According to projections by the Statista Research Department, North America is said to suffer the highest economic losses because of online advertising fraud in 2028. It is set to account for 42% of the 173 billion US Dollars in ad fraud losses forecast for that year, followed by Far East & China with 20% and Western Europe with 17%. If you don’t take action now, your ads could be the next victim.

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But don’t panic just yet. Your ads might be a bit vulnerable now, but they don’t have to be. With the right detection strategies and defense mechanisms, you’re all set to tackle any fraud coming your way. This blog dives into exactly what ad fraud is, how it works, and how you can defend your ads.

Ad Frauds: A Rising Threat

Ad fraud is costing advertisers billions worldwide. But what is it all about?

Ad fraud refers to the malicious activity of creating deceptive ads that harm the user clicking on them. For advertisers, this can mean anything that harms either the perception, the outcome, or the performance of the ad. It usually affects advertisers, publishers, and users who are less digitally savvy by posing as an invisible threat.

It can be done for a lot of reasons.

• Scammers and fraudsters might create ads that redirect users to a completely different page to steal their personal information.
• Publishers might scam advertisers by providing fake impressions and profiting off of it.
• Even your competitors might create false advertisements that tarnish your image or use click spam to exhaust your budget.

While it is done for plenty of reasons, there’s one common motive: financial gain.

Why Advertisers Should Care

So the question is, why should you, as an advertiser, care? You’re not getting affected yet… or are you? Many times, you won’t even realize that you are.

Your ads might be getting clicks by bots instead of real users, or the targeting by the ad network might be totally off. You’ll keep changing your strategy, thinking there’s something wrong with it, when the actual problem is completely different.

Ad fraud can come in the form of fake impressions, fake clicks, and fake audiences. Unjustified ad placements are also very rampant and often lead to the advertisers feeling unsatisfied with their results. These inaccurate results lead to poor future planning and budget drain.

As an advertiser, you should definitely care about who your ad is getting displayed to, whether the clicks are legit, and if you are getting a decent amount of return from them. If your engagement or ROI feels off, then make sure you do a thorough analysis to check if you are getting scammed.

Ad Fraud Can Affect Your Brand

While financial losses because of ad fraud are a big deal on their own, it doesn’t end there. It negatively impacts your brand in a variety of aspects, and here’s to list a few.

• Sinks your Reputation: When consumers start seeing your ads on low-grade and inappropriate sites, it will put your brand in a negative light. They will trust your brand less and less, ultimately sinking your reputation.
• Decreases your ROI: Very often, ad frauds lead to lower ROIs. Outcomes are poor, and you don’t get the expected worth of your investment.
• Inaccurate Data: When your clicks and impressions are all falsified, there’s no way to know what the accurate insights are. They could either be less than what is shown or even more in certain cases.
• Poor Future Planning: Reviewing inaccurate data will automatically result in poor planning for future campaigns. You might focus on the wrong things instead of the ones that require vital changes.

And the list just goes on if you don’t tackle it in time.

How Ad Fraud Works: Watch Out For These

There’s no one way in which scammers conduct ad fraud. Some might be using tactics that we haven’t even identified yet, but here’s a list of the ones that are most commonly used.

Click Fraud/Bot Fraud

Click fraud is a type of fraud that is carried out by bots and works by generating fake clicks for the ad. Advertisers are made to believe that they are interacting with real human users, but instead, it’s just the ad fraud bots trying to deceive them. This fraud is usually seen with PPC or pay-per-click ads and results in advertisers exhausting their budget way too soon.

Click Spamming

Click spam is another form of PPC fraud that specifically targets website and mobile ads. Here, spammers execute clicks on behalf of users who haven’t made them. They begin clicking in the background while the user engages with the website or app, making it look as if they have interacted with the ad itself.

Impression Fraud

Impression fraud happens when scammers (usually publishers in this case) defraud advertisers and ad networks running CPM ad campaigns. They rack up impressions by using bot traffic and making the ads appear in unseen places to make more money. By creating a false perception that ads are getting seen, they increase their ad revenue.

Ad Stacking

In this type of programmatic ad fraud, ads are hidden by publishers from the actual users. They are layered on top of the other, creating a stack with a primary ad on the top. When this primary ad gets an impression or an interaction, it is counted for all the ads stacked up. This is also done for the purpose of increasing ad revenue.

Pixel Stuffing

When multiple are crammed up in a single 1×1 pixel space that makes them invisible to the user, it is termed pixel stuffing. In other words, normal-looking pixels are combined with fraudulent pixels to hide them from the end-users. Impressions and clicks are counted as usual, holding absolutely no value for the user.

Ad Injection

Ad injections are a type of fraud where ads are ‘injected’ or sneaked into places on publishers’ websites where they don’t belong. It can either replace existing ads or add new ones during a user’s session. This not only interrupts the user’s experience by making them see irrelevant ads but also hides the actual ads that have been paid for.

Domain Spoofing

This involves hiding the real domain or identity of a website. Spammers ‘spoof’ or copy the domain of another well-known website by making certain alterations to imitate them.

When advertisers spend money to bid and display their ads on such sites, they are setting themselves up for loss. Although users and impressions from it are real, such low-quality websites are not worth the money spent on them.

Are Your Ads a Victim of Fraud?

Scammers and fraudsters are extremely subtle with their tactics. There’s no way you’ll know you’re being defrauded until you sit down to analyze and notice it specifically. Here’s what you can do.

First, check if you are at risk of advertising fraud. While fraud can generally impact any size and niche of businesses, there are a few that are at high risk. Generally, fraudsters are seen targeting finance businesses, retail/e-commerce stores, and firms offering legal services.

Next, notice the signs. These can be:

• Unusual or lower engagement rates compared to the number of impressions and clicks.
• Lower interactions than what you consider a ‘ base’ standard.
• Unrealistic spikes in impressions and CTR.
• Repeated site visits that lead to no actual engagement or conversion.
• Suspicious traffic sources that don’t really include your target market.
• Higher bounce rates can be a result of bot traffic.

If anything seems unusual, you can further turn to ad fraud detection tools to identify fraudulent activities in your digital advertising campaigns.

Pro Tip: Check for suspicious activities in your ad campaigns every once in a while, even when you don’t see the signs. This can help you identify and eliminate fraud in the early stages.

Prevent Ad Fraud With These Strategies

Advertising fraud can be easily mitigated with the right strategies. Here’s how you can safeguard your campaigns:

Monitor Performance Regularly

To grasp fraud, it’s best to monitor your performance regularly and watch out for any unusual activities in the preliminary stages. Set a ‘base’ standard for yourself depending on past performances, and use it to compare future performances. You can also make projections and compare them with the actual results.

Look out for the ad impressions, click-through rates, legitimacy of website traffic, conversions, and other relevant metrics. If anything looks abnormal or out-of-place to a vast extent, then it can be a sign of ad fraud.

Research Reputable Ad Networks

Your ad delivery largely depends on ad networks, which is why it’s important to partner up with only reliable ones. Research reputable ad networks and check for their:

• publishing partners
• website verification procedure
• quality of ad inventory
• transparency in results and reports
• support system
• reputation in the market

Ensure that they aren’t involved in any kind of fraud themselves before advertising through them.

Implement Multi-Layered Security

The next thing you can do is tighten up your security. Opt for multi-layered security measures like IP blacklisting, device fingerprinting, and behavior analysis that detect and block frauds effectively. It is a sophisticated defensive technique that you can use to safeguard your ads from a variety of frauds.

Monitor Your Competitors

Keep an eye out for what your competitors are up to. Many competitors don’t play fair and might employ bots, fake accounts, and fake referrals to give you a false impression. They might even hire low-paid workers to continuously click on your ads, called ‘click farms.’

So, if you suspect any such activities, block all suspicious IP addresses and consider legal action if the problem persists.

Watch Out For Spoofed Domains

To detect any spoofed domains, you can either use a tool or do searches on your own. Carefully examine your URL and pay close attention to any misspellings and alterations in characters.

For example:

• ‘amazom.com’ instead of ‘amazon.com’
• or using unusual characters like ‘rn’ for the letter m

You can also train your organization to do random checks.

Utilize Fraud Detection Tools and Software

If you see any unusual activity or are at a high risk of digital advertising scams, then utilizing fraud detection tools and services can be your best bet. Invest in tools and software that are accurate, reliable, and can analyze multiple facets of fraud. They should offer full transparency and be capable of providing full-funnel protection.

Target Precise Audiences

If you set your targeting to a very precise location or demographic, you can easily identify any spikes in impressions and clicks from unmentioned sources. This can be an indicator of fraudulent activities being conducted by publishers and ad networks.

Follow the Industry Initiatives

Initiatives and guidelines led by companies like IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) serve as a great marker for ad fraud. Becoming a part of them will give you access to a community that works to combat ad fraud and promote safe practices.

Conclusion

As new technology unfolds and online space becomes more crowded, we are bound to see a rise in the number of ad frauds. Scammers are going to come up with newer tactics that are yet to be discovered. But the good news is that ad fraud is not unbeatable. While there might not be a feasible method to tackle it from the root yet, prevention measures can go a long way.

The bottom line is- you always need to stay one step ahead, prioritize reliable partnerships, and take action against suspicious behavior in the early stages. Make sure your ads get the worth of your investment without any compromises.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is ad fraud?

Ans. Ad fraud refers to malicious activities that affect the perception, outcomes, and performance of digital advertisements. They can severely affect the ad campaigns and cause high losses to the advertisers.

How can I detect ad fraud?

Ans. Advertisers can detect ad fraud by using specific tools and continuously monitoring your campaign’s performance. You can set a base standard and compare it with the actual results to check for any suspicious spikes or falls in the number of impressions, clicks, and engagement.

What are the most common types of ad fraud?

Ans. Click fraud, click spamming, impressions fraud, ad stacking, domain spoofing, pixel stuffing, and ad injections are some of the most common types of ad fraud that you should watch out for.

How can advertisers prevent ad fraud?

Ans. Advertisers can prevent fraud by using tools and software that help in detecting and eliminating fraud throughout the funnel. You can also keep a constant check on your competitors, monitor your performance, watch out for spoofed domains, and implement a multi-layered security system to keep things in check.

Who is at the risk of ad fraud?

Ans. Ad fraud can impact businesses of any size and niche. However, it’s financial businesses, legal firms, and retail/e-commerce stores that are at high risk of ad fraud.

We will discuss click spam and how it affects advertising practices in detail. We will also talk about some ways by which these fraudulent practices can be prevented. So, let’s delve into this amazing blog.

How Do You Define Click Spam?

Click spam (also referred to as click flooding) can be defined as a fraudulent action that involves providing fake clicks to advertisers’ ads. It is a very harmful practice that threatens advertisers’ money and businesses. Click spamming increases ad clicks, but these clicks are not genuine. These are done with the help of bots or by some other illegitimate means.

These clicks are not made by users who are genuinely interested in your business and thus are fake. Click spam occurs across various channels, such as social ads, banner ads, native ads, etc.

How Does Click Spam Work?

Now, let’s understand how the fraudulent practice of click spam takes place. It involves the following steps:

Infected App Or Website

The click spam fraud begins with the user downloading an infected app or surfing an infected website. The user does not notice, but this infected app/website sets a malware code on his mobile.

In-App Purchases And Ad Clicks

Any activity done by the user, such as an in-app purchase and an ad click, results in the click spammer making money. The more clicks and purchases, the more money the click spammer makes. The worst part is that the malware code allows the spammers to make clicks on the user’s phone without his/her consent and knowledge.

Distorting Actual Data And Analytics

These ad frauds drain the marketers’ precious money and distort the actual data and analytics, placing some platforms above those that are better than them. Since data and analytics are not correct, it leads advertisers to make wrong decisions.

Types Of Click Spam

Yes, you read it right. There are even types of click spam. These include :

Background Clicks

This fraudulent activity happens when the user uses an app containing malware code. The spammer clicks the ads in the background without the user’s knowledge. This results in an increased number of clicks.

Impression As Clicks

This refers to the fraudulent activity of making the impressions appear as clicks. This practice not only scams the advertisers but also spoils its image. The ad network the advertiser is connected with also faces a degradation of its image.

Click Injection

This is also a well-known click fraud. It involves a malware app downloaded by the user that detects any new app downloaded by the user on his/her phone and makes ad clicks in that app. Obviously, this happens without the user’s knowledge.

Preventing Ad Injection: Key Tips for Advertisers to Boost ROI

Click Spoofing

Click spoofing involves fraud publishers (fraudsters acting as publishers) deceiving advertisers into believing that their ads are getting genuine clicks through various methods, such as manipulating IP addresses and distorting analytics data when, in reality, they are not.

Impacts Of Click Spam

There are various types of click spam impact. These Include:

Wastage Of Money

Obviously, these spams are fraudulent activities. Advertisers do not need to pay any money to reap benefits from the actions that spammers do or show that they do. These ads are fraudulent as spammers show the advertisers their organic clicks as paid clicks. So, advertisers pay for something that they have earned through their own hard work.

Bad Effect On Return On Investment (ROI)

The traffic that advertisers get is bot traffic and genuine users. Thus, these fake clicks do not actually result in conversions, which causes a loss to the advertisers. Consequently, the return on investment (ROI) is adversely affected.

Distorted Data And Analytics

The fake clicks that the spammers provide to the advertisers distort the actual data and analytics. Due to this, advertisers can not access their data and analytics properly and make the right decisions. Not being able to make the right decisions due to the unavailability of correct data is harmful to the growth of advertisers’ business.

Adverse Effect On Brand Image

Another pernicious effect of these fake clicks is that they affect the brand image of the advertiser’s business because the audience will understand at some point that the clicks and conversions the advertiser claims are not true. The worst part is that even the advertiser does not know about this distorted data.

What Can Be Done To Prevent Click Spams?

Although there are no proven ways to stop these spammers, one can employ several strategies to prevent themselves from getting spammed. These strategies include:

Keeping An Eye On Click Patterns

This is an exhausting but powerful strategy that advertisers can use to detect click spam. They can detect any unusual click patterns. Now, what are these unusual click patterns? They include unusual time intervals between the clicks and the installs, a large number of clicks from the same IP address, etc.

Fraud Detection System/Tools

Advertisers can use various fraud detection tools to detect any unusual click patterns. Machine learning tools and artificial intelligence (AI) are used by these tools to detect any fraudulent click patterns.

Click Validation

Advertisers can validate the authenticity of the clicks through various methods, such as fingerprinting and digital ID tracking of the systems.

Do Business With Popular And Reputable Ad Networks

You must choose a reputable ad network for promotion and marketing purposes. Also, do proper research before contracting an ad network. Your research should be done based on the ad network’s professionals’ average experience and expertise. You should also look at the client reviews about the ad network. One of the primary reasons for partnering with a good ad network is that it provides advanced security.

Optimize Target Advertising

A good advertising network also provides the facility for target advertising. The benefit of target advertising is that it lets you choose your audience on the basis of various factors, such as age, sex, and location. This way, you can focus on people that you believe are your potential customers.

Stay Updated

Advertisers must stay alert about changes in the advertising industry because only then can they stay updated about things like the latest technology for creating engaging ads and preventing an online business from clicking spam.

Best Advertising Network For Providing Security From Click Spam – 7Search PPC

7Search PPC is a name that you should always remember because it provides you with an advanced three-layered security system, combining imaginative in-house and third-party fraud detection systems. Along with advanced security, we also provide several other features, such as:

1. Powerful Ads: We provide several ad formats that can be used according to your needs. These ad formats are text ads, banner ads, in-page push ads, native ads, popunder ads, and video ads (coming soon).
2. Easy-To-Use Interface: Our ad network also provides a user-friendly interface so that you face no trouble while using our website.
3. 24*7 Customer Support: If you face any problem, you can contact us anytime as we are available for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. We try to resolve your query as soon as possible.
4. Self-Serve Platform: 7Search PPC is a self-serve platform. This means that you have complete control over the management of your ad campaigns.
5. Multiple Payment Options: We offer various legal options for you to pay. These include credit cards, debit cards, cryptocurrency, etc.

Conclusion

Click Spam is harmful to the advertiser’s pocket as they pay for traffic that is either organic or fake. It also undermines the advertiser’s brand image because, at some point, the audience gets to know that the real data doesn’t match what they claim. The worst part about this is that even advertisers don’t know the reason for this unmatching of the real data and the apparent data.

There are various ways by which these spams can be protected, such as monitoring click patterns, using fraud detection tools, optimizing target advertising, connecting with popular and reputable ad networks, and staying updated about the evolving technology.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the types of Click Spam?

Ans. The types of click spam are:

• Background Clicks
• Impression As Clicks
• Click Injection
• Click Spoofing

Why partnering with a good ad network is crucial?

Ans. It is crucial that you partner with a good and reputable ad network because it can provide you with various features, such as various ad formats (text ads, banner ads, native ads, etc.), 24*7 customer support, and, most importantly, advanced security.

How can advertisers check the authenticity of the clicks they get?

Ans. Advertisers can check the authenticity of the clicks they get through various mechanisms, such as fingerprinting and digital ID tracking.

What are the ad formats that the popular ad network 7Search PPC Offers?

Ans. The ad formats offered by 7search PPC:

• Text ads
• Banner ads
• In-page push ads
• Popunder ads
• Native ads
• Video ads (coming soon)

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