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Digital advertising, being a relatively new channel, is still evolving. As digital ads become more and more popular, new concerns are being identified. One such concern that has been in the limelight recently is data transparency. Users are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy. They want to (rightfully) control who obtains their information, how they obtain it, and how they use said information. In other words, digital users expect brands to build trust through transparency. However, such concerns are not limited to users. Transparency matters also concern advertisers. As third-party cookies are being phased out and the focus on privacy becomes sharper, brands must also demand transparency from advertising platforms and providers. Recent privacy regulations and concerns surrounding consumer trust have made things more difficult for brands. In such times, access to reliable data and transparency have become critical to success. Still wondering why? Here are three solid reasons: Reasons Brands Need Data Transparency to Thrive in 2024 1. Mitigate The Risks Bad data negatively impacts digital efficiency. This means that bad data prevents brands from making the most of their advertising and marketing efforts. This is because bad data usually stems from invalid traffic or anomalies found in ad traffic reporting. Such instances can impact the marketing of brands in a variety of ways. The most obvious impact is the wasted ad spend. If you are paying for a click or an impression, and if it doesn’t come from a real user, then your ad budget for said click or impression is wasted. Fraudsters may use bots or click farms to direct invalid traffic to an advertiser’s website and steal their advertising dollars. A less obvious impact of invalid traffic is on organic rankings and traffic of websites. Too much invalid traffic may lead to a website losing precious rankings and traffic on search engines. On the contrary, if brands have access to reliable data, they can effectively mitigate these risks. Access to accurate data will enable brands to accurately pinpoint their most valuable traffic sources and nurture them. It will also give them clarity on their effective channels and best-performing campaigns in which they can invest for greater returns. 2. Targeted Reach One area of digital advertising where there is a serious lack of transparency is ad placements. Advertising networks and platforms let brands exercise some control over who sees their ads. By targeting the right audience, brands can ensure that their ads are being displayed on websites frequented by their target audience. However, this is usually only true in theory. In most cases, brands have little control over or information about the websites that publish their advertisements. As a result, many brands remain unaware that their ads are being displayed next to irrelevant content or on completely irrelevant websites. The obvious impact of this is, once again, wasted ad spend. If the ads are being served to users who may not find them relevant, the conversion rates suffer, diminishing the returns for the brand. The less obvious impact of the same can be observed in extreme cases. In such cases, brands become victims of unsafe ad placements. This means that without the knowledge of the brand/advertisers, their ads are displayed next to questionable or extremist content. It isn’t difficult to imagine the impact on a brand if its ad is displayed next to, say, homophobic content. While the brands have little control over this, most users who view these ads are unaware of the same. As a result, when such unfortunate ad placements come to light, the advertising brand’s image suffers the most damage. If, however, brands have the power to verify and control where their ads are displayed, they get access to targeted reach. This means that brands can target users who are most likely to respond to their offer and convert into paying customers. 3. Improve Efficiency One of the biggest yet most overlooked effects of bad data on advertising is skewed metrics. The most lucrative aspect of digital advertising is the access to ad reporting data that enables optimization decisions. However, due to the lack of transparency, bad actors in the advertising supply chain may tamper with their traffic reports in the hopes of making a quick buck. Similarly, invalid traffic can make campaign reports inaccurate. It may compel advertisers to give credit to bot traffic sources and overlook legitimate ones. Alarmingly, this effect isn’t limited to traffic sources. Bad data may lead advertisers to invest in the wrong ad variations, audience variations, and even ad platforms. In the long run, this can have a compounding effect on wasted ad spending. On the flip side, if brands can validate their traffic, execute data optimization, and get access to accurate reporting, optimization decisions will be easier and more accurate. This can result in substantial improvements in the ROI a brand can expect from its digital advertising efforts. Your Partner for Trust and Transparency The good news is that brands and advertisers are not powerless about transparency. By validating traffic and publishers and carefully selecting advertising platforms and vendors, advertisers can ensure access to transparent and reliable data. Manually validating traffic and its sources can prove to be inefficient. It is time-consuming, and there exists a margin for human error. This is where a solution like mFilterIt becomes relevant. Using AI and ML algorithms, mFilterIt’s ad fraud solution and brand safety tools validate traffic and publishers in real-time along with tracking the unsafe ad placements. Our solution ensures continuous monitoring of traffic and traffic sources, eliminating all margins of error or overlooked incidents. It also enables brands to stay clear of objectionable ad placements and reduces the risk of brand risks. It is designed to enable informed business decisions based on reliable, verified data. Way forward A transparent internet is better for users and brands alike. As we progress toward a more privacy-focused future for the web, advertisers’ reliance on transparent data will only become more prominent. It will enable advertisers to continue being productive contributors to a better internet and

Every brand in the digital ecosystem is in the rat race to expand its presence, build brand reputation, and gain customer trust. But to excel in this race brands need to make sure they safeguard their efforts from threats like Brand infringement. The major brand challenge is identifying infringement cases and building an automated takedown, reporting, or blacklisting mechanism to protect their brand reputation and maintain brand integrity. Fake Apps, Websites, Social Media Handles, Customer Care, Job Posts, or any fake Brand Communications must be identified to protect brand image along with the detection of counterfeit products and sellers. Let’s dig deeper to unveil what it takes to detect brand infringement cases and mitigate the risk and adverse impact of brand infringement. Why do brands need Brand Safety monitoring and Infringement Protection? Brands in the digital ecosystem need to protect brand reputation by safeguarding their assets from high-risk digital content for both apps and the web. This includes Unsafe & Non-Contextual Media Placement Relevancy of Media Campaigns Web Brand Safety Keyword Bidding Fraud Coupon & Incent fraud Another key aspect for brands in e-commerce business on online marketplaces is needed to safeguard from brand abuse by identifying and eliminating digital infringements and counterfeits. This includes Identifying and blacklisting fake sites and social media handles Listing of Fake Customer Care Contact numbers Malicious and fraudulent Brand Communication Monitoring APK Copycat Apps Protection from Account Overs – credential sharing With solutions utilizing the open-source intelligence brands can protect their reputation, build customer trust, and prevent revenue losses. The risk assessment across the brand’s digital activity helps protect the brand from brand infringement threats. Case Study – How a leading construction and real-estate brand identified and prevented brand infringement cases. The brand prevented Intellectual Property Infringement – Any violation or breach of protected intellectual property rights in logo/design infringement and domain infringement or Cybersquatting. With mFilterIt, they conducted scans for similar URLs, Pages, and Websites about similar keywords, content, or visuals in the global web horizon. The solution flagged off any fraudulent activity to the advertiser to take corrective action. Brand acted on the shared data with corrective action. Fake Websites impersonating the construction company and using the brand names of Prestige Constructions in the domain name were identified. Fake social media handles impersonating Construction firms are identified on Instagram and Facebook. Unauthorized Facebook Ads using construction firm Logo/IP detected For Another multinational food manufacturing company job promotions propagated on social media platforms to mislead or defraud job seekers were detected. How to mitigate the risk of brand infringement The brand must monitor the use of its intellectual property in the digital ecosystem. A comprehensive detection and prevention mechanism in place can enable brands to protect themselves from infringement across apps, web, social media, e-commerce, and other media platforms. Brands must implement robust monitoring systems that monitor unauthorized use of brand assets, or any counterfeit product sold online. Proactive measures to protect intellectual property rights with prompt takedown action. A mechanism to detect and measure the risk associated with brand infringement Identify any guidelines or pricing violations by authorized sellers/distributors or retailers. Enable best practices to combat brand infringements effectively. Be adaptive and vigilant against the sophisticated and evolving threats to brand integrity in the digital ecosystem. Stay informed on emerging trends and technologies for brand protection Final Thought To safeguard your brand from infringement, you must be aware of the far-reaching impact it can have on your brand reputation and revenue. Loss of Revenue, brand reputation damage, customer trust erosion, regulatory compliance risks, and long-term business impact can be prevented with a proactive approach and brand infringement protection solutions. Get in touch to learn more about brand infringement and brand infringement solution

Horses for courses – What sells more on Blinkit, might not get the same response on Zepto. On the same pin code, three different dark stores may have different product availability and more orders of particular brands as compared to others. Pricing and bundling of products also vary from one quick commerce platform as compared to others. Therefore, building a strategy for e-commerce and quick commerce marketplaces demands insights and analysis covering different platforms, geographies, dark stores, and trends versus competition. Let’s explore what it takes to build a strategy for e-commerce marketplaces and what brands need to stay competitive in a fast-paced evolving digital commerce ecosystem. Matching the pace of evolving needs of E-commerce marketplaces Gone are the days when e-commerce marketplaces were limited to metros. The e-commerce horizons are expanding to tier-2, tier-3 cities, and beyond. Ease of payment and swift internet has led to a new revolution. This scenario is not limited to a single country, but global e-commerce is picking up pace with Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia (AMESA) region leading the charge. The global eCommerce online sales reached $5.8 Trillion in 2023 and are expected to grow to $6.3 trillion globally in 2024 The astronomical rise in e-commerce sales and competitive landscape spicing up has opened multiple sales avenues from e-commerce brands in the digital commerce landscape which include E-commerce, Q-com marketplaces, D2C platforms, and social commerce with massive role of influencers driving sales. Building strategy with marketplace intelligence and insights can help scale business, identify market gaps, target new unexplored geographies, and target demographics. Data Driven Intelligence for e-com growth E-commerce growth requires strategies that can leverage data and insights to boost brand presence at pin-code levels across multiple marketplaces. Monitoring brand performance versus competition in the digital space is the key to staying ahead and staying competitive. Big brands with massive SKUs venturing into multiple categories, sub-categories, and product variants need comprehensive insights along with monitoring their sellers versus competition. Optimizing delivery turn-around time and identifying pricing violations are the key challenges. For Quick commerce, availability becomes a key factor. To identify gaps in strategies, tracking market trends along with varying requirements of different platforms requires high-quality digital shelf monitoring. Comparatively smaller brands looking to go head-on with established well-known global brands require insights into what set them apart and identify the market gaps and opportunities at the micro-level. ecommerce competitive analysis and actionable insights can help them identify their audience and white spaces in the market. This could enable say, a local indigenous toothpaste brand in Southeast Asia to compete with brands like Pepsodent or Colgate. May be not at all sub-categories but on say, 100gm pack at some region on Lazada or Shopee. Every brand has different needs that require a solution that can be customized to suit their needs on different e-commerce platforms. Protecting Your Brand Integrity on E-commerce Marketplaces The e-commerce strategies for brands on digital marketplaces should not be limited to just digital commerce intelligence. Both on and off-platform activities must be in sync to boost brand reputation on the platform. Therefore, here are some things brands need to elevate performance on e-commerce platforms. E-commerce perfect page analysis: On every platform and geography brands’ products may have different competition. To make this battle more interesting all platforms require a different strategy. Therefore, platform-level analysis or perfect page analysis across platforms is required to ensure consistency and brand presence across the digital commerce landscape. Analytics for its Sellers: Sellers on e-commerce platforms also need to upswing their process with Digital Shelf monitoring, Marketing Automation, and Automated Cataloguing. This can help simplify the process, and boost sales with more buy box wins. Platform-Level Intelligence: The rise of digital commerce has revolutionized the customer behavior. Options are plenty for shoppers to pick the shopping platforms and products, this makes the online shopping ecosystem more competitive. Monitoring, identifying white spaces and real-time actionable insights are strategic intelligence required to optimize performance across platforms. Final Thought Intelligence drives performance on e-commerce platforms. E-commerce strategy must cover platform-level intelligence, seller analysis, and competitive insights on KPIs like pricing, availability, keyword share, product page content, delivery turnaround time, and more. Every brand faces its own set of challenges on different e-commerce platforms and geographies, identifying the gaps, exploring new opportunities, and enabling a brand to optimize performance across categories, sub-categories, and product variants requires a data-driven strategy. Get in touch to learn more about leveraging digital commerce intelligence to build e-commerce strategies.

The e-commerce landscape has expanded across India beyond anyone could have expected 5 years ago. New startups are challenging the big brands in the digital commerce ecosystem. Big names venturing in on digital marketplaces expanding revenues and catering to the need for convenience for their buyers. The digital native brands have carved their niche with an expanding customer base, targeting shoppers looking for a healthy and organic lifestyle and products driven by innovation. The Indian e-commerce landscape caters to the ever-expanding shopper base with an estimated 230-350 million online shoppers in 2023. (Source: Bain & Co.) Such expansion and multi-platform sales avenues generate the need for e-commerce shelf monitoring to stay ahead of the competition and optimize the customer journey. How can e-commerce Shelf Monitoring optimize brands’ performance across platforms? A Shelf Monitoring framework in place could simplify the process with seamless optimization across e-commerce platforms and geographies. Here are some steps that can help streamline e-commerce Shelf Monitoring. 1. Discover Performance Gaps Identify if you’re underperforming on key measures. Set a checklist to illustrate – How is it measured? Set targets and notification process on where you stand on core KPIs like availability, share of search, primary and secondary PDP content, rating and reviews, seller performance (authorized and unauthorized), price parity, and more. 2. Assess Performance After identifying the areas with performance gaps, assess and analyze to establish what has caused such performance gaps. Identify where you stand versus competition across categories, sub-categories, and product variants across geographies. 3. Chart a path to remediation with the Shelf Monitoring Report Disseminate the findings work towards a correction mechanism and define a detailed action plan with timelines and accountability assigned. 4. Set Reassessment timelines Do not just limit to a one-time shelf monitoring as the digital commerce ecosystem keeps on evolving. Identify key parameters and Shelf Monitoring your progress versus competition every 3 months at least. Tweak and correct the measuring standards where and when required to improve performance standards. 5. Comprehensive Lat-long Analysis Monitoring product performance at the pin-code level enables brands to scale up the performance versus competition at the granular level. Such detailed comprehensive digital shelf monitoring can upswing brand presence across the cities on multiple platforms. The digital shelf monitoring solution, mScanIt offers such unique detailed monitoring to boost your brand presence. Benefits of e-commerce Shelf Monitoring in the digital commerce ecosystem Knowing how your product performs on a platform versus competition sometimes may not be enough – The monitoring should have a wider perspective covering different needs of different platforms and what they need to excel on various quick-commerce, and e-commerce platforms. Here are some of the key perks of e-commerce shelf monitoring: 1. Performance Enhancement By Identifying performance gaps on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as availability, share of search, content quality, ratings, reviews, and seller performance, etc. brands can enhance their overall performance on e-commerce platforms and geographies. This requires continuous monitoring across platforms, setting and updating thresholds regularly. 2. Optimized Customer Journey Enhancing customer experience is the top priority for every brand in the competitive e-commerce landscape. A thorough Shelf Monitoring allows brands to identify areas of improvement in the customer journey. This includes analyzing product detail pages and tracking customer sentiments via feedback ratings and reviews. Every step of the customer journey from interest and awareness, discoverability to the purchase phase. Optimizing these aspects contributes to a seamless and satisfying customer experience. 3. Actionable Competitive Insights Do you know where you stand versus the competition? Tracking SKUs across categories, sub-categories, and product variants on multiple platforms and geographies helps in strategic decision-making. The insights help build an understanding of the root causes behind performance gaps. It enables brands to take targeted actions with data-driven insights and build strategies with a detailed action plan, timelines, and accountability. E-commerce Shelf Monitoring enables brands to capitalize on strengths, identify weaknesses, and stay competitive in the market. 4. Maximized Revenue Potential By optimizing various aspects of e-commerce operations, brands can maximize their revenue potential. This includes improving search visibility, pricing strategies, and overall customer satisfaction. It can help boost market share and sales. 5. Adaptability to Market Trends With the ever-changing e-commerce landscape, staying proactive is crucial. An e-commerce Shelf Monitoring enables brands to adapt quickly to market changes, ensuring they remain relevant and responsive to shifting consumer demands. 6. Enhanced Brand Reputation Addressing performance gaps positively impacts the brand’s reputation. Consistently delivering a high-quality experience builds trust among consumers, leading to increased loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. Final Thoughts E-commerce Shelf Monitoring can prove to be a solution to multi-faceted enabling performance optimization and upswing growth. In a competitive landscape, every quick commerce and e-commerce marketplace has a different set of challenges, with expanding business in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. For brands venturing on multiple platforms and multiple geographies tracking and monitoring competitive trends and positioning of own brands versus competition is to optimize brand performance. E-commerce Shelf Monitoring can prove to be your perfect companion for market growth, enabling competitive intelligence to drive monitor, and optimize your product performance vis-a-vis competition along with extensive E-commerce Shelf Monitoring for platform-level optimization. Take your e-commerce effort to the next level with data-driven decisions and in-depth analysis and intelligence with E-commerce Shelf Monitoring. Get in touch to learn more about shelf monitoring.