Ad fraud is a serious threat to the online advertising industry, costing advertisers billions of dollars every year. It involves malicious actors using various solutions to generate fake impressions, clicks, or conversions on digital ads, often with the help of bots, malware, or compromised devices. fraud protection not merely wastes your allowance, but also damages your reputation, performance, and analytics. How will you protect your campaigns from ad fraud and ensure that you are reaching real and relevant audiences? Here are some best practices to follow.
Know the common types of ad fraud
To stop and detect ad fraud, it's important to comprehend the various forms it may take. Impression fraud, for example, involves inflating how many times an offer is displayed through bots, fake websites, or hidden pixels. Click fraud happens when fake clicks are generated on an offer with the help of bots, click farms, or malware. Conversion fraud is when fraudsters create fake actions or events triggered by an offer, such as for instance sign-ups, downloads, or purchases, using bots, stolen identities, or cookie stuffing. Domain spoofing involves disguising low-quality or fraudulent websites as premium ones to trick advertisers into bidding on their inventory. Lastly, ad injection occurs when unwanted or unauthorized ads are inserted into legitimate websites using browser extensions, malware, or network proxies.
Choose reputable and transparent partners
One of the best ways to prevent ad fraud is to utilize trustworthy and reliable partners, such as for instance ad networks, publishers, platforms, and vendors. Before you decide on somebody, do some research and check their credentials, reputation, and reviews. Ask them about their policies, procedures, and tools for preventing and detecting ad fraud. Search for partners which can be certified by industry standards, including the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), or the Media Rating Council (MRC). Also, try to find partners offering clear and detailed reporting, and allow you to audit and verify their data.
Use anti-fraud tools and solutions
Combatting ad fraud can be achieved through the utilization of technology and data. There are many tools and solutions available that could help monitor, measure, and optimize campaigns, in addition to flag any suspicious or fraudulent activity. Ad verification is a procedure that verifies the delivery of ads to the right place, at the right time, and to the right audience. Ad fraud detection detects and identifies any fraudulent or invalid traffic, impressions, clicks, or conversions on ads. Ad fraud prevention reduces the danger of ad fraud through techniques such as for instance whitelisting, blacklisting, frequency capping, geo-targeting, or device fingerprinting.
Educate yourself and your team
Keeping yourself and your team informed on the latest trends, threats, and solutions in the online advertising industry is a key best practice for preventing and detecting ad fraud. Ad fraud is an energetic and evolving problem, so it's important to keep in front of the curve and adapt your strategies. You can inform yourself and your team by reading blogs, newsletters, reports, and case studies from reputable sources. Additionally, attending webinars, workshops, conferences, and events linked to ad fraud protection can be beneficial. Joining forums, communities, and networks of peers and professionals who share their insights and experiences can also be helpful. Asking questions, seeking feedback, and sharing best practices together with your partners and vendors is an effective way to keep informed.
Here's what else to consider
This is a space to generally share examples, stories, or insights that don't match the previous sections. What else would you like to include?
