Mumbai: Ad fraud is not unheard of anymore. It’s eating into the share of marketers and digital/advertising agencies alike and each one is trying to chart out a path which would help them prevent ad frauds and stay away from them. Founded in 2015, mFilterIt is a new-age company that caters to protecting digital integrity across platforms. The company strives toward building trust, upholding integrity, and driving growth & value across the digital ecosystem, and establishing itself as the hallmark for digital integrity by validating all engagements in the digital world.
mFilterIt is one of the first companies in the space of Ad Traffic Validation (ATV), Brand Hygiene Protection, and E-commerce Analytics making it one of the most essential tools in a digital marketer’s handbag. The employment of smart technology services by the company enables the customers to have a holistic view of their respective journeys in the digital ecosystem and empowers them with real-time and accurate data to help them understand their return on digital investments.
The growth of the company has been exemplary and over the course of time, it has served more than 50 clients across the globe and has helped its clients to save more than $400 million. On a weekly basis, mFilterIt validates 2 billion + transactions and has 3 billion unique device coverage.
mFilterIt has partnered with various clients like Amazon, Flipkart, Unilever, Rain, ITC, Cred, Mashreq, Careem, Boutiqaat, Starzplay, Redington, Disney, etc., thus building a strong digital ecosystem through its smart services.
Indiantelevision.com in an email interaction, chatted with mFilterIt co-founder and CTO Dhiraj Gupta to find out about the advertising technology scenario, the rising ad frauds during the IPL and more.
Edited excerpts:
On the impending demise of third-party cookies and privacy concerns and the heavy disruption faced by the advertising technology
As advertisers lose access to third-party cookies, it will be a challenge to target the ideal audience without having transparency of the customer’s behaviour and preferences to create personalized ad campaigns. However, to survive in this new age of advertising, marketers need to shift their strategy. The best alternatives to third-party cookies are first-party data and contextual advertising.
The fall-out of third-party cookies means a safe and secure digital advertising approach where data protection will be given the utmost priority. To acquire first-party data, the brands have to move towards a customer-centric approach to retain the trust of the users.
On the ad industry losing millions of dollars due to ad fraud and some of the ways to prevent it
It is estimated that by the end of 2023, the loss due to ad fraud is expected to reach $100 billion globally. To combat the impact of ad fraud, marketers need transparency of their ad traffic quality. Without the validation of ad traffic, the advertisers have less clarity of their data and end up wasting ad spends on invalid traffic. By verifying the quality of the ad traffic, the advertisers will be able to proactively eliminate invalid sources and optimize the ad campaigns better with clean traffic resulting in greater returns.
On the current economic uncertainty constraining marketing budgets and the best way to ensure that a brand gets a bang for its buck when it comes to digital spends
To stay afloat during the current economic uncertainty the marketers need to shift their focus towards protecting their ad spends from the rising sophisticated ad fraud threats. Modern marketers need to leave traditional advertising practices behind and adopt a precision-based and performance-enhancing strategy to curate detailed insights to make effective business decisions. To move towards a transparent digital ecosystem, the first step marketers can adopt is to validate the quality of their ad traffic.
It will help the marketers eliminate invalid sources, hence improving the media quality and optimising the media campaigns with clean data. Another thing to focus on during these uncertain times is to protect the brand’s digital integrity. The key to surviving economic volatility is to make efforts to retain the trust of the existing users as they tend to lose trust in brands if they fail to be authentic and honest.
On transparency being critical and marketers getting adequate transparency to tell them where their ad spend is going especially for digital buying
Yes, transparency is a critical aspect for digital advertisers to make efficient business decisions. Without a transparent overview, the advertisers are unaware of whether their ads are placed beside relevant and safe content, or whether the publisher is showing the ads to a relevant audience.
With adequate transparency, the advertisers can eliminate the invalid sources proactively and prevent the wastage of ad spends. Not just the ad traffic, but the advertisers can protect their brand reputation by reducing the chances of their ads being shown beside unsafe/illicit content.
On the way ad fraud has been taking place in the IPL and kind of ad frauds are done during the game
During the IPL season, marketers increase their ad spends to tap the attention of their target audience. Meanwhile, the fraudsters also become active with their fraudulent techniques to steal the advertiser’s ad spends.
They use bots to inflate the traffic on the digital ads to consume the ad budgets of a marketer and manipulate the ad campaign’s data. Furthermore, they also use disposable numbers/email addresses to create fake accounts and manipulate metrics like sign-ups and claim the payout of a genuine publisher.
They also commit organic traffic stealing by bidding on the brand keywords and appearing above a brand’s search ad. This also results in an inflation of the bid prices of the brand’s keyword. Therefore, the brand eventually pays for the organic traffic that is redirected by the fraudulent affiliate’s website and pays a higher price for its brand keyword.
On the fact that ad fraud during the IPL affects the trust of advertisers and brands deeply and also keeping their trust intact
During the IPL, the advertisers are unable to get a transparent overview of their ad campaign performance due to invalid traffic which further manipulates the ad campaign data. This further impacts the trust of an advertiser in their media partners. By validating the media quality and the ad traffic, the advertisers can get transparency of their ad traffic quality and eliminate invalid sources to improve the efficiency of the ad campaigns. With transparency in data, the advertisers also get the confidence to partner with trustworthy media partners and get greater returns.
On ad stacking & domain spoofing and used during IPL for ad frauds
Ad stacking is a technique where multiple ads are placed one above another in a single ad placement. As a result, the ads are served but only the top ad is viewable to the human eye. Using this technique, the publisher claims the payout for all the ads served. However, the advertiser’s ad might not be seen by only a few or no one.
As a result, the advertiser pays for an ad placement which provides no brand recall or brand value.
Domain spoofing is a technique where a fraudulent publisher disguises itself as a premium publisher. This technique is prevalently used in the programmatic marketplace. By replicating a premium publisher, the fraudulent publishers get a good value for their ad impressions served and the demand is also high due to the genuine publisher’s brand value.
On the way ad stacking and domain spoofing can be prevented
The advertisers can protect the ad campaigns from the impact of ad stacking and domain spoofing by getting adequate transparency of their ad traffic. An ad traffic verification partner can help to detect the anomalies in the ad traffic and help the advertisers to take proactive action by eliminating them at the earliest. A verification partner can also help to detect sophisticated fraud patterns which are difficult to detect with basic fraud checks.
On bot traffic and click fraud being very common forms of ad fraud and the percentage of ad frauds on IPL is through bot traffic
According to the industry benchmarks, fraud traffic detected is almost 30-40 per cent.
The advertisers can reduce the risk of bot traffic and click fraud by validating their ad traffic and eliminating invalid sources. With time, the bot patterns have become sophisticated and human-like behaviour which is hard to detect with basic rule checks. To combat the advanced fraud techniques, advertisers need an advanced solution that can detect anomalies across the funnel and refrain bots from penetrating and polluting the other stages of the sales funnel.
On how to make the IPL free from ad fraud and the possibility to make IPL free from ad fraud completely
Yes, it is possible to make IPL free from ad fraud. Marketers need to shift from the traditional methods of fraud checks and adopt an advanced solution to detect the anomalies in the ad traffic and eliminate them, thereby protecting the media quality and reducing the wastage of ad spends.
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