With most businesses acknowledging the need to have an online presence, the competition to acquire the largest online market share is fierce. And the only way to stand out is through intense advertising.
Up to 64% of consumers seeking to buy an item online will click on a Google ad, and this proves just how effective an online marketing is at generating revenue for a business. But this also makes it attractive to fraudsters.
Trying to figure out how fraudsters can penetrate the ad industry?
Ad Stacking
This is where the fraudster places multiple ads in the same space. Only the top ad can be seen by visitors, this means that your business’s ad may not be visible to your target audience, but you still get to pay for it.
Pixel Stuffing
This is almost similar to ad stacking in that you may pay for an ad that was never viewed by your targeted audience. In this case, the ad is placed in tiny pixels that are 1X1, which, of course, is impossible to see.
Search Ad Fraud
In this case, the fraudsters create fake websites and stuff them with highly-priced keywords that have a high cost per click. It generates search ads and businesses who wish to advertise against these keywords invest their money. But these ads have very little chance of ever being discovered, and the business loses.
Lead Fraud
Ad fraudsters can mislead you into thinking you are generating leads by paying people and using bots to click on your ads and fill out forms. The bots form botnets that mimic human behavior.
Placing an online ad is not inexpensive and it’s only fair that you get value for your money. You can use ad verification to ensure that your hard-earned money is not wasted on ads that do not reach your target audience or that are not well displayed in the audience’s browsers.
What Is Ad Verification?
It refers to a technique of confirming that your ads are placed in the correct websites, in the right context, and in the right location on the website where they can be exposed to the right audience.
Using ad verification, a brand owner can detect false impressions, conversions, clicks, or any other kind of ad fraud. You can carry out ad verification for your business by visiting the advertiser’s landing page anonymously.
Visiting the website anonymously to collect the necessary data requires the use of a proxy server. A proxy will hide your device’s IP address and instead, send the proxy’s IP.
There are two types of proxies you can use for anonymous ad verification
Data Center Proxies
This is a proxy server that is artificially created in a data center. It is independent of an internet connection and ISP. They offer the highest speed and can be obtained in large numbers. Each IP address is attached to a different location to give the impression of real traffic. You can use data center proxies to track your ads across numerous websites.
Residential Proxies
Residential proxies offer the highest level of anonymity. They make it possible to improve the performance of your ads and detect any signs of fraud without making your intention known. Residential proxies are provided by internet service providers. They are attached to a real device linked with a physical location.
Web Scraping for Ad Verification
You can also use web scraping to collect data on the authenticity of the website where your ads are placed as well as the performance of these ads.
Web scraping refers to the automated process of collecting data from the internet using a web scraper. A scraper is data collection software that allows you to target the website from which you would like to collect data on your ad.
You could also opt for a real-time crawler. It offers a more powerful process of data extraction from your target websites. A real-time crawler requires less effort to extract data and provides 100% accuracy.
To remain anonymous when extracting data and prevent the web server from detecting your scraper, you will need to use proxies.
Conclusion
Ad fraud reduces your revenue. It makes you invest in a marketing campaign that does not yield any returns. You can easily bring this to an end with the use of ad verification. Ad verification refers to the process of checking the placement of your ads to ensure that they are reaching the right target.
Quality proxies will help you carry out ad verification anonymously. Data center proxies will provide high speed while residential proxies will provide the highest level of anonymity. Ensure that you get proxies that are private with rotating IP addresses for maximum effectiveness.
Web scraping also aids with ad verification. By scraping data about the websites where your ads appear, you can confirm their genuineness and collect information on the performance of your ads.
