The world of digital advertising is an appealing one to fraudsters — back in 2016, the World Federation of Advertisers anticipated that, within a decade, ad fraud and other fake internet traffic schemes would become the second-biggest market for organised crime after the drugs trade. Cut to today — a recent report (by Business of Apps) points out that the total cost of digital advertisement fraud globally in 2022 was $81 billion, which is predicted to increase to $100 billion in 2023. The biggest hit is the APAC region with $75 billion in 2022. India has about a 10% share of total global ad fraud costs. Suffice it to say, the cost remains eye-watering.
Fraudulent advertising has started plaguing the Indian Premier League (IPL) as well. The advertising spends via IPL are projected to be around Rs 6,000 crore this year; out of this approximately Rs 2,000-2,500 crore are expected to be spent on digital platforms. Based on mFilterIt’s observation, advertisers will incur a loss of nearly Rs 300 crore due to ad fraud during the IPL season.
Vinod Kunj, founder and chief creative officer, Thought Blurb, notes that being such a big media event, it is difficult to monitor ads at a granular level and thus the tournament becomes a fertile ground for frauds.
Industry observers identified malicious bots, hidden ads, fake devices, fake accounts and click farms, install hijacking and click injections, and click flooding as some of the main forms of advertising fraud.
Dhiraj Gupta, co-founder and CTO, mFilterIt, says bots are commonly used for activities like click fraud and it has been difficult to detect bot patterns over time as they have become sophisticated. “The bots are used during IPL to inflate the traffic and drain the ad budget of the advertisers. Apart from that, the fraudsters also use disposable numbers/email addresses to create fake accounts. These activities manipulate metrics like sign-ups. This is a major issue among app marketers,” he says.
Organic traffic stealing is another big worry. Fraudsters bid on brand keywords to appear on top when a search is conducted with a brand name. As a result, the advertiser’s organic traffic is redirected to the fraudulent affiliate’s website. This also results in an inflation of the bid prices of the brand’s keyword.
Gupta adds, “Some other techniques during the IPL season are ad stacking (a method where multiple ads are placed one above another in a single advertisement placement), and dom-ain spoofing (the technique of impersonating a premium publisher to avail a good price of their ad inventory by using the brand value of a genuine publisher).”
Well, where there is a safecracker, there is a locksmith.
Siddharth Dabhade, managing director, MiQ India, SAARC, China, advises brands to be educated about these risks and work with agency partners that place their ads in a brand-safe and privacy-compliant digital environment.
“Brands can get 10-20% higher ROAS by working with an advertising partner who understands the realm of brand safety and ad frauds,” he adds.
Gupta of mFilterIt adds that with the help of an ad traffic validation solution, advertisers can get transparency of their ad traffic quality and eliminate invalid sources that can improve the campaign efficiency.
That apart, experts say there is an urgent need for institutions like the ASCI to take up the governance of digital marketing in earnest. Advertisers must also consider working with third-party arbiters like the INS or BARC, which can help to audit ad spending.