How Trackscouting is Staying Ahead of Mobile Ad Fraud in 2024

Created on 2024/02/14 • 195,783 views • 3 minutes read

How Trackscouting is Staying Ahead of Mobile Ad Fraud in 2023

Ad fraud is a growing concern for mobile advertisers and marketers. As technology continues to evolve, so do the methods of ad fraud. In 2022, ad fraud cost advertisers over $80 billion globally, which is expected to surpass $100 billion by the end of 2023. Given the economic downturn and potential of an impending global recession, it is more crucial than ever to take proactive measures to safeguard your marketing budget and ensure that every dollar is wisely spent.

Collaborating with a mobile measurement partner (MMP) such as Trackscouting is one way to combat ad fraud. Even without the Fraud Prevention Suite (FPS), clients can prevent fraudulent activities with Trackscouting. We offer a variety of tools that can help detect and reject fraudulent installs, ensuring that your data sets remain clean and accurate for reliable analysis, and they’re available to all clients automatically. In this article, we share best practices for optimizing campaigns affected by click spam using Trackscouting's analytics solutions.

What is Click Spam?

Click spam occurs when fraudsters generate fake clicks on behalf of a user, without their knowledge or consent, to poach and steal attribution. When click spam is left unchecked and continues to occur within a campaign, it can lead to the misallocation of marketing budgets. This is because the campaign's budget will be reinvested into fraudulent sources that appear to be delivering positive results. Failure to act against click spam can also hamper your ability to monitor and optimize affected campaigns efficiently. That's why taking preventive measures against click spam is vital to guarantee that your campaigns remain effective and scalable.

How Trackscouting Protects Your Data

Click spamming leads to skewed data and wasted resources. To combat this issue, Trackscouting has developed a range of powerful tools and techniques that all clients can automatically utilize. Our advanced reporting and analytics dashboard provides real-time monitoring of your campaigns, allowing you to quickly identify suspicious activity and take corrective action as needed.

With Trackscouting's newly developed campaign blocking feature from March 2023, you can easily detect and block campaigns frequently associated with fraudulent activity based on click volume and conversion rate. Click spamming campaigns generate large volumes of fake clicks within a short period, often within a few hours. This can damage your data before our FPS kicks in and affect your key performance indicators (KPIs). Trackscouting has implemented more aggressive measures to stop spamming traffic as soon as it is detected. This prevents fraudulent activity from distorting your data while maintaining existing engagements and attribution associated with the blocked campaign. To fight click spamming, we strongly suggest monitoring your traffic closely and implementing the suggestions below in collaboration with Trackscouting.

How to Improve Campaigns Affected by Click Spam?

You can improve affected campaigns with the following best practices:

1. Optimize Campaign Structures and Tracker Limit Automatically creating granular levels in the campaign structure (campaign/ad group/creative) and filling them with networks' corresponding macros via Trackscouting Tracking URLs may seem like a time-saving solution. However, this kind of structure does not allow for true insight into traffic sources and should be avoided. Fragmented setups like these may affect the functionality of our fraud filters.To tackle this challenge, you can collaborate with affected network partners to establish a 'Tracker Limit.' This limit is added to the Trackscouting tracking URL and can be customized for each tracker to detect any excessive creation of trackers. Once the limit is surpassed, all traffic will be automatically credited to an "Unknown" tracker. This will serve as a warning to investigate particular sources during ongoing fraud prevention monitoring.
2. Conversations to Have with Networks Gathering as much evidence as possible before addressing suspected fraudulent behavior with networks is crucial. Use concrete examples to start an open-ended discussion about abnormal traffic patterns. Developing automated strategies to remove publishers who continue to provide suspicious traffic is also imperative. To begin a dialogue with networks about click spam, you can use the following indicators:Extremely low conversion ratesThe volume of clicks exceeding the target market's populationA large number of non-converting clicks outside the targeted regionExcessive and even daily tracker creationSub-sources generating almost identical numbers of non-converting clicksHigh reattribution rates on campaigns that are strictly user acquisition (UA) campaigns
3. Extremely low conversion rates
4. The volume of clicks exceeding the target market's population
5. A large number of non-converting clicks outside the targeted region
6. Excessive and even daily tracker creation
7. Sub-sources generating almost identical numbers of non-converting clicks
8. High reattribution rates on campaigns that are strictly user acquisition (UA) campaigns

By following these best practices and leveraging Trackscouting's tools, you can better protect your advertising budget from fraud, ensuring more effective and scalable campaigns.