Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Anti-Fraud Playbook

What to look for in your analytics and reports to find and reduce ad fraud yourself

https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/b2c-marketers-anti-adfraud-playbook

If you’re buying ads through programmatic channels, including through Google and Facebook, chances are that you are affected by ad fraud. This is where ads are shown to bots and not to humans. Because millions of sites can now make ad revenue by using programmatic advertising technology (adtech) platforms, even fake and fraudulent sites can “get in on the con.” Fraudsters set up fake websites, copy and paste some code on the sites, and use bot traffic to create ad impressions out of thin air, no human visitors needed.

As a marketer, you know that if your ads are shown to bots and not to humans, you will not get any business outcomes. So you have to be on the look out for ad fraud and if you find it, you can turn off the domains and apps that are causing it. For example, if your ad is loaded on a fake site, which uses bot traffic, you can see that domain eating up for ad impressions, and turn it off so you don’t waste budget showing ads there any more. Similarly some mobile apps are committing ad fraud too — like the flashlight app, alarm clock app, keyboard app, goat simulator app, etc. all loading tons of ads in the background. Turn those off in your campaigns.

For some more ideas about where to look and what to look for, check the B2C Anti-Fraud Playbook link above.

A few more examples can be found here: Analytics Are Better Than Fraud Detection, Here’s Why, With Examples

Please let me know if you have questions, and let me know your experiences with ad fraud. Together we can solve ad fraud and make digital marketing better.

Photo by Ali Hajian on Unsplash