even the slightest degree of confidence failing even the thumb rules. The user understanding of digital is also relatively lower than that of a city or major town, meaning users could easily be trapped by fraudsters and their footprints ‘hijacked’ to skyrocket the performance. The data set here analyzed by mFilterIt pertains to affiliate marketing. But we see this across every mode and platform. It’s more or less the same trend. Whether we like it or not, bad BOTs have already polluted the digital environment and one cannot create a space that doesn’t interface with this environment at one or the other point. So, this inefficiency is going to remain whatever platform or medium an advertiser decides to go with. Digital is changing from a marketing and outreach platform to a business platform. Even for organizations that had never thought of getting directly in touch with a consumer. We have already seen how D2C is growing up as a trend. This means investments in digital will have to go up substantially and it will not only be the marketing budget but also business development cost which one would have to invest in digital. However, this should not happen without a completely neutral view which does real-time audit and in certain cases ‘proactive’ audit in terms of integrity check to decide whether to put in money through the channel or not. mFilterIt has prescribed actionable best practices to tackle this situation which could be the first step in the direction of any decision-maker. I would encourage you to read them and connect with us for any explanation or assistance you may want regarding its implementation. We all have to find out a balance between taking care of the safety of people and minimizing the impact on economic activities. Digital is indeed an enabling powerful medium, but we need to use it optimally and spend judiciously with a 24×7 validation that could guide us the way forward.

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artificial-intelligence

Using Artificial Intelligence to Detect Real Humans

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AI-powered ad fraud detection and protection help advertisers build a wall of defense. The ad fraud detection and elimination suite for the app and web platforms by mFilterIt does real-time pattern analysis of events and engagements to review fraudulent performance. In a typical anti-ad fraud solution, a post-mortem analysis is done on the events to draw patterns and identify fraud. The engagements which show expected behaviors are marked ‘Not Fraud’. In such solutions, one doesn’t require advanced data science techniques or the power of machine learning as well as any AI engine. One can analyze the data dumps and figure out genuine versus fake patterns. A logic check is required on the data, which can very well serve through any spreadsheet application, let’s say advanced MS Excel functions. Of course, one needs to capture the right data points, which may require some integrations with the mobile or web applications to be analyzed. The game changes when one wants to go up the challenge and start building a protection layer, which can do an analysis on the go and block any potential invalid engagement. The tech requirements changed dynamically, hence the architecture. mFilterIt has always been focusing on ease of integration. For us to deploy ad-fraud monitoring and protection, it is a simple javascript integration or an SDK integration depending on whether it’s an app or web deployment and how deep protection is required. SDK integration makes it a data-rich integration helping our data analysis engine throw up some of the unique analysis of events. Our solution uses data analytics, real-time computing services, and cognitive logic to offer the best ad fraud detection. The internal analysis shows that we can detect an average of 22% more ad fraud over and above the industry benchmark compared to other solutions available in the market. This is not just our analysis but jointly done with some of our anchor customers. We also perform more than 70 checks to uniquely identify the origin of an event, including that of coming from an actual human. The set of unique data points powers all this we capture and real-time computing possible due to our lean on-prem architecture. We securely connect any application with our cloud-based solution for computation. The layer of artificial intelligence built over it is even more critical, which equips the suite with all cognitive power. This is very core to the solution’s architecture as all the thinking ability is designed and structured in it. As soon as the data starts shoring our servers, the ‘brain’ of the solution, based on proprietary algorithms using AI, starts drawing patterns to segregate actual versus fake, human versus BOT. As version 2.0 of the solution, we have taken it to the proactive stage, where we can validate the integrity of the click and base the results; it can be blocked much before the event occurs.  This helps the mFilterIt ad-fraud suite to protect proactively rather than through post-mortem analysis only. It may sound easy to read, but it isn’t elementary in architecture and implementation. As a technology architect, I can vouch for that independently it’s one of the most complex solutions that I have come across in my career. However, we have always ensured to keep the integration as simple as possible. Taking ad fraud to this level is another game-changer. Many advertisers who rely heavily on non-affiliate marketing would find using any ad-fraud solution less effective as payment is prepaid on such platforms and recovering the money after establishing any fake engagement is cumbersome. With click integrity capability, advertisers can take a call much in advance about where to spend. In our journey of more than 5 years at mFilterIt, where we have saved over $150 million and validated over 10 billion events for our happy and satisfied customers across the world, the brain of the solution has been one key differentiator. Just like any human being, where you may acquire similar skills but cannot always replicate the capabilities that are powered by the thinking ability, mFilterIt’s Ad Traffic Validation also thinks much ahead thanks to its cognitive power based on artificial intelligence engine, where it can distinctively differentiate between a real unique human engagement and a BOT.

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