Mobile-focused digital advertising has become the industry leader as regulating bodies all over the world gradually blow away the worries sparked by the pandemic on a worldwide scale. This sudden rise in popularity was expected, of course. Despite multiple predictions, the ramifications and gravity of ad fraud, which is also increasing due to digital marketing, have always been ignored. This has made it a threat to every ad campaign.
Ad fraud, fake news, misinformation, and data privacy legislation are some of the many direct attacks that cybercriminals are making against victims. Zenith recently made a forecast that global digital advertising was supposed to reach $705 billion, but unfortunately, this advertising network surge also triggered many levels of spam. Businesses should not disregard a strategy for battling ad fraud as they launch their 2022 marketing goals to safeguard their return on ad expenditure (ROAS).
If you are eager to make a rather sizable and generous investment for your firm’s growth, this article is the best way to start gaining knowledge. Check out the upcoming section and understand why ad fraud fighting tools require your money and attention!
Defining Ad Fraud
In our exclusive interview with the marketing and advertising stalwart, Faisal Abidi, who co-founded a prominent IT & Consulting firm, RNF Technologies, we learned about ad fraud or spam in depth. Let’s get into the details:
Ad spam or fraud is a term given to an accumulation of malicious strategies opted by a few bad actors to prevent digital adverts from reaching the people and demographics it was designed for in the first place.
These malicious strategies involve bots, SDP spoofing, and click spamming, aka click injection.
By employing these strategies, ad spammers tend to snip off businesses’ from their advertising budgets. Regarding spam, Faisal Abidi said these tactics lead to loss of leads, sales, and decreased brand awareness because the ad never reached the audience.
The ad spamming hurts the advertisers and harms the publishers; they witness lowered ROAS and value of the advertisement aired.
So what challenges does ad fraud throw at the advertisers? Check out the next section to find out!
Significant Challenges To Face In 2022
Because many customers still feel uncomfortable purchasing in person, the e-commerce industry has expanded across the Covid-19 epidemic. However, as was already indicated, the expansion of digital advertising also sparked a record amount of criminal activity related to advertising fraud. When asked how Faisal Abidi challenges his app and web development arm, Phonato Studios, in combating ad fraud, he stated that the digital advertising landscape somewhat knows what ad spam can do to their brand. Many industry leaders are working hard to stop the fraud trends evolving in the sector.
Further, the marketing expert adds that this shouldn’t be a battle, and all businesses can actively combat it by adopting preventative measures rather than becoming victims.
The entire digital ad industry might devolve into a lawless wasteland rife with ad fraud if only a few businesses are battling it. Therefore, it is the obligation of every company running advertisements in the industry to understand how to stop ad fraud.
Keep scrolling through to get a firm grip over ad fraud-fighting tactics.
Two Methods To Defeating Ad Spam
It is not a hidden fact that the marketing industry is trying to find a unique and suitable solution to this perplexing problem– Ad Spam. After talking to the co-founder of RNF Technologies, Faisal Abidi, we learned that ad spam is full of implications that need the power of money and time to better the situation as it is nearly impossible to obliterate it.
Currently, two methods are getting popular for their effectiveness in fighting ad fraud– detection and data analytics. Let’s explore more about them-
Ad Fraud Detection
- Some businesses utilize ad fraud detection software to identify fraudulent clicks across programmatic/display advertising, paid search, and social channels.
- The software can identify bot-generated clicks and impressions on paid advertisements and block them, stopping them from continuing to drain the campaign’s budget.
- Ad fraud detection software relies on identifying patterns in an ad’s impressions, clicks, traffic, IP addresses, or all three data sources that mimic suspicious actions.
- The software analyzes ad clicks to its database, and if it notices an abnormality, it alerts users immediately so that advertisers can review their data.
Data Analytics
- Using data analytics, businesses may identify the causes of fraud.
- Faisal Abidi and his security team at Phonato Studios believe in data analytics as it can give marketers access to various performance measures regarding their marketing efforts, including information about potential customers who interact with their ads and web traffic throughout their online assets.
- This makes it easier for advertisers to spot fraudulent traffic, stop additional harm, and rapidly switch their advertising focus from bad traffic to good traffic.
- Businesses may ensure that genuine target customers see their adverts by verifying their data across various channels to stop insufficient data from contaminating the rest of their data set.
However, seeking expert advice on this subject is another productive and secure course of action for businesses. Due to its lucrative nature to fraudsters, ad spam has also grown into its industry. As a result, its trends also revolve around hiding those red flags in the statistics, making it harder and harder for inexperienced people to identify ad fraud just by looking through statistics.
Key Takeaways
No matter how broad your advertising campaign is, it is difficult to spot errors with the human eye, necessitating automated tools, preferably in real-time. Ad fraud has been a significant problem in the AdTech industry for the previous two years. It is expected to get considerably worse in 2022, driven by the surge in e-commerce during the pandemic.
Companies will want to think about investing in solutions that check their data’s authenticity and ensure that their pay-per-click (PPC), display, and video ad campaigns are as effective as possible.
