There are times, when you are left wondering the reason behind a popularity of a campaign. And it has nothing to do with storyline or a popular celebrity but perhaps everything to do with ‘click injection’ a rather popular ad-fraud mechanism. Advertising fraud worldwide have grown exponentially within four years between 2018- 2023 to $100 billion from $35 billion, reveals data from market research firm Statista. It is here that companies like TrafficGaurd come to the rescue of brands and platforms.
The company claims to have recorded annualised revenue of $3.55 million (circa) underpinned by new customer contracts and upsell to existing clients. It further posted a 41% growth in annualised revenue from July 01, 2022 and 23% from January 01, 2023. It further claims to have signed new clients PPC and mobile – including MyDeal and Skillz. In an interaction with BrandWagon Online, Himanshu Nagrecha, vice president, India and South Asia, TrafficGuard talked about the increase in ad fraud and the for detection to minimise loss of money. (Edited Excerpts)
As publishers try to find their own answers to ad fraud where does it place companies such as TrafficGaurd?
Google and Facebook are the answer to practically everything in digital, but the challenge with such big legacy tech companies or media publishers as well as with in-house solution is that it only looks at half of the story. This means publishers or platforms end up looking at the conversion data and try to identify whether it is good or bad. Even if the in-house teams of platforms or publishers are able to detect it, it’s practically impossible to prevent it. So, every time a fraud happens, – it is new in nature, and by the time one detects it and try to prevent it, its too late. So, every time advertisers end up playing a catch-up game. That is where a third-party solution provider like TrafficGuard comes into picture.
With a verification company like us, we just don’t detect, we integrate at the very first point from where the traffic or the invalid clicks could come in, which is the publisher, and put a stop there. If the click is invalid, we don’t let it enter the attribution, So, conversions are on a clean source of data.
The size of ad fraud in India is close to about Rs 5,000 crore, and continues to increase. Are brands and publishers doing enough to fight it?
In India, digital advertising comprises nearly 50% of total advertising expenditures. This equates to an annual investment of approximately Rs 51,000 crore dedicated to digital advertising. Within this allocation, projections indicate that around 10% of the budget is squandered due to invalid traffic and ad fraud. This translates to an ad fraud volume of roughly Rs 5, 000 crore in the Indian market.
To be honest, they are doing but whether doing enough or not, is something which is it’s still a path to discovery. Each marketer would like to believe that they are doing enough, but I think the space is evolving. And with the advent of more and more tech players, like TrafficGuard coming into the market, I think the awareness is increasing.
How does TrafficGuard aid brands in combating ad frauds?
TrafficGuard works as a SaaS platform which charges according to different kinds of channels a company targets. Broadly, all the channels can be clubbed into two buckets. One is the PPC channel, where clients are usually buying on Pay-Per-Click kind of model and the other channel is called as an attribution channel and is also popularly known as performance marketing, where clients transact on the basis of the final outcome or the final conversion. So, currently, TrafficGuard has solutions across both these channels. –On Google PPC, we can help the client identify any kind of invalid traffic there in real-time. Attribution is further divided into web traffic and app installs or mobile app users. Google PPC, mobile app user acquisition campaigns, and affiliate scams are among the common channels for ad fraud detected in 2023.
Any recent case studies where TrafficGuard has helped brands combat ad frauds and minimise loss on their digital ad spends?.
From fake clicks and click flooding to bad bots and fake ad impressions, fraudsters may go to any lengths to siphon critical money from your ad budgets. We have closely worked with about t eight to 10 clients in India in combating ad frauds.
We recently did a two weeks detection or a proof of concept (POC) with B2C consumer facing brand. We found out that in just a span of two weeks, we could identify close to about 15-17% of invalid clicks, which lead to an equal amount of invalid installs, which further lead to misattribution, which means they were paying for installs that should have been free to them, almost 4,000 installs are getting misattributed on on a routine basis. If put a monetary value to it, all of it was close to about Rs 65- 70 lakh in a month, which was getting wasted on all this invalid traffic leading to invalid installation leading to misattribution.
Similarly, one of the PPC clients from the gifting space wanted to understand if there still a scope in the cluttered markets. The client wanted to understand a way wherein they can still squeeze on and improve return on ad spend. So, again, we ran a detection for them just to help them understand what is the quantum of the fraud and threats. Again, in just a span of about four weeks, it could bring their invalid traffic almost down by 66%, as soon as they move to prevention.
What is the mechanism followed to identify ad frauds and what technology is adopted by TrafficGuard to combat various ad frauds?
We use a lot of complex machine learning, behavioral analysis, big data to prevent ad frauds in real-time. In terms of incoming traffic or where the clicks are coming from, we also analyse the conversion not just looking at conversion but also looking at a lot of factors that characterise those conversions. For instance, the source, the IP the traffic has come from, the device, the operating system, time of the day and more. And then we look at the combination of this data, try to enrich this data with the already data set, which the company has available with it. Based on these data points, we help advertisers identify or match with whether the source of the traffic was valid or not, or the conversion that eventually happened is valid.
Everything happens in real-time. So, the tech stack is multi-layer. First, looking at the source of the traffic, then looking at the conversion, then trying to enrich the data with the data sets that are already existing, and then eventually making a call on the traffic validity or advantage.
What has been the rise of ad fraud in mobile ?
Mobile ad frauds revolves around acquiring users for the mobile app. This stems from the fact that once a brand gains a certain number of app downloads, there’s a heightened connection with users. This connection is stronger due to users willingly opting in and providing information upon downloading the app. Consequently, brands gain more insights into their consumers. This leads to a situation where brands compete to entice users to download their apps. This competitive drive is intensified by the app’s ranking on the Play Store. Higher rankings attract more organic downloads, but to rapidly achieve high numbers, brands turn to third-party affiliates and ad networks. These entities help expand their user base quickly and cost-effectively. However, this pursuit of rapid growth opens the door to fraud. Ad networks recognise the demand for quick results and attempt to deliver high volumes of downloads in a short time, often beyond organic feasibility. This is where ad fraud becomes prevalent. The imbalance between high demand and not enough immediate supply, combined with time pressure, creates an environment conducive to ad fraud. Despite the continuous growth of the mobile app market, even established entities seek ongoing expansion and customer acquisition, perpetuating this phenomenon.