To put it simply, Ad Stacking means stacking up adverts on top of each other. Ad Stacking is a very common mobile ad fraud practice wherein, multiple ads are stacked beneath one another in a single ad placement on mobile apps or websites for generating fake impressions. Only the top ad is displayed to the user/visitor. However, every ad in the stack receives a click or impression, because of its placement. As a result, advertisers are forced to pay for fraudulent impressions or clicks which are not intently clicked by the visitor. Ad stacking is among the most widespread types of ad fraud. Moreover, Ad stacking is most commonly associated with mobile ads. It accounts for 20% of global ad spending, stealing hard earned money of marketers and businesses of all kinds. That is because it is more prevalent in click-based campaigns and businesses spend a huge section of their budgets on Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost per Thousand (CPM) campaigns. But how does this work exactly? How can fraudsters defraud big corporations or fool regular internet users? Let's find out How Does Ad Stacking Work? Ad stacking is just what it sounds like, stacking ads on top of each other. On a normal course of action, it would look like a pile of sheets. However, digital marketing and the internet work differently. Herein, by stacking, fraudsters actually hide several ads beneath the main ad, and the users can only see the advert at the top. When a user clicks or watches the top ad, the other stacked ads also get clicks or impressions and are thus recorded for the same. Ultimately, advertisers are paying for clicks and impressions which was not intended by the user, but somehow have a record of click or impression. This way fraudsters steal ad budgets from advertisers and marketers and increase ad revenue for publishers who are also engaged in the scheme by stacking advertising. On a website or any fraudulent platform, the publisher will summons ads and stacks them into a single ad space instead of displaying one ad per ad unit. Only one ad will be shown to the user, with the remaining ads loaded at zero or near-zero opacity, leaving them invisible to the user. A click on one ad unit resulted in a click on all of them. These adverts are never seen by the user, yet advertisers pay for these fake impressions or clicks since they trigger an ad impression. This way, fraudsters make money from multiple channels by generating just one click. With additional ad stacks, clicks, and impressions, the threat escalates tenfold. The impact of Ad Stacking As previously stated, Ad Stacking is a cause of great concern for marketers. Moreover, according to research from 2018, Ad Stacking, together with Click Spam, amounts to 27% of total ad fraud, trailing only App Install Farms (42%) and Click Injection (30%). And just like other forms of mobile ad fraud, Ad stacking also lead to wasted ad spending and biased campaign statistics for marketers. Advertisers and Marketers might get the desired traffic and impression from their ad campaigns. But in reality, most of those data would be untrustworthy and the amount spent on such would be a waste. Ad stacking is mostly used when advertising is paid on an impression-based or click-based model. Brands often pay ad networks on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis, but their budgets are depleted because of fake clicks and impressions. By layering ads on top of each other, advertisers waste money, resulting in a low return on ad spend (ROAS). In addition, this will also have adverse effects on a company's marketing strategies. Any marketer who isn't aware of such malicious practices will believe in the misleading reports and poor performance results. Ultimately, this will push firms to increase their advertising spending, resulting in more money for scammers and fraudsters. Not only marketers, but publishers can also fall victim to Ad stacking. It can potentially harm the reputation and credibility of publishers who are unaware of the false ads they are displaying. Finally, the user or the visitor might not suffer any monetary losses, but they are nevertheless flooded with multiple ads on their browser. How to prevent Ad Stacking? Every day, fraudsters are billing multiple advertisers for single clicks and are simply draining large amounts of advertisers' money. But this functionality can also aid in the detection of fraudulent activities. Publishers can detect numerous impressions or clicks from a single user at the same timestamp, indicating that many ads were piled on top of each other. It is the publisher’s obligation to report these malicious practices on their platform From an advertiser’s perspective, brands must regularly check their campaign performance and identify if the same user or device is clicking on several adverts with the same timestamp. Monitoring the conversion rates of campaigns on a regular basis will help detect anomalies. A high number of impressions combined with a low conversion rate is usually a sign of ad stacking. Further, there are also cybersecurity software and tools that employs advanced algorithms to detect and prevent fraudulent behaviour. These were a few techniques to figure out if you are targeted by ad stacking. When Ad stacking occurs, these can help identify it. In Conclusion The digital ad space has become a playground for cybercriminals. Even capable mobile gadgets are also subjected to cyberattacks. Fraudsters are defrauding marketers, networks, and even users, all at once. They constantly find a way to steal money when marketers increase their investments in digital advertising. Thus it is the responsibility of brands to take proactive and preventative measures to ensure that mobile ad fraud does not impact their operations.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are believed to be revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology. Not only that but they are intended to help humanity to solve serious issues on multiple avenues. Considering Artificial Intelligence is a tool, it is currently used for automating key operations, limiting human intervention, and accelerating major technical processes. However, the application of Artificial Intelligence depends on the individual in charge of it. The technology is intended to aid human beings with their objectives, but whether it is used for the right or bad motives remains to be seen. As a result, Artificial Intelligence is often categorised as either good or bad. Ad Fraud is plaguing the online advertisement business Ever since we got our hands on the internet, every entity wants to be a part of this universe. Whether it is the general public or major businesses, even pet animals have their social account with followers more than any ordinary individual. We have progressed to the point where we can currently discover information about almost everything on the internet, with the exception of a few bad elements (more on that later). As a result, businesses, since the onset of the internet, have tried their best to reach out to the online community, spending millions to market their brand. They engage in digital marketing practices and many businesses have made a fortune serving their audiences. At the same time, over the last two decades, they have been subjected to multiple cyber attacks and ad fraud, which have caused serious disruptions in their operations. Ad Fraud is an ever-growing concern for Marketers worldwide, and the much-discussed Artificial Intelligence, Bad AI to be more specific, is at the bottom of it. “Good AI” is possible but “good human” is still unsound. How do Cybercriminals use Artificial Intelligence to scam marketers? As discussed earlier, Artificial intelligence is used to automate a technical process on its own, without the need for human inputs. Thus, fraudsters use AI for malicious purposes and this has been reported in terms of hacking, stealing confidential information, or distorting the marketing budgets of brands. Cybercriminals, fraudsters, and others engaging in illicit activity frequently create bad bots and use them to harm businesses. A malicious bot is programmed to carry out harmful activities and thus constitutes a bad AI. However, to get in-depth into why AI is bad for marketers, we first need to understand good AI and bad AI, and what makes them different. Artificial Intelligence: The Good Aspect Popular movies and television media have presented a very debatable description of Artificial Intelligence. To some extent, they might be true, while in most instances, they are simply exaggerated versions of AI. There have been several initiatives to use AI in multiple domains, with an objective to assist in the better functioning of crucial projects. AI-assisted solutions are only going to make things simpler for us. It is worth noting that Artificial Intelligence has progressed significantly in the right direction and in this section, we will discuss some of its positive influences. Presented with a large set of data, AI can perform predictive analysis and help in decision making. Recently, we have seen in healthcare, Machine Learning and Image Recognition are used for cancer detection. This has been critical in forecasting severe diseases and contributed to saving human lives. Moreover, they have also been designed to carry out automated tasks, based on user behaviour and data. In online marketing itself, advertisers and publishers employ the technology for their marketing goals. AI is frequently used in marketing campaigns where speed is critical. Understanding the demographic, user behaviour, and preferences, it makes automated decisions that drastically benefit the campaigns. Needless to say, Artificial Intelligence is making its way and is making headlines for all the right reasons. We are yet to see the full potential of a man-made brain, and it will be in everyone's best interest if it becomes the ideal companion for humanity. The Bad AI Coming to the section which pop culture believes is the true nature of Artificial Intelligence. The Bad AI. Yes, it exists. But the question is, who is to be labelled as bad? Does the AI make the decision, or the person controlling it? Artificial intelligence (AI) is programmed to think and act like humans, giving them human-like characteristics like learning and problem-solving. A bad AI will perform all sorts of malicious actions, just like any fraudsters would do. And that is because it is the fraudster who wants them to. They might have been trained to perform questionable actions, but at the end of the day, they are coded by an instructor to do so. Ad Fraud has been on the rise and when we examined the problem more closely, we discovered that it is the result of bad AI doing the dirty work for cybercriminals. Online Ad Fraud like click spamming, click framing, domain spoofing, ad injection, and so on, have been a result of bad bots. Bots in themselves are just code instructed to perform any simple task such as repetitive operations or complex tasks like identifying and imitating human behaviour. But it is their intent that makes them good or bad. Bots are engineered to flood ad campaigns, act like real audiences, produce clicks, hijack real clicks, and whatnot. As a result, this creates an impression that bot traffic is real. Their actions are real. Ultimately, just fooling the marketers before they even realise it. It is expected that digital ad fraud will cost brands $44 billion in 2022. Unfortunately, malicious bots are becoming more sophisticated and thus making it difficult for businesses to combat this issue. With the advancements in Machine Learning, a rising number of bots are imitating human behaviour and fooling the most advanced fraud detection technology. “Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilisation” - Stephen Hawking In Conclusion The industry, very recently, has started to address the impact of ad fraud. The potential for irreparable damage to a company's finances and reputation resulting from fraudulent attacks. Therefore, we have seen crucial steps toward the fight against fraudulent practices. It is now the responsibility of a good AI to counter the effects of a bad AI. Machine Learning has emerged as a potential solution, already making significant progress in combating ad fraud. It can be useful in detecting potential fraudulent trends and helping reject bad traffic. However, there is a long way to go. But witnessing such steps in this direction suggests that we can soon lessen the impact of these bad elements in such a promising technology.

In recent years, mobile phones have come a long way. Smartphones have become a companion of our daily lives, with most of our activities centered on them. The widespread usage of mobile devices has had an impact on the advertising industry, with businesses spending money to reach out to mobile phone users. Mobile search results account for 65 percent of clicks on paid search results. While marketers keep pumping money into mobile advertising, there is a negative aspect to it. There are cyber criminals who engage in mobile ad fraud to benefit from this market. Advertisers and marketers work hard to generate clicks and impressions, and they often get the desired results through various campaigns. However, in a majority of cases, these clicks and impressions do not translate into actual conversions. Well, this is because mobile ad fraud, and click spamming in particular, is impacting their marketing efforts and business. Click spamming has long been a source of concern for mobile app advertisers, and this type of click fraud can be incredibly costly for advertisers. It can go unnoticed by ad networks for extended periods of time. Let's understand what is Click Spamming and how it works. What is Click Spamming? Click spamming, also known as click flooding, is a type of mobile ad fraud in which fraudsters can produce fake clicks through infected mobile apps or websites. Here, the mobile user, or the owner is unaware that a malicious app has been installed on their device. The app would then spam clicks on advertisements on the smartphone, giving the impression that the ad has had a lot of traffic. The click generated by click spam is non-human traffic, more specifically, BOT traffic, and thus would not result in any real transaction. Simply a waste of money on fake bot clicks. Click flooding is used to generate fake clicks on advertisements, installs or downloads, or even impressions, visits, or views on websites. These clicks can operate when a program is operating in the background and often imitate actual human behaviour to trick marketers. Advertisers may see clicks or impressions as beneficial, but in reality, they are distorted statistics. How does click spamming work? The initial stage of this operation starts with the user when he or she might download suspicious software. These infected apps are typically downloaded outside of the Google Play Store or the iOS App Store. It is understandable when users download these since the app does not look suspicious, and more importantly, its fraudulent activity operates in the background. The app contains a code that generates a large number of clicks (spam clicking) on adverts. All ad clicks are allocated to the click spammer, and if there is an ad click, an unrelated app store download, or an in-app purchase, the spammer gets paid. As a result, it makes a platform appear more effective than they are and it defrauds marketers of their ad spend. Spammers invest in click spamming operations because it is a lucrative business, with the fraudster receiving their cut on ad clicks or in-app purchases. The higher the number of undetected spam clicks, the greater the prize money. However, for the advertiser, it might imply that there is a lot of activity on their ads, but there isn’t. Their ads are filled with a large number of fake clicks before any form of conversion. In long term, it not only affects their ad spending but their marketing campaigns and strategies as well. Who Is Affected By Click Spamming Fraud? Click Spamming fraud affects almost every player in the advertising industry, even if the consequences vary. It marginally affects the users but has a significant financial impact if you are a network, publisher, or advertising. Marketers and Advertisers Click spamming can have a significant impact on the marketing spending of any business. Advertisers are paying for clicks and spammers are doing their bit to flood their ads with clicks, well fake clicks. Many advertisers use the pay-per-click (PPC) model, and each false ad click is stealing their money, thus affecting their company's revenue. In addition, this will also have a negative impact on their future marketing efforts. The inaccurate results, the inability to distinguish between real or fake clicks, and the dependence on fraudulent reports mean poor decision-making by the marketers. Networks and Publishers Publishers on the other hand are the one who places adverts on different platforms, including mobile devices, for advertisers. And thus, they are the ones who should get paid for any activity on the ads, be it click, installs, or visits. It is their money that is being stolen from them because a code takes the credit from them, and the money into the pocket of the fraudsters. Users The mobile phone user might not face any monetary losses, however, they are also affected by this mobile ad fraud. A malicious app is secretly operating on their mobile devices, and this always poses a threat to their confidential files. They can also experience performance issues on their devices due to these malicious apps. How To Detect and Prevent Click Spamming Mobile Ad Fraud? Examine your traffic and conversions Keeping a close watch on your traffic source can assist you in identifying click spamming. These invalid traffic are frequently caused by a large volume of traffic in a short period of time. However, they never result in any real conversions. Sudden increases in traffic, but only a few conversions can indicate fraudulent click activity. Going deeper into the source of poor traffic can help in eliminating click spamming attacks. Validation of Apps As discussed, malicious code can enter into a user's device through malicious apps only. It is thus the responsibility of the publishers as well as the marketers not to associate with such applications. Always look out for the validity of the app on app stores and it is also possible to ensure if the code within an app is not harmful or not. Combat Mobile Ad Fraud by Being Proactive Ad Fraud detection requires special expertise. Fraudsters are only getting smarter and bots are progressing to the point where they can imitate a real human user. Thus it becomes imperative to switch to anti-fraud solutions that are specifically engineered to prevent your campaigns and ad spending from such frauds. Com Olho’s solution can help enterprises prevent multiple forms of ad fraud before they have the chance to steamroll their campaigns and bleed their budgets dry. Find out more about how Com Olho can help protect your advertising campaigns by scheduling a free demo. In Conclusion Digitalisation has taken over the advertisement sector. Resultantly, marketers rely on digital marketing to reach out to their audiences in cyberspace. A platform that is filled with scammers. When marketers boost their investments in digital advertising, scammers always find a way to profit. As a digital advertiser or publisher, you should be aware of these mobile ad fraud practices and their impact on your marketing efforts. Take proactive and preventative actions to ensure that click fraud like click spamming is recognised and stopped as soon as possible.

Throughout my professional journey, I have always worked as a content creator and a writer. I love creating valuable content and have always been passionate about presenting my thoughts in a medium that can resonate with the readers. Although I have produced a number of insightful articles for several entities, I often lacked actual engagement with my audience. My previous position confined me to a role where my contribution was limited to content creation with minimal participation in strategic discussion. One can build a successful campaign if and only they can learn how their target audiences feel about their efforts and what they expect from them in the future. In my quest to make a meaningful impact, I set out to look for new responsibilities and challenges. I wish to work in a capability wherein my creativity can be further supported by the flexibility to be at the forefront of crucial projects. I was elated when the team at Com Olho recognised my talent and saw my potential to be an assistant to the marketing team. I joined Com Olho as a Senior Associate of Marketing, with my role focused on ensuring the brand's presence in the industry. At the same time, I was looking forward to working with a young and promising team. Working in a small team meant I was set for a demanding yet rewarding experience. And I can safely state that it was a true start-up experience that I could have imagined. I started with my regular duties, gaining efficiency on the marketing assignments while utilising all the resources provided by the company. I had only been in this position for a few days when I was handed bigger responsibility. I was soon attending client meetings, making proposals for future prospects, and was also given the opportunity to interact with our investors and founding members. They trusted me and included me in important organisational decisions. You know, like which beverage should be on our menu! Very important. All of this made me feel like I belonged to this organisation and that I was an integral part of the team. At Com Olho, I can certainly see my growth accelerating and I am confident that this company is ideally suited for me at this point in my career. Working in a tech firm is all new to me. But in spite of all the challenges ahead, I know that the team at Com Olho will always support me. In addition, the company gives me the platform to bring out the best in me. So far, this journey has been an amazing learning opportunity and I cannot wait to explore more in the future. Connect with me on LinkedIn : Link

To understand how to detect ad fraud, you need to understand how it started. The History of Ad Fraud When online ads were first introduced, they truly transformed the way businesses can market their products. Placing your ad on an online website, attracting visitors with your ad, and successfully completing an online transaction is still a reality in today's world. And this has been a prevalent practice since the first digital ad was placed on the internet. However, spending millions of dollars on various marketing campaigns online will also attract a large number of fraudsters who are looking to make a quick profit. While businesses were celebrating their sales resulting from online ads, at the same time, they were putting huge sums of money in the clutches of fraudsters. Advertisement frauds and cybercrime are plaguing the digital ecosystem at large. Bots account for the majority of clicks in most digital ad campaigns these days, fuelled by a network of bots rather than genuine humans. As a result, businesses are spending their money on clicks that are not genuine. But how did we arrive here? How could a brilliant money-making idea result in losses for businesses? Why are online ads more promising avenues for fraudsters but not marketers? To understand why ad fraud is a growing concern and why marketers must be vigilant in addressing it, you must first understand how it all started. It is critical to examine the history of Ad Fraud and how it cost advertisers throughout its history. Introduction to Online Advertising When digital advertisement started, brands used to place paid banner advertisements and sponsored articles on the internet. In fact, the first even digital banner appeared on the AT&T-owned website HotWired.com in 1994. Those campaigns were based on a CTR model, with extremely effective results in the initial periods. Paid ads created a sensation among prominent internet companies, and Pay per Click became a thing. Goto.com was a search engine that promised to help businesses rank high in search results. Of course, this comes at the price of charging them for the same. Soon after, companies such as Google and Yahoo followed and established their own search engine to enter the digital marketing business. When pay per click was launched, publishers were only charged when a site visitor clicked on their ad. This was groundbreaking at the time, yet it also provided a golden opportunity for fraudsters. The First Impact of Digital Ad Fraud Just when pay-per-click (PPC) was gaining popularity in the dot-com era, the first impact of ad fraud was felt during the same period. There have been numerous reports of sophisticated internet ad fraud attempts. As a result, there were growing concerns about these attacks, which could endanger PPC's sustainability. At that time, there were limited methods to combat the possibility of these frauds, and this has become a lucrative business for fraudsters. The truth is, that marketers and advertisers spend money on advertisements in order to drive visitors to their company. However, ad campaigns can produce the desired traffic and outcome and are yet labelled a failure. Why! Well, it was discovered that most of the visitors that come to their websites aren't real people. They are bots instead. This became a standard procedure for internet scammers to take advantage of the click campaign's feature and make a profit for themselves. Despite various initiatives to fight digital ad fraud and click fraud on the internet, the business continues to lose billions of dollars every year. In fact, recent estimates put the total amount of money lost last year due to ad fraud at $59 billion. And all indicators point to an annual increase in digital frauds. The Evolution of Internet Bots Internet bots are merely software programs that run on computers and mostly cyberattack has something to do with bots at its core. Internet bots can perform automated tasks and cybercriminals frequently use these bots to perform illegal actions such as stealing data, hacking accounts, etc. While the first generation of bots mostly behaved like bots, we can see modern bots often hiding themselves pretending to mimic actual human beings. This, as a result, makes it difficult to track them, and at the same time, equally important to combat them at the earliest. Businesses need to learn how to spot fake traffic. Let's look at some of the major fraud attacks that disrupt the digital marketing channels on the internet, and the role of bots in committing those ad frauds. Attack of the bots Bots are developed such that they can mimic an actual user and could thus befool anyone, giving the impression of an actual visitor. The usage of bots has definitely become an issue on the internet and they accounted for around half of all web traffic. Bots started to appear in all types of internet advertising platforms and campaigns, resultantly draining money from valid sources, and putting it in the pocket of fraudsters. Methbot (2015-2017) Methbot was dubbed one of the largest ad fraud schemes ever formed, costing businesses half a million dollars each day. It is believed that the attack was active between 2015 and 2017. The bot was delivering 3-5 billion false bids and clicks each day. In this, fraudsters produced fake copies of popular websites with URLs that looked identical and placed video advertising on these fake websites. This was followed by a network of bots visiting these websites, and clicking on ads to inflate the prices. Resultantly, this fooled the advertisers by displaying exceptional reports, which in reality were irrelevant. At its peak, Methbot was paying its operators between three and five million dollars per day for losses to the ad business. Advertisers lost an estimate of $16.4 billion to digital ad fraud in 2017. Industry response to rising ad fraud This acted as a wake-up call for advertisers to tackle the issue seriously. Many organisations and top executives have expressed their concerns while laying out their agenda on how to combat those. Companies like Procter & Gamble announced in 2017, that they will be cutting their ad spending by $200 in order to minimise the impact due to fraud. Moreover, other major organisations including Unilever stated their intention to combat these frauds. In 2017, search engine giant, Google officially recognised the issue of ad fraud and started processing refunds to advertisers, who had been victims of malicious practices on their platform. Furthermore, Google has started issuing guidelines to limit the reach of bots. However, these are only the first steps in a conflict against scammers, who are always developing new tools and strategies to defraud businesses. Fight against Modern Sophisticated Bots Recent technological advancements have also resulted in more sophisticated programs and intelligent bots capable of imitating real-life human behaviour. For fraudsters, this is becoming a much easier operation, leaving little room for detection. Because of advanced bots, detection methods based on traditional methodology are basically obsolete. As a result, new techniques and methodologies are required to overcome the increased threat to cybersecurity. What’s Next? Since its origin, several organisations and networks, including major players in marketing have been at the center of the ad fraud debate. Advertisers are still processing methods to fight the issue, which is unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. Furthermore, ad fraud costs genuine businesses billions of dollars each year. There has been increasing ad fraud in sponsored search and paid social, mobile apps, affiliate marketing, and so on. Brands and marketers are now competing in a digital field that is vastly inflated because of the presence of these malevolent variables on the internet. Thus, they need to be extremely cautious when deciding their digital advertising budget. It is critical to examine your data thoroughly; and ensure that your efforts are yielding genuine results, not simply vanity numbers.

According to Elon Musk, Parag Agarwal, the CEO of Twitter, has publicly refused to present proof that Twitter has fewer than 5% of accounts that are fake. Hence, CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter, for approximately $ 44 Billion, might not see the light of the day due to massive mismatch between Twitter’s total and real user’s database. In fact, Twitter earlier this year also admitted that it had been overestimating its user base by 1.9 Million users every quarter for the previous three years. The platform in March 2019, launched a feature that allowed people to link multiple accounts together in order to conveniently switch between accounts. However, at that time an error was made at the time, such that actions taken in the primary account resulted in all linked accounts being counted as mDAU (Monetizable daily active users). This once again has drawn attention to the prevalence of bots and fake accounts on social media platforms. This now raises a bigger question – Are Twitter and other social media platforms as transparent as they are supposed to be? The answer is crucial since many enterprises and brands are spending 30-40 percent of their digital ad spending on social media and influencer marketing, unaware that a significant amount of their social media base could be fake. What exactly is a bot? To measure the prevalence of fake accounts and bots on Twitter, a clear definition of them is necessary. Fake accounts are those that impersonate people. Bots, on the other hand, are accounts that are partially controlled by software and can automatically post content or carry out simple interactions, like retweeting. Bots are meant to either skew enterprises’s advertising matrices or to mix with existing human traffic to increase financial gain for ad fraudsters. Bots can be used to increase impression, click and engagement matrices and are often mixed with traffic that is either organically hijacked or hijacked via last click attribution. If you are a website owner, it becomes your duty to provide such content to your audience which your website visitors and advertisers can trust upon. After all, advertisers and readers are like the two wheels of the bicycle of a website’s bottom line because they help us in generating revenue over our content. And, Invalid Traffic (IVT) or bots can majorly affect your relationship with your audience. Importance of bot measurement Bots and fake accounts are a known growing evil in the digital ecosystem becoming more sophisticated in today's world of emerging AI and ML technologies, portraying real and human-like persona. Automated bots can generate massive volumes of conversation, chats and trolls on social media platforms. While fake bots/ accounts may appear as an easy and simple way to gain followers and promote your brand, they can actually dilute your brand’s image and credibility. Bots can reduce engagement and lead to higher customer acquisition costs. Consider a campaign where the marketers spend money on targeting and retargeting such bots. While the digital medium is becoming the most important medium for advertisers, accuracy still exists as a challenge across social media platforms and marketers should not judge performance and effectiveness solely based on these platforms. What is the industry's strategy for dealing with bots? The majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from selling ad space on its platform to global advertisers. And to attract advertisers, it requires a huge and growing user base. In 2021, Twitter generated more than $4.5 billion in advertising, up from $77 million a decade ago. Leading car and other significant brands are partnering with Twitter for marketing campaigns and product launches. Bots and fake accounts exist on all social media platforms and it is an open secret to all advertisers. Marketers now wonder if the controversy will have an impact on their enterprises and ad revenue. Many advertisers employ bots for promotional activities in order to push for organic communication. However, many of them are consciously making decisions to not use such bots, releasing it will affect the brand in the longer run. Customer lifetime value is becoming the key focus for the enterprises, and they will have to look beyond the campaign numbers. Enterprises do realise how damaging bot traffic can be to their digital advertising strategy. Bot traffic leads to businesses wasting money on fraudulent ad clicks that will not generate any revenue. With distorted numbers that can be terrible for enterprises, it's critical to understand how to identify bot traffic and protect your digital campaign from it in the most effective way possible. Advertisers who wish to drive performance via social media won’t be affected right away. However, enterprises and brands may want to decrease their budgets or pull out until all of this gets cleared. There may not be an immediate impact, but in the longer run, revenue will get affected when the response of the ad spend won’t come out as expected.

Cybercrime and cyber threats do not have a very long or illustrious history. In fact, it just came into the picture when the internet was booming. Despite its novelty, its severity cannot be understated. Cybersecurity experts predict that global cybercrimes are expected to rise and could result in $10.5 trillion losses annually by 2025. As a result, there has been a necessity for more comprehensive and organised cybersecurity measures to prevent rising crimes on the internet. Furthermore, various industries in India, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID outbreak, are experiencing massive engagement of audiences and customers through digital means. Resultantly, it makes them more and more vulnerable to digital frauds and attacks. An Overview: Digital Ad Fraud Cybercrime isn't confined to banking or financial frauds only, that defraud customers of their hard-earned money. Instead, fraudsters are becoming more inventive, developing new malicious ways to steal money from marketers and major brands as well. Digital Marketing was envisioned as the future of marketing, predicted to overtake the traditional methods, because of its immense potential. However, it became a hub for scammers looking to deceive marketers and brands. In 2021, $59 billion were reported in loss, due to digital ad frauds. Networks of malicious bots are costing brands every day and this is happening at an alarming rate. Enterprises have started spending more and more on digital advertising, which has also piqued the interest of criminals looking to make quick money. The more money an enterprise spends on advertising, the more it stands to lose due to digital ad fraud. Fraudsters tend to use fraudulent practices such as Click Injection, Ad Stacking, Domain Spoofing, etc to defraud marketers. As a result, ad fraud detection has become an essential step in ensuring the safety of brands and the interests of their customers. Importance of Ad Fraud Detection Like any other cybercriminal activity, digital ad frauds are also relatively new. Thus its modern roots make it challenging to combat such frauds. In most cases, marketers are uninformed or unaware of the fact that they have been scammed. Thus, it is more important than ever to fight such malicious activities. Most ad fraud affects the advertising budget of an organisation without producing results. These ad frauds claim credit for coincidental site visits or generate fake clicks and impressions, which results in wastage of ad spending of marketers. Eventually, this will have a negative impact on the marketing strategies of the enterprises and wasted efforts. In addition, it can also do reputational damage to brands, when associated with inappropriate or objectionable content. When a brand is a victim of ad fraud for an extended period of time, it can significantly lose its potential customers. Heading towards the good part, it is safe to say that the Indian startup ecosystem is fortunate to have some of the most talented and committed individuals who are determined to tackle these problems. Many of these young entrepreneurs have recognised the importance of cybersecurity, especially in this ever-growing digital space. A recent article published by YourStory details the path and goals of six Indian cybersecurity startups that are redefining the digital security landscape. We, at Com Olho, are proud to be able to share this platform and convey our goals and aspirations; to remove digital ad fraud from our digital landscape. All enterprises, large and small, should understand the importance of digital security. With the rise in cyberattacks, Com Olho has realised the significance of cybersecurity solutions and is committed to assisting brands and marketers to safeguard their interests. Com Olho takes pride in actively contributing to the advancement of India's cybersecurity business and is determined to add value to this ever-growing industry. We are a Gurugram-based cyber security startup that uses patented technology for non-rule-based digital ad fraud detection. In Conclusion Every organisation must protect itself from the costs of ad fraud and they must detect it early and put a stop to it as soon as possible. Com Olho, in this aspect, has always helped brands and is on a mission to assist Enterprises and the Government to create a Digital Safe India.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the industry saw an increase in mobile advertising. According to a recent report, the total ad spend in India is estimated to cross INR 1 Lakh Crore mark in 2022. With a 45 percent share of the entire ad pie, digital is destined to overtake TV as the most popular advertising medium. The total estimated mobile ad spends from the total share of digital ad spend is projected to be greater than 60% in 2022, valuing it at INR 29,000 Crore. Digital spending is only going to increase. As a result, passionate marketers have the perfect opportunity to innovate and deliver the best ROI. However, they got to overcome a significant challenge in the process – Mobile Ad Fraud. Mobile Ad Fraud is a subset of ad fraud plaguing mobile based performance campaigns. It is a collective term used to describe a combination of tactics used to stop digital ads from being delivered to the audiences or spaces for which they were intended. One such tactic syphoning off enterprise ad spend dollars is Click Injection. What is Click Injection? As a marketer who is handling user acquisition, click injection is perhaps the most common fraud that you experience, regardless of if you have figured it out yet or not. Click Injection, a sophisticated form of click spamming, is a commonly used ad fraud method that steals organic and good traffic from other sources. Click Injection will use an app located on the user’s device which informs the fraudsters when a new app is installed, triggering a click before installation is completed, enabling fraudsters to take credit for the install. As a result, the attributes are manipulated and you will be paying the wrong media source instead of the actual (and deserving) source. Click Injection exploits the existing drawbacks of last click attribution model, and injects click just before the lead is submitted or an install is completed. How Does Click Injection Work? Click injection is a type of ad fraud technique that aims to win the last-click attribution in CPI campaigns affecting millions of devices. Fraudsters inject a click when an app is downloaded by a user on their device just before the install is completed. Publishers are usually charged a fixed fee when an app is installed, but when click injection is performed, fraudsters receive the financial credit for the app install. Fraudsters also utilise bots or bot networks to click on multiple ads at the same time. Here is how click injection works: Users may unintentionally install the malicious app that performs non-suspicious activities, like auto-changing wallpapers, flashlight, cat-voicing, etc., and it appears harmless to them. They can even make their way to mobile devices without the user’s knowledge. These apps have the ability to inject a click to run another application. The malicious app installed in the phone keeps performing its unsuspicious action until the user begins to download a new app, and the first malicious app contains code that alerts it of this new installation. Fraudsters inject a fake click to represent as the source of app install, as well as also inject the click to run the application. In the advertising industry that works on last click attribution, advertisers pay mostly to the last source that got the successful installation. In this model, the malicious app is able to claim the credit for getting your app installed. Hence, the advertiser attributes the credit to the fraudster and pays them a percentage of the revenue. Who Is Affected By Click Injection Fraud? Click Injection fraud affects almost every player in the advertising industry, even if the consequences vary. It marginally affects the user experience of the customers, but has a significant financial and reputational impact if you are a network, publisher, or advertising. Networks and Publishers: Click injection fraud will take away the credit from the worthy and deserving network and publisher, depriving you to make money even if you get an install as a result of your genuine efforts. Advertiser: Even if the campaign was influenced by click injection fraud, it may look that the advertiser eventually received the desired outcome that is app installation. However, it impacts them in multiple ways. To begin with, advertisers might end up paying to the network or publisher even if they earned the installation with the organic efforts. Moreover, such ad frauds manipulate the campaigns performance and viewability. This can also lead to a negative impact on advertiser’s decision making as they may keep spending more on fraudulent sources while downsizing the real and true performers. Needless to mention, that as not an ideal scenario to be in. What are the threats that click injection pose? Click injection affects mostly the publishers who run digital ads across several platforms with the goal of driving app installations. CPI campaigns are usually run on multiple different ad networks, meaning that enterprises need to protect them across each such platforms. The main threats are: Advertising budget losses Click injection result in fake ad engagements, wasting advertiser’s hard earned money that could have been spent on reaching real people. Compromised analytics Marketer’s future campaigns and ad spending are influenced by the data that they get from campaigns. Since any data affected by click injection will be skewed, marketers will not be able to accurately identify which channels are most effective, perhaps resulting in investing money into invaluable campaigns. What can you do to prevent click injection? Click injection, even though it is a simple sort of ad fraud for fraudsters to carry out, it is a malicious form of ad fraud because it infects devices directly. Keeping up with all of a fraudster's tricks is difficult. Without proactive anti-fraud solutions that automate the detection of bad actors and their methods, click injection fraudsters will continue to use low-quality apps to hijack devices. Protect your CPI campaigns against click injection Ad fraud prevention often feels like a cat and mouse game. As soon as you block one incident, another ten pop up in its place. Unfortunately, fraudsters are only getting smarter. Ad fraud is becoming more difficult to detect, especially without the use of anti-fraud solutions that are specifically engineered to prevent your campaigns and ad spending from such frauds. Com Olho’s solution can help enterprises prevent multiple forms of ad fraud before they have the chance to steamroll your campaigns and bleed your budgets dry. Find out more about how Com Olho can help protect your advertising campaigns by scheduling a free demo.

It was last year when the Government of India reported that they were working on a measure to prohibit the use of all types of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) in the country. Regarding the same, the Indian Government has now mandated all the VPN providers to collect and store data of their users for five years. Although they stated that this is being done amid security concerns, the impact it can have on all parties involved is alarming, to say the least. As per a new directive issued by CERT-IN (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team), companies will now be required to store user data, including their IP addresses, emails, names, contact numbers, and addresses, for up to five years even after a user has terminated their service. Furthermore, the ministry can request this information at any moment, and VPN providers will be required to cooperate under the new regulation. As a result, there are growing tensions among the service providers as well as users. The ministry said the move was an effort to “coordinate response activities as well as emergency measures with respect to cyber security incidents” and help it fill “certain gaps” that cause hindrance in handling cyber threats. What are VPN services? Simply put, Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows the users to establish a secure network connection. This way, the service protects a user's identity by hiding their device's IP address, encrypting their data, and routing it through secure networks.There are more than 270 million Indians who use virtual private networks (VPNs). People use VPNs to get access to websites that might have been restricted by the government and browse the internet safely, without being monitored at all. Additionally, it can also be used to browse internet content accessible in other states or countries or utilise it for privacy on the internet, which is rife with marketing tracking. Another common use for VPN is to protect oneself when connecting to a public network. When connected to a public Wi-Fi, users often expose themselves to the risk of security breaches and data theft. VPN enables the user to establish a secure network connection. It encrypts internet traffic and conceals a user's identity, making it difficult for third parties to track and steal user data. However, these regulations will simply contradict the established intent of using VPNs. If there is no data privacy and user data are not protected, users will be hesitant to use VPN services, affecting the businesses of these service providers. The use of VPNs in corporations Additionally, VPNs are also used by organisations for data protection. Many companies and enterprises instruct their employees to use an internal VPN to access the office network. However, their use of VPN differs significantly from that of the general public. A business VPN, as it is called, is uninterested in surfing restricted content, but rather it is used to track its employee’s digital footprint. In some ways, this is what the government intends to achieve with the country's new VPN mandate. The new regulation will most likely not affect enterprises or private VPNs since they already collect user data and information for so-called “data and user safety”. However, it will be interesting to see the impact of this regulation on major public VPN service providers. Overall Impact According to several reports, as soon as the new regulation surfaced, major VPN service providers in India, like Nord and Surfshark have stated that they will relocate their servers from India instead of complying with the new rules. This was expected since most of these services prioritise data privacy and user safety. More importantly, these service providers offer a no-log policy, which means they don't keep track of what users do with their VPN. As a result, they won't be able to assist the ministry with any data they might request, and thus, it seems difficult if they will be able to comply with these regulations. Only if these VPN services adjust their practices in a way that makes them less secure can they comply with Indian regulations. However, this will simply go against their promise of securing the user data and providing data privacy. As a result, other VPN providers are likely to dismiss their operations in the country. VPNs that do not comply with Indian regulations will be temporarily blocked. In Conclusion VPNs indeed allow users to cloak themselves, allowing them to engage in malicious activities which could be a concern. However, many experts consider these measures to be excessive. These rules are likely intended for state-sponsored surveillance and defeat the purpose of user privacy. They have been designed such that, to drive all VPN services that provide privacy and anti-censorship out of the nation. By the looks of it, it appears that the government has taken the first step in achieving its initial goal of outright banning VPN services. Whether VPNs comply with the new rule or not, it is the user's privacy that will be put at risk. The new VPN rules in India will take effect in June. For the time being, this will be strictly enforced. Interesting fact: Many countries that either ban or regulate VPNs include China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

Last year, when advertisers and marketers expressed their concerns regarding the safety of their brand, social media site Twitter claimed to have placed their interests as its top priority. Caitlin Rush, the Head of Global Brand Safety Strategy at Twitter stated, “Brand safety is not only about brands, but it is about people.” She further added, “When we focus on the safety of people, we also protect brands from the reputational damage of supporting things like hate, abuse, and misinformation with their ad dollars.” This has been viewed as Twitter’s response to safeguarding its ad revenue from brands, accounting for 4.5 billion USD. However, Elon Musk's decision to take over Twitter, and his outright plans with the platform, may worry many brands. Ad income accounts for roughly 90 percent of Twitter's total revenue. It still is nowhere close to its competitors and other social media platforms. Moreover, Twitter's user reach is also substantially smaller than its competitors, with around 200 million users seeing advertising compared to 800 million on LinkedIn and almost 2 billion on Facebook. It is understandable, given that Twitter has a niche audience, and marketers prefer platforms with a large user base and engagements. Nonetheless, Twitter has been hell-bent to make its platform as much accessible for brands as possible. This has been evident in their various policies, including content moderation, manual human review assisted with machine learning, and brand safety policies. In addition, Birdwatch and Conversation settings are two other recent Twitter applications for safe conversations. It allows users to recognize potentially misleading information in Tweets and then report or add notes that provide context. More than 11 million individuals have used the conversation settings that allow everyone to determine who can reply to their Tweets. And there have been further efforts by the company to make it more accessible for brands. Until now. The discussion around an edit button and its impact on Brand Safety Earlier this year, Elon Musk conducted a poll, surprisingly on Twitter itself, expressing his desire to have an edit button on Twitter. This feature has been long missing from the platform and would allow users to edit and make changes to their posts. Surprisingly, over three-fourths of over 4 million voters agreed that an edit button is needed. Meanwhile, Twitter also announced that they are working on an edit feature to be implemented on their platform. This is likely to be good news for users and brands, who can always have an option to modify their earlier tweets. Brands are always mindful of their status, and any objectionable posts on a platform with 300 million monthly active users can always result in backlash. On the other hand, Twitter has always been viewed as a platform where real conversations take place. Your viewpoint or stance is constantly in the public domain since you can't alter your tweets or statements. And that is what makes Twitter unique. The addition of an edit feature may detract from the distinctiveness of Twitter posts, as a result, lowering their relevance. For Marketers, it is important to identify and select the right medium to market their product, while ensuring brand safety. An edit option can have a significant impact on how marketers approach campaign plans, and it will undoubtedly affect Twitter's forthcoming businesses. Brands have always welcomed any initiative that allows them to be associated with posts or tweets, that won't do them any reputational damage. Twitter has always shown efforts to make its platform a safe haven for brands of all sizes. All of that could change if Elon Musk takes over the social media platform later this year. Elon Musk and his plans with Twitter Just days after his post about the edit button, news surfaced that Elon Musk will now acquire Twitter. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, and if it goes through, it'll be one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever. Now that it is evident that Elon Musk will be the owner of the platform, we are not yet certain how the platform is going to function in the future. And one of the concerns for marketers is the billionaire’s repeated admiration for free speech. This will have a direct impact on the principles that the platform has been building over the years. And now, with limited content moderation and the freedom to express oneself freely, the platform may introduce new complications. Giving a free speech platform, for example, has the potential to spread hate speech and other forms of misinformation. As a result, no brand wants to be associated with such content and may opt for a different medium. Some advertisers are worried that Elon Musk's potential takeover of Twitter will push the app away from the brand safety path that Twitter has established through standards and relationships with the advertising industry over the years. Furthermore, several advertising executives have stated that if Elon Musk removes the features that allowed Twitter to remove objectionable content, they are willing to allocate their ad spending elsewhere. In Conclusion Elon Musk has made it clear that advertising is not a priority. He said that he wants to loosen the service's content moderation policies, which marketers say have helped keep ads from appearing alongside hate speech and misinformation. Additionally, he has mentioned making money from Twitter in other ways, such as charging some users to use the service. It will be interesting to see how the world's richest person manages to strike a balance between his vision for Twitter and the prior business partnerships that the platform has built through its security measures.

Given all the developments in digital advertising over the last year, with Apple and Google announcing major platform changes, staying vigilant against mobile ad fraud may have taken a back seat. Mobile ad fraud, however, is never going away. Mobile Ad Fraud is a subset of ad fraud plaguing mobile based performance campaigns. It is a collective term used to describe a combination of tactics used to stop digital ads from being delivered to the audiences or spaces for which they were intended. These tactics often include the use of bots, click injection, click spamming, organic hijacking, device farms, SDK spoofing etc. These tactics allow ad fraudsters to syphon off enterprise’s ad spend dollars while the ads themselves fail to generate brand exposure, leads and sales because they were never seen by an actual person. Besides hurting the advertisers, mobile ad fraud also hurts publishers by driving down the ROAS and decreasing the overall value of ads. Advertisement-related frauds will continue to be a major threat in mobile environments in 2022. Last year broke records for ad spending. According to a recent forecast, global digital advertising in 2021 was expected to grow by 15.6% over 2020, reaching $705 billion — well above pre-pandemic levels. Unfortunately, this advertising boom also triggered mobile advertising fraud. As businesses kick off their 2022 marketing plans, there's one thing they shouldn't overlook — a strategy for combating mobile ad fraud to protect their return on ad spend (ROAS). According to a study, ad fraud costs the marketing industry an estimated $51 million per day, and these losses are likely to increase to $100 billion annually by 2023. Sophisticated nonhuman bots, which are actively involved in ad fraud, are responsible for roughly 18% of all internet traffic in the marketing business. Digital advertising operates within a complex system with many loopholes where fraud can infiltrate, but with a little guidance, advertisers can mitigate fraud that gets past prevention measures. Approaches To Fighting Mobile Ad Fraud Fraud is a moving and changing target, and it hides behind the performance numbers CMOs are looking for in the first place. The goal is to not wait until something major occurs to make you pay attention. The goal is to pay attention on saving ad spend that doesn’t take much time or resources from enterprise's marketing team. Look Beyond Install Numbers Examine your conversions, post-install rates and numbers using cohort. This is where you're more likely to notice anomalies like a strange device ID or email address, and then check into the behaviours linked with these potentially fraudulent identities. Click to install time is another metric to consider. Instal events that happen too quickly or in groups can be marked for further evaluation. Be Aware Of Your Audience Reach User acquisition is one of the most important aspects, however the farther your reach, the less trustworthy the traffic becomes. You'll be more exposed to fraud if you use lower CPIs or have a wider reach. There are only so many ad partners out there, therefore in order to meet demand and for client's growth, they may have to rely on marginal traffic. To stop suspicious traffic, make sure you have traffic verification methods in place. Mobile Ad Fraud Detection Some enterprises use mobile ad fraud detection software to spot invalid clicks across their programmatic/display advertising, as well as paid search and social channels. The software can detect clicks and impressions that are generated by bots on paid campaigns and then blocks them, thus preventing them from continuing to syphon money away from the campaign. Mobile ad fraud detection software relies on detecting patterns that resemble suspicious actions in an ad’s impressions, clicks, traffic or IP addresses — or a mix of all those data sources. It compares clicks on ads to its database, and if it detects an anomaly, it notifies users in real time so advertisers can analyse their data. Data Analytics Data analytics helps enterprises pinpoint sources of fraud. Advertisers can use data analytics tools to get a variety of performance indicators on their marketing efforts, such as web traffic across their digital assets and information on potential customers who interact with their ads. With this much bad data in enterprises marketing stacks, it’s no surprise that a significant portion of their total ad spend doesn't deliver any return on investment. Modern data analytics tools utilise machine learning to analyse massive amounts of data and discover anomalies that often indicate fraudulent activity. In turn, this helps enable advertisers to identify fraudulent traffic and prevent further damage by quickly adjusting their ad strategy and divesting from bad traffic in favour of good traffic. Verifying their data across multiple channels also helps enterprises prevent bad data from impacting the rest of their data set, ensuring that their ads reach real and actual target customers. The Takeaway Mobile ad fraud has been a major issue worldwide in the last two years, fuelled by rise in digital during the pandemic and it's projected to become an even more concerning issue in 2022. To get the most from their campaigns, enterprises will want to consider investing in solutions that validate the accuracy of their data and ensure that their ad budgets result in impressions and clicks that actually generate the desired results and values.

My work experience at Com Olho has been very insightful and eye-opening. Things started well from day one. This company is pretty organised in terms of being ready for new employment. I had my schedule before the day started, and when I reached office, my computer and swags were waiting for me. Once I settled down and met my new employers, it was time for the formal training to begin. I chose to work as a Product Manager to get a better idea of researching, designing, implementing and identifying areas for modification in existing programs. The amount of trust that the company has put in me is honestly unbelievable, they provide the employees with all the resources that would enhance their capabilities and bring the best out of them. Week after week in this organisation, I also built up my capabilities progressively and that resulted in more confident in the tasks that I was assigned. I am honestly beginning to feel a part of the team. Getting to know my workmates daily made me feel that any problems I would be facing with the task that I’m being assigned would be quickly diminished by simply asking for assistance on anything I wasn't sure of. As a 23-year-old, it’s hard to determine exactly what career opportunities might interest me, especially with my focus being largely on achieving good A-Levels leaving little time for exploring what the workplace could be like. However, it’s been a high learning curve for me, which leads me on the journey of discovering myself. This work experience has helped me to better understand what working in an office-based environment is like and I now feel more prepared for, not only work but choosing a career path that better suits me. I know I'm still within the early stages of this job, and things will still change and evolve during my time here. But for the foremost part, things have started off well and I am very proud of my job and therefore the company. Connect with me on Linkedin : Link