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4 Effective Ways to Fight Ad Fraud

With the rising power of the internet and rapid advancements in technology, cybercrime has become a big concern for many. Naturally, cyberattacks are strongly focusing on digital areas that involve the movement of large sums of money. One such area is digital advertising, so ad fraud is something you already might be aware exists.

Essentially, any attempt to defraud the digital advertising field for financial gain can be considered ad fraud. Ad fraud participants use all kinds of methods and strategies to carry out these types of cyberattacks. By using bots or other methods, scammers trick digital ad networks and advertisers into giving them money.

If you’d like to get more information on ad fraud, this article contains ad fraud statistics as well as useful ways of combating ad fraud. Check it out!

Important ad fraud statistics

Before we jump into the possible ways of protecting your business against ad fraud, let’s look at some important ad fraud statistics that have marked the recent period.

Around 28% of global web traffic comes from non-human activity, indicating ad fraud.

Right now, there are several forms of ad fraud. Some of the most prevalent ones include:

  • Incent abuse (20%)
  • Bots/emulators (18%)
  • SDK spoofing (13%)
  • Click spamming (9%)
  • Click injection (8%)

Moreover, $25.8 billion was lost to the top three ad fraud forms – SDK spoofing accounted for 42%, click injection for 30%, and finally, click spam for 27%.

The most vulnerable categories frequently targeted by ad fraud include:

  • Finance;
  • Shopping;
  • Gaming;
  • Social;
  • Travel.

With the increased smartphone use, a staggering 21.3% of iOS app installs and 26.9% of Android app installs are currently fraudulent, and this percentage will increase down the road.

Almost 70% of international brands that spend $1 million/month report a minimum of 20% of their budget lost to digital ad fraud.

Even though some are trying to reduce the impact with machine learning, many predict ad fraud will become the most successful market for organized crime by 2025. It will be worth around $50 billion looking at the current statistics.

Today, China is the most affected country by ad fraud, which will probably stay true for some time in the future. China is estimated to lose around $19 billion to online ad fraud in 2022.

How fraud damages businesses

The whole point of ads is to create marketing campaigns that’ll increase the brand’s success. However, that’s impossible to complete if it’s impossible to measure the success of campaigns due to disparities caused by fraudulent activities.

Marketers are rarely aware they’re affected by ad fraud. Therefore, they collect and analyze campaign insights that aren’t the real representatives of their success. Because of this, the statistics become hugely skewed, and as a result, marketers typically mistarget the upcoming campaigns.

Even if the marketers are aware ad fraud has an impact on their campaigns, it’s not easy to locate where the inconsistency is occurring and how to deal with it.

So, ad fraud affects businesses in both cases. It can cut efficiency and profitability levels across the entire organization.

4 ways to combat ad fraud

Luckily, there are methods businesses can implement to combat ad fraud. Here are our top 4 suggestions.

⦁ Use residential proxies

Residential proxies help companies combat ad fraudsters by equipping them with a variety of organic, unique, geo-located IP addresses. This allows companies to gain access to geo-restricted content and make it challenging for ad fraudsters to detect ad traffic.

As a result, companies using residential proxies can monitor ads from any location without being blocked by ad fraudsters, thus combating this illegal activity anonymously and efficiently. If you’re considering using this powerful tool for ad fraud prevention, check out this popular residential proxies store

⦁ Use tools for detecting ad fraud

Another great resource is to invest in tools designed for detecting ad fraud. The main goal of these tools is to detect and report a digital ad fraud attempt before it has an effect on your budget. Moreover, these tools will also analyze clicks, impressions, and conversions to detect ad fraud attempts as soon as possible.

⦁ Understand different ad fraud approaches

Learning about ad fraud is an essential step towards understanding this type of cybercrime better. By taking the time to educate your marketing team about different ad fraud approaches, you’ll have a better team by your side. That way, the staff members will know what to do if you become a victim of ad fraud.

⦁ Compare visits and clicks

A simple solution is to compare the ad clicks and website visits. As ad fraudsters typically generate fake clicks, it’s easy to detect fraud. If your ad clicks and website visits drastically differ, there’s a high chance some fraudulent activity is happening in your campaign.

Conclusion

Ad fraud is becoming more and more powerful each day. Although it’s extremely challenging not to fall victim to ad fraud attempts, there are several helpful tips and tricks your company can implement and remain protected. Don’t allow ad fraud to affect your business, and find a best-fitting solution today!

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