As more people use the internet to browse new products and services, businesses have had to make a crucial shift in their marketing efforts. Online ads are now one of the most essential ways in which they can reach new clients and grow their business. However, placing ads online comes with various risks, the most critical of which is ad fraud. We consider how proxies can be used as a solution, like when you set your browsing to a specific location when using a UK proxy. However, first, we look at ad fraud and how to detect it.
What is Ad Fraud?
Ad fraud is precisely like it sounds, which is any fraudulent activity that tries to impact or illegally take advantage of online advertisements negatively. The primary manner in which this fraud is carried out is by simulating clicks without any natural traffic
People using these techniques take advantage of systems like Pay per Click (PPC) to generate an income or even bot traffic to force their “clients” to pay for traffic they didn’t generate. These days, you must verify your ads to ensure they’re placed as they’re meant to, and below, we look at how you can detect fraudulent ads.
Detecting Ad Fraud
The lack of performance is the most concrete evidence that you might be the victim of fraudulent ads. If you’ve paid to place advertisements on websites but don’t experience any change in leads, conversions, or website traffic, it’s likely people aren’t seeing your advertisements.
Another is if you’re experiencing poor or unnatural onsite analytics. What we mean by this is if you see high bounce or click-through rates. Natural people will spend time reading a page, filling in a form, or clicking through to other pages, while bots won’t complete any of those actions. Check your CTRs to see whether it delivers within the normal range.
It’s also a good idea to check the IP addresses that visited our website and see if you can identify any datacenter IP addresses. These types are often indicative of bots accessing your website. Finally, you should check which sites your campaign reports your advertisements on. Often with advertisement fraud, you’ll find long-tail site placements on obscure websites.
Types of Fraudulent Ads
Various types of advertisement fraud exist, and you must understand which types to look out for.
Impression Laundering
With this action, hackers and blackhatters divert legitimate advertisements to less relevant, obscure, or shady websites. It generally uses CPM (cost per mile) instead of PPC, as the client pays for the performance measured by impressions.
Click Farms
One of the most common forms of ad fraud is click farms or fraudulent clicks. With this method, the hackers pay real people or use bots to click on the advertisement. Since the client pays per click (PPC), it means they pay for clicks that never had the chance to generate leads.
Website Bot Traffic
This method has bots visiting a website and performing simple actions to simulate real people’s traffic. It gives the impression of increased site traffic but without generating leads.
Add Stacking
Ad stacking is when hackers place the ad in the right place but hides it from the client’s eyes. They can do it by displaying the ad as a 1×1 pixel square, stacking ads on each other, or placing it outside the website’s visible areas. Overall, it means no one is seeing your ads to interact with them.
How Proxies Are the Solution
Ad verification checks whether your ads are seen by genuine leads and displayed as they should be. You can use a proxy to that end, as it helps you access any location, like when using a UK proxy. With the location services, you can check on your ads in different markets, ensuring that distance from the market doesn’t mean your ads become neglected.
Using residential proxies also means the IP address it assigns you is affiliated with ISP in residential homes. With this natural-looking IP address, you can access any websites your ads should be on without the website blocking you.
The gist of ad verification is checking whether you can interact with the advertisement as a potential lead would, and for that, you must look like a natural person. Rotating proxies further help you enhance your security and your device’s IP address, ensuring you can access any website in any location without trouble.
Verify Your Online Ads
A significant factor in being unable to detect ad fraud is if you’re advertising in multiple markets and can’t reach the relevant location to check that market. However, using proxies like a UK proxy to access all the markets in which you’re advertising means you can safely check your ads from any location and ensure your possible leads see what you want them to see.
