Ad Fraud: Meaning, Types, and Prevention

Posted on: Jun 5, 2024 | 3 mins | Written by: HDFC ERGO Team

Ad Fraud: Meaning, Types, and Prevention

The world of marketing and advertisements is improving by the day. Professionals recommend digital channels to promote the products or services of a brand. However, the evolution of advertisements has also led to an increase in the way people try to trick the system. People try to trick the system by presenting invalid traffic and incorrect data about impressions. This leads to diverted revenue and losses. Furthermore, the optimizing and scaling activities are also negatively affected. These frauds should be understood and kept in check in order to prevent dangerous consequences. One aspect that has been proven to help companies in such situations is cyber insurance.

What is Ad Fraud?

Ad fraud refers to the activity of individuals or organizations that involve scamming digital advertising networks. Usually, the purpose behind such fraud is financial gain. There are many kinds of techniques employed by these fraudsters, including the use of bots. In simple terms, ad fraud is the action of producing wrong numbers or frequency with which users have clicked an online advertisement. But why do advertisers do this? This will increase their revenue and ensure that the publisher benefits from an advertising fee. It involves the use of bots to generate fake traffic and to click on ads.

Common Types of Ad Fraud

There are numerous kinds of ad fraud, like:

1. Fake App Installations

In this kind of ad fraud, numerous people are employed for installing the applications multiple times. Such teams of people are often found at click farms. Due to their bulk interaction with the app, the numbers will improve.

2. Click Fraud

This refers to the process of targeting PPC ads with the use of bots. Because of this, the number of human clicks is shown to increase on the ad platform. This will make the specific website or post very popular, thereby attracting more payments for ads.

3. Cookie Stuffing

Sometimes, scammers also use cookies to show an increase in the number of impressions. They insert a different site’s cookies into the original one. Moreover, they will place these cookies on a bot to portray that the keyword is receiving better engagement.

4. Ad Stacking

In this kind of ad fraud, individuals use one advertisement (which is visible to the user) to conceal the numerous ads beneath it. Hence, the impressions will also improve for all the hidden ads.

5. Click Spamming or Flooding

Scammers use this kind of fraud to target those using mobile apps and websites. This involves the ad running in the background without the user finding out. Thus, the clicks are conducted without the user's knowledge.

6. Domain Spoofing

With actions like cross-domain embedding, human browsers, or custom browsers, domain spoofing is implemented. In this ad fraud, the fraudster tries to present themselves as a high-value domain.

7. Ad Injection

Under ad injection, the individuals will insert new ads while the user is already interacting with the website. These ads either join or replace the preexisting ones to enhance impressions.

8. Pixel Stuffing

This prevalent kind of advertisement fraud involves adding numerous advertisements in a single pixel frame. As a result, the number of clicks on the ads also increases.

9. Forced Redirect Ads

Sometimes, compromising malware is also presented on the website as a part of a malicious ad. When users click on such ads, they will be redirected to a malware or spyware-containing webpage.

How can you Prevent Advertising Fraud?

There are many effective ways of preventing ad fraud from happening. Firstly, you must integrate fraud detection properties into the system. Furthermore, monitoring traffic and being able to identify between normal and abnormal traffic is essential. You should also keep an eye out for click-to-install time (CTIT) that is too low or too high.

Additionally, using an ad.txt file has also proven to be effective. Of course, professional site testing also helps to keep such fraudsters at bay. Lastly, there are many innovative and effective systems available to prevent advertising fraud. These include bot management systems and anti-malvertising software.

Conclusion

Ad fraud has surfaced as one of the most recurring schemes in the field of digital advertising in the modern world. The tricky thing to manage here is that there are too many kinds of fraud exercised by scamsters. However, with due diligence and insights from experts, combating this problem will be easier.

Advertising fraud may also make you susceptible to cyber attacks. Hence, you must follow experts' recommendations and get cyber insurance for family. With the help of HDFC Ergo, getting support and assistance regarding cyber insurance is easy, whether it is cyber insurance for shopaholic or family.

FAQs

1. What are some common types of ad fraud?

Some of the most common types of ad fraud include Click Spamming, Cookie Stuffing, Fake App Installations, etc.

2. Will ad fraud have negative effects?

Yes. There are numerous adverse effects of ad fraud. These include a reduction in revenue, a decrease in inventory, and a tarnished brand reputation.

3. How does advertising fraud work?

Ad fraud works through invalid traffic or IVT, which is basically a way of tricking systems into believing that an ad has had more impressions and clicks. IVT is of two types:

• General invalid traffic (GIVT)

• Sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT).

Disclaimer The above information is for illustrative purposes only. For more details, please refer to policy wordings and prospectus before concluding the sales.

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