Third-party cookies have been integral for digital marketing for over a decade and their reach covers everything from audience targeting to behaviour tracking to re-marketing and more. However, with searches for "online privacy" at an all-time high and this being a key concern for people all over the world, the traditional methods of collecting behavioural data as we browse needs to change, which is why Google is depreciating cookies. As we all know the digital industry ecosystem is extremely dynamic in nature. With the recent developments and changes within the marketing space, one thing always remains constant, Audience. Understanding our audience's behaviour and reaching out to the right set of consumers is the most vital aspect. And for this, marketers require data to pull insights about their user behaviour. Defining Different Types of Data Available Let’s start by looking at the different types of data that marketers use. First-Party data First-party data is data about an enterprise's customers that's collected and owned by the enterprise. Information about customers is compiled through codes and systems that the enterprise itself owns. The enterprise can use this information (digital interactions, purchase history, behaviour, preferences, etc.) to create ads, content, and experiences catering to an individual’s interests. Second-Party data Second-party data is first-party data from a trustworthy source. This data will facilitate an enterprise to achieve greater scale than relying on its own data alone, and since the data isn’t sold openly, it can provide greater value than third-party data, which is available to anyone usually who wants to buy it. Third-Party data Unlike first-party data, third-party data comes not from the direct relationship between a customer/client and an enterprise, but from an outside source that has collected the data. Third-party data often usually comes from a variety of sources online, and this information is then aggregated, segmented, and sold out to companies for their own advertising use. What is 1P data? 1P or First Party Data is the advertiser’s data that they collect directly from its customers and owns. It is an element of the mosaic of data marketers have at their disposal. The data includes information such as email, phone number, demographics, interests, time spent on the website, purchase history, etc. This customer information is collected from both online and offline sources, like the enterprise’s website, app, CRM, social media, or surveys. This data is extremely pertinent to all businesses because it is collected directly from digital or offline properties. In this blog, we’ll uncover why First party data has become a powerful tool for modern marketers. The Value Of First-Party data In this age of consumer empowerment, creating personalised and highly targeted experiences that drive brand loyalty and retention means being able to understand and respond to customer wants, needs and intent with 1:1 contextual relevance. What better way than using the actual information that details each and every customer interaction with your brand? First Party Data is qualitative. It’s free. It’s yours. First-party data is the foundation for understanding your customers as it is the data that an individual entrusts to you, in exchange for your superior product or service. And it’s the only information that provides the types of insights and control you need to recognise, relate and respond to your customers in more meaningful and valuable ways. While the concept of leveraging first-party data to reach more to known customers isn't new, the approach for doing so is. Thanks to the evolution of customer/client intelligence solutions, marketers can now integrate all of a brand’s offline and online first-party data to reach and interact with actual customers wherever they are in their decision journey. As marketers increasingly adopt customer/client intelligence as a strategic discipline, brands expect additional information from their first-party data and are planning on increasing their use of first-party data within the years ahead. Sources of First-Party Data The key to reaping the benefits of first-party data is getting the right data from the right sources. First-party data comes from a variety of sources. Website: A website can offer a wealth of data about on-site visitors, from names and email addresses to visitor behaviour and transactions. Plus, there are additional behaviours that can be tracked (such as once users hover over text or images) for specific retargeting strategies. Mobile Apps: App users are few of the brand’s most interested and loyal supporters — after all, they made the effort to download the app. To ensure useful data is being extracted from a brand app, marketers need to define which user events are significant and be sure to log and measure them. Email and SMS: Email offers data like open rates, click rates and bounce rates that date back to the beginnings of the brand’s digital marketing efforts. Furthermore, marketers may segment audiences and execute particular ads aimed at varying degrees of engagement using the comprehensive data on who is opening emails and whose interest is flagging. Similarly SMS data, text messaging is an intimate form of communication, customers who allow brands to engage with them via SMS show a high level of interest. Challenges of Using First-Party Data ​​While the rationale for employing first-party data may appear to be obvious, marketers who want to make better use of their audience and customer data face a number of challenges: Lack of a Data Strategy You can’t resolve your information issues in a single afternoon. You have to form a strategy first, which means knowing what sources you have got, what you’re collecting, and mapping it across the customer journey as you comprehend it. Your strategy will guide the method & process, and it has to be customised so that it's relevant to your brand. Integration of Data Integration is difficult. A lot of your customer engagement data lives within the fragmented silos of your third-party technology partners. Even though these partners have gathered the data on your behalf, obtaining it all at once in one place can be hard. However it’s yours, and you need it to make things happen. Pulling your data out from these silos and into one place will help you see the big picture of your data points, and the outlines of your customer profiles will start to take shape. Taking Action in Real-Time The value of data decays quickly. A first-party should be able to distribute data and information to your internal and external media execution partners so as to take advantage of what you know about each customer before the window of opportunity closes. First-Party Data Strategy 1. Create a framework for your first-party data. First-party data is the foundation for a bigger, omnichannel marketing strategy that can facilitate brands to achieve lower-funnel objectives, like customer loyalty, retention, and upselling. Outline your marketing and customer experience goals and objectives, the techniques and analytics needed to execute the strategy, and create a roadmap for how your cross-channel marketing capabilities will develop over time. Break down the long-term effort into smaller projects that show incremental returns at each stage. 2. Determine the right data points and sources. Examine and audit your data sources and points to identify what data is being generated and how it is measured. Check your data sources and data points with the data requirements of the marketing and analytics use cases you’re planning to implement and make sure you’re collecting the data that’s critical to your goals. 3. Create a Benchmark and track it over time. Continually evaluate your first-party data capabilities, monitor progress, and integrate what you’ve learned at every step along the way. Establish key success metrics for your answer, both in terms of operational capability and support for cross-channel marketing initiatives. Track information volumes, sources, process speed, profile depth, and which information is activated for analytics and measurement. Conclusion Enterprises will no longer use third-party data to target their audiences in the future. They have started to explore ways to use first-party data as the foundation of their advertising needs. First-party data is increasingly crucial from a measurement standpoint—and businesses may consider utilising their data and analytics for enhanced one-to-one engagement as well as measurement and optimisation. It's time marketers place a strong emphasis on building first-party data as their customers are demanding increased data privacy and deserve the best personalised experience. It’s true that staying on course with today’s consumers is challenging as they hop from one channel or device to the next. However, with the right technology and a customer intelligence strategy rooted in first-party data, you’ll discover the most direct route begins and ends with the first party data that i.e. the data you already own.

When I got my summer internship in January’2021, I was hoping that the Covid-19 situation in India would subside, and I would get to go to Gurgaon and experience an in-office summer internship, since the first year of my MBA was unfortunately in online mode. But these are scary times, and now I am glad to be working safely from my home in Indore. The work keeps me busy and helps me cope better in these chaotic times. Before joining, I was excited but anxious because Com Olho being an Artificial Intelligence-based B2B company, was a completely new domain for me. However, after learning about the business of Ad fraud detection and engaging in regular conversations with the founders, I realised that Ad fraud detection, though very complex, isn’t very hard to understand plus it is more relevant than ever in the digitally driven times we’re living in. The work environment is friendly and nurturing, there’s freedom to share, ask questions & give suggestions. At Com Olho I'm made to feel more like an employee and less like an intern, because of the responsibilities I have been given and how my contributions are taken equally seriously. Apart from Marketing which is my role, I am also learning about the journey and growth of a young startup in India, which I believe is invaluable. I am also observing the importance of empathy and sensitivity, being practiced as core values at Com Olho, as India faces the worst crisis of the century. I am grateful for the learnings, and there is more to come. As a student of the PGDM batch of IMT Ghaziabad 2020-22, I want to say that we might have missed a year of “campus life” but that makes us a unique and resilient batch.

When I was looking for an internship, I was looking for a challenge. A place where I could learn a lot, gain real-life experience in order to prepare myself for the corporate world. I came across Com Olho on LinkedIn and I knew that it’s exactly the place I was looking for. I joined Com Olho as the Technical Intern, where I could get to work on the hottest technologies like Cloud & DevOps. My job responsibilities here are diverse. To put it into perspective, there is always an opportunity to dive deep into things and find a unique solution to the problem and I can say that I have groomed myself a lot during this internship, also, I’ve developed a lot of confidence in my skill set. I’m a Edureka Certified DevOps Engineer. I am passionate about ‘Technology’, because technology has the ability to impact lives at a level and scale that has never been realized in the history of mankind. The idea that something I create can impact someone across the world now, or in the future is what drives my passion for technology. I enjoy nothing more than learning the trends that technology is taking in order to work more efficiently and see progress and success. The internship gave me the opportunity to put into practice a lot of disciplines I had previously only studied conceptually. It really has broadened my horizons and given me a better understanding of why we study certain things and their relevance in the industry. I am thankful for having this wonderful opportunity and would like to express my gratitude towards Com Olho team members for helping me learn every day. I cannot wait to explore even more in this company in the future. This internship has been such an amazing journey of learning, sharing, and presenting my knowledge and skills. Connect with me on LinkedIn : Link

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

Due to the ever-changing needs of the industry, artificial intelligence and data science have become a catalyst for business growth and corporate value. Today, I am proud to be a member of an industry in which artificial intelligence and data science play such a pivotal role in solving business problems. Data, in my opinion, tells us more than just numbers; it helps us understand our users and their needs. I loved numbers from a young age and I knew I would make a career with them. That is why I wanted to be a data scientist, because not only is it a new and untapped field but there is enormous potential for businesses to maximise their value by harnessing the power of data. I've always wanted to do something out of the norm in my life, such as major in mathematics in college and pursue a career in technology. There has always been a dearth of female participation in the tech industry and its leadership roles. I aspire to be one of the top female data scientists and artificial intelligence experts in the Indian tech industry by the age of 30. Com Olho has been a terrific experience for me to work with such a team of incredibly talented people, thriving to make it easier for businesses and industries to detect fraud and tackle it efficiently and effectively. For both consumers and businesses, Com Olho uses state-of-the-art technology, which I extremely admire. It has given me a tremendous head start in my career and I look forward to mutual growth and progress. As a problem solver and analytics person, my career goal is to make data tell its story in an insightful and informative manner. Connect with her on Linkedin : Link

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.

When it comes to brand campaigns aka CPM's or top of the funnel campaigns, marketers are least concerned on how much such campaigns would add to the bottom of the funnel, we often hear if we have 2-5% CTR then we must keep spending. Marketers are confident too that such brand campaigns would add a lot to the brand visibility and name assuming they are being shown across all channels of digital engagement. We recently analysed more than 100 mobile applications engaging in generating impressions through their inventory leveraging ad exchanges, and the results are shocking and revealing on how much dirty business is going inside advertising technology right now. Understanding Good CPM Traffic The healthy traffic and to be examined traffic is visualised over a 2d scatter plot to understand data behaviour of the impressions (CPM) acquired for the brand by the networks, affiliates and other sources. Conclusion: Once visualised we can clearly see a strong relevance of the “To be Examined Impressions” with our Healthy Vector. The inventory of such network/affiliate can be highly effective for the brand as it seen by real humans. Result: Good Impression Traffic Source Understanding Bad CPM Traffic – Type 1 The healthy traffic and to be examined traffic is visualised over a 2d scatter plot to understand data behaviour of the impressions (CPM) acquired for the brand by the networks, affiliates and other sources. Conclusion: Once visualised we can clearly see a puny relevance of the “To be Examined Impressions” with our Healthy Vector. The inventory of such network/affiliate cannot be highly effective for the brand as it is not seen by real humans. Result: Bad Impression Traffic Source Understanding Bad CPM Traffic – Type 2 The healthy traffic and to be examined traffic is visualised over a 2d scatter plot to understand data behaviour of the impressions (CPM) acquired for the brand by the networks, affiliates and other sources. Conclusion: Once visualised we can clearly see a puny relevance of the “To be Examined Impressions” with our Healthy Vector. The inventory of such network/affiliate cannot be highly effective for the brand as it is not seen by real humans. Result: Worse Impression Traffic Source You cannot buy engagement, you would have to build it-Nelson

Fresh orders are the delight of every seller. They are what you practically work for and a new order gives your brand the hope it needs. But what if you encounter fake orders? In a brick and mortar store, you must be mindful of those with less than honourable intentions, filling their pockets with your products, and then making off without paying. As an online business, you might think that you are immune from stealing – however the sad reality is that there are lots of people out there who are trying to do the very same thing. Perhaps even more so, given the benefit of committing a crime from a distance. As your business grows bigger and bigger online, fraud should be the one thing that you monitor on an increasingly frequent basis. Fake orders are the ones that have been placed with the intention of defrauding the seller. If left unchecked, fraudulent orders can cost you tens of thousands of dollars or more, easily. Most of the customers in India prefer COD (Cash on Delivery) as a payment mode because they find it much more trustworthy than paying online. This is the reason that criminals place fake orders. Even if your customer is providing you a valid billing address, even then there are high chances of fraudulent orders. That’s why you need to be on top of a few precautions before accepting any order. Here are a few of them: 1.Verify and Contact through Email to Check if the Email Id is Authentic Verify your customer’s email ID. Most fraudulent customers use fake email IDs to place an order. If you email them and they don’t reply, it means it’s a fake order. 2.Call Them to Double Check This is the quickest way to verify someone is who they say. You can call the customer to double-check the information they have provided about themselves. If the number is unavailable, not reachable or the customer seems hesitant to comply with you, it means there is something fishy. 3.Confirm Order Before Shipping it It is always better to get in touch with your customer via phone or email and confirm once they want the order to be delivered. This way you are sure if the order must be shipped or not. Just in case they do not reply you must immediately cancel the order. 4.Delay the shipment Scammers want their operations to be completed as quickly as possible in order to decrease the chances of getting caught. If you delay a shipment deliberately, and tell them as much, it may scare them off. This is an inconvenience to honest shoppers, thus only use it if you have to. 5.Use A Security Software Software ensures a good level of security for your brand. It permits you to impose several layers of security and makes sure that your customer is authentic and has the right intent. Once your customers clear all security steps, it’s safe for you to interact with them and ship their order. The issue of fake orders isn’t only because of Cash on Delivery orders but also on prepaid orders. Here are few ways to find and prevent fake orders online using a credit or a debit card: 1.Verify the CVV code There is a three-digit code on the back of the debit card, and it is a security measure to prevent cases of electronic credit card theft. If the numbers do not match then it’s most likely a case of fraudulent order, and such an order shouldn’t be accepted. 2.Verify the Address via an AVS system Many people ship the product to a set number of addresses like their workplace or their personal home and those addresses are recorded in your account that you have set up with the portal. This system shouldn’t be viewed strictly as its results could be false positive too. Hence, this method should be used as a guideline. Maximum customers in India prefer COD (Cash on Delivery) that makes it very hard for sellers to differentiate between fake and real orders. Although the above steps are useful in avoiding fake orders, you don’t have the time to do all this for each and every order, hence a good start is to develop your instincts. Learn to identify and spot suspicious orders early, and if something seems off to you — even just a little — by all means, don’t ignore it.

The coronavirus disease or the COVID-19 has seen its preliminary documented affected person in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since that time, this virus has been scattering across the globe too fast way too quickly than anyone imagined, and as in step with WHO this disease was declared a pandemic by March 2020 resulting in the shutdown of the whole country. With this pandemic, there were innumerable difficulties to each and every person, and thus not even leaving the businesses. Several businesses face one of the most common difficulties which is brand safety. It is a very common fact that view-ability, readability, and ROI are some of the critical standards and are considered by any brand when buying any ad inventory. Another thought that crosses their mind when collaborating with publishers or advertisers, might be to use the top qualities of the content to get a great brand image. Every advertiser hopes to get the most relevant and pertinent users for their campaigns, but obviously not at the cost of having any unsafe content. And this is where brand safety will play its assigned role! Before understanding the importance, let us have a glimpse of what is brand safety? Introduction to brand safety! Brand safety measures are perfectly designed for protecting the online reputation of any brand and this will be done by restricting the brand from collaborating with any negative or inappropriate content. A famous quote says: “Brand safety is in the eye of the beholder—it all depends on what is or is not appropriate for the brand. For example, an R-rated action film might have different standards than a baby products company.” Now let us understand why we say that brand safety is a crucial aspect? Almost all the small and medium-size publishers are not having much knowledge about brand safety as a practice. And as a result, they definitely miss out on ad money monetisation prospects for them. Even the big and huge publishers such as news and magazine websites are trying hard to offer correct and pertinent information without making the use of any blacklisted or blocked keyword and losing out on any of these opportunities. Brand safety is a measure that will protect the publishers from any kind of risks also. Some of the potential risks included are illegally downloaded ads, fraudulent e-commerce ads, and invalid traffic. These might be exterminated with the publisher’s brand equity. Thus, there is a need to have a complete understanding of brand safety so that no publisher will avoid any kind of chance to leave money on their tables. What steps must be taken by the publishers? Have a check of your current position: Not just the use of blacklisted keywords, the advertisers should also consider their domain rights, a score of view-ability, fill rate, and historical bid price of the website you own. If in any of the cases, these numbers don’t match the standard of the advertiser, you can any moment be removed from the campaign of the advertiser. Thus, it is advisable for you to have a check on these numbers so that you avoid any penalty by the brand safety controllers. Do not try to touch the invalid traffic: When in contact with the non-human traffic, you might take down the brand safety score drastically. If by any chance any demand-side system catches a glimpse of any unusual traffic on your site they might mark your website as unsafe and even other buyers can’t see you then. Undeniably, this is true that the publishers can’t completely avoid the unusual traffic, in any if such case, they must be straightforward and the percentage of the invalid traffic should be shared in the policy of your website. Try to review the demand sources: It is suggested for you to choose the demand partners very carefully. Double ensure that they take and have adequate safety measures in the right place to avoid any wrongdoing like ad injection fraud, domain spoofing, and a lot more. Try to take some help from brand safety ventures: If you are constantly facing a declining fill rate and the reason is not known to you, then chances are the advertisers might have blacklisted or blocked you. There are innumerable reasons for this but don’t rule out the blacklisting at any cost. It is advisable to work directly with some of the prominent brand safety ventures or vendors. Along with the services for protections, they will also offer the perfect and required consultation to make a balance between genuine content and ad revenue. Have a clear understanding of brand safety: Brand safety is not only important for the advertisers but is also a vital concept for publishers of any size. Thus, it is well said that when you learn more about any problem, then you get closer to the solution. Marketers, as well as their businesses, had been somewhat ignorant about the occurrence of keyword blocking and brand safety. Any publisher will find it really embarrassing to get some screenshots from the advertisers related to their keyword usage on any disinformation websites and some extra hatred websites.

Marketing & Advertising has always been a field of jargon's and methodologies, it has been a market selected by a few and for long it has been able to keep it's dark secrets. As we have been moving towards a more digital world, the need for brand safety, trust, transparency and privacy are among the most discussed keywords among marketplaces that crowds marketers. We have tried summing the context of Brand Safety in today's digital world. 1. Ads served on unsafe environments An OTA (Online Travel Agency) player would never want a digital advertisement next to news page that's describing a recent travel accident or mishap or say an e-commerce player or any player would never want a digital advertisement next to page that describes a sensitive issue. These form of ad view-ability on unsafe environment doesn't just bring down the brand image as a whole, but also reflects upon lack of attention of marketers in house. We need to enable our programmatic technology to be able to predict ad placement by merely processing keywords on the page during ad placement, and prevent it from being served on unsafe environments. 2. Transparency of Supply Chain We have noticed an upward demand of marketers to be able look into their entire supply chain of channels their creatives run on, except the walled gardens such as Google and Facebook, marketers leverage on ad networks/agencies to exponentially scale their traffic, but often forget that non transparent supply chains target particular GAID's/IDFA of brand's consumers for their competitors. 3. Behaviour Bot Traffic and Trust One of the key reasons for lack of transparency in supply chains is interest of ad agencies to intentionally add bot traffic for financial gains. While traffic mixes have been a new age methodology for cyber criminals to minimise detection, unethical technology development to fudge the data with intermediary 3rd party tools and technologies. 4. Privacy, the new Law While the ad serving infrastructure is ready and deployed, and ad tech market is highly inflated and looms in darkness. A ever increasing demand of consumers demand has been constantly questioning the practices and ethics the market has been using for years. Today, consumers don't want to be tracked, they don't want to see ad's that are targeting on basis of their searches and research. While we are slowing improving the marketing and advertisement industry as a whole, bringing back the attention to the consumer needs and adding more value to the advertiser spends. The age of software infrastructure is over, marketers ain't looking for DMP's / DSP's /SSP's that can automate their workflows but they are constantly in search of algorithms and cognitive technology that can help them make more sense of their data assets. “People are spending too much time talking about ad-blocking and not enough time figuring out why people want to block ads.” Jim Stengel, former P&G CMO

If you are a bar owner and alcohol is in the news a lot, you might want your digital ad placed next to the news because it is getting a lot of traffic but you do not want your ads to be displayed next to a news article reporting a deadly accident involving drunk people or your ads popping up on a blog post which explains why you should cut down your drinking for a healthier body/mind. You might have an amazing scheme in head and on display that will drive up your sales but it will reflect poorly on your brand if it comes in the situations stated above. In this case, blacklisting some words/terms seems beneficial towards the image of the company. To understand this, let’s take another example, imagine you are a car dealership owner and you are promoting your new batch of fossil-fuel high- powered cars but your ad starts displaying on a website which is explaining how the population of polar bears and penguins among other Arctic and Antarctic animals has significantly plummeted because of increasing Green House Gasses (GHGs) and emissions. Most people will take that ad in a poor taste and question why people, industrialists in particular like you are being ignorant. It is often said that first impression is the last impression, if someone comes across your ad in this situation for the first time, they have full reason to believe that your brand is threatening the environment, even though it might not be completely true. But ads being displayed in the wrong parts of the internet is not the only brand safety concern for companies these days. With the internet progressing and bettering itself every day, the problems are getting more complex day-by-day too. Other potential risks to name a few involve invalid traffic, fraudulent e-commerce ads, domain spoofing, extremism, inappropriate content and illegal download ads. Advertisers should be vigilant of these tricks to avoid having monetary and reputational losses. Every product or service is designed keeping in mind a segment of people who are designated as the target audience for that service or product and if people from the targeted audience are not able to view the things on the market or if they are being seen by bots or people who accidentally clicked on the ads. It defeats the purpose of online advertising. Legitimate ad traffic is important for an online advertising campaign to be successful, only then does the brand truly realise its goal of serving the rightful customer. Otherwise, it is just efforts being wasted and so much time and energy spent in vain. Interaction with a genuinely interested user is how the brand can assure itself some growth, any other exchange will just be stagnating and not so useful. If we look at fraudulent e-commerce ads, it basically includes numerous tricks used by fraudsters to not only harm the safety of the brand (i.e. reputation) but also steal money. One common way is search ad fraud. In this type of fraud, expensive words are targeted by developing fake websites by fraudsters. Using bots, they drive up the clicks and then sell that ad space to unsuspecting advertisers. They bring in illegitimate clicks along with questionable content which may conflict with brand image and safety. Another, way of tarnishing a brand image/safety is an ad injection. Imagine you displayed you ad on a legitimate, well- known website. Since you thought that it is a safe website because it is reputable and popular, it does not mean that there is no scope for fraud there. Thing being said, it is safe to say that every website is vulnerable, some more than others. Now, these ad injections are ads slipped onto a website without permission of the publisher. This ad is just sneakily injected which has nothing to do with the website or your ad. But, it could be a bad look not only for your ad but also the website. The ad is generally pornographic content. In the examples above we have seen how a particular company/brand may be affected because of particular placement of ads in certain areas of the internet However, brand safety means much more than mere placement of ads on websites or a few random useless clicks, it is practically saving money which is lying on the table. It includes the image of a brand and what it associates with completely. It takes years to build a reputation and one wrong move can destroy it and cause monumental damages, especially in today’s world where we have the internet, though which information flows very quickly so does misinformation. Also, nothing ever truly goes away, in the sense that it is permanent, once information is on the internet, no Public Relations team can truly ever get rid of it, they can twist facts and present it another way but, never get rid of it.