Bot busters: Saving ad spend from digital fraud

Data has the power to make or break the success of a marketing campaign. However, this power exists only when there is visibility into who is interacting with the ads.

Over the last 10 years, bots have taken over the internet and become the trusted tools for fraudsters to siphon off the marketers’ ad spends into their own pockets. These bots can generate fake impressions, clicks, and even fill out lead forms.

Many a time, misled by inflated high-volume numbers resulting from bot activity, marketers continue to in their campaigns, leading to no actual gain. Thus, marketers pay for the ads which never reach their intended audience.

According to Juniper Research, 22% of the total online advertising spend was lost due to ad fraud in 2023, which is projected to exceed $170 billion in five years. However, this is just one piece of the entire puzzle. The implications of bot traffic may stretch far beyond monetary losses incurred by marketers.

The domino effect

Bot traffic leads to skewed data, triggering a domino effect of reducing campaign efficiency as marketers take decisions based on this data. Without visibility into the quality of traffic, marketers continue to invest their ad budgets on these bot-controlled campaigns.

The classic way to identify bot activities is spotting abnormal influx in traffic, mostly impacting clicks and impressions. This process reliably identifies general invalid traffic (GIVT) bot patterns.
However, as fraudsters evolve with time, bot patterns are also getting advanced, generating sophisticated invalid traffic. Advanced bots can see an ad, click on it, and also fill out a form. They are also capable of bypassing captcha or OTP protections.

In their ceaseless pursuit of illicit wealth, fraudsters exploit every ad format and platform, demonstrating impressive capabilities. Therefore, marketers cannot rely solely on campaign data.

Fighting the fraudsters

Ad fraud is not a foreign concept anymore in the digital advertising landscape. There are industry guidelines and initiatives to curb the impact of fraudulent activities on marketers. However, it is not just the responsibility of the associations but also of the brands to take a stand against ad frauds.

Merely monitoring the metrics such as traffic spike, low on-page time, and bounce rates is not enough to combat these fraud techniques. Present-day bots are sophisticated enough to bypass these thumb rules, exhibiting a human-like behaviour and making it harder to detect their activity.

Fortunately, marketers now have access to innovative tech solutions to identify these sophisticated bot patterns and take fast decisions to protect their ad spend.

Clean traffic means better optimisation

A dedicated ad verification technology proactively blocks bot traffic before it reaches the campaigns, ensuring the marketer’s budget is not wasted on fraudulent traffic. Some of the benefits of bot detection for marketers are:

• Reduction in ad spend wastage: By implementing a robust bot detection tool, marketers can protect their advertising budgets from being wasted on fake clicks, impressions, and other advertising payout metrics. This ensures that every rupee contributes to genuine user engagement, maximising the effectiveness of marketing investments.

• Clean traffic, better analytics: An advanced bot detection tool provides marketers with the required visibility into their digital campaign data. This leads to more accurate insights and informed decision making, allowing companies to allocate resources more efficiently and optimise marketing strategies.   

• Improved return on investment (RoI): Utilising full-funnel ad traffic validation tools provides businesses with clear, accurate metrics. This enables targeted analysis of each marketing channel, allowing for strategic budget allocation to the most effective platforms, resulting in a higher ROI.

• Brand safety: Investing in effective fraud detection tools protects brands from unsafe or questionable content. By placing ads in trusted, brand-safe environments, businesses can maintain their brand integrity, foster consumer confidence, and enhance their overall brand reputation.

A global conglomerate saw a traffic influx in its campaigns across Google, Facebook, programmatic channels, and affiliates. The advertiser was facing issues like high bounce rates and click through rates (CTRs).

Using an advanced full-funnel bot detection solution, the advertiser was able to identify and filter out non-human traffic. It blacklisted fraudulent sources, resulting in a significant reduction in fraud—from 37% to 9%—further delivering $1.2 million in savings.

The way forward

Identifying and filtering out bot traffic is an essential step in achieving maximum efficiency in marketing campaigns. This will help marketers safeguard their ad spend, increase RoI, and also protect their brand reputation.

Bot detection is not just an additional, but a critical step for marketers to ensure they have true visibility into their campaign data. Greater visibility into the real user will elevate a marketer’s confidence in spending on ad campaigns, delivering genuine results.

 - Dhiraj Gupta, Co-Founder and CTO, mFilterIt