How Advertisers Can Fight Ad Fraud

This post was created in partnership with Human

Online fraud prevention isn’t just about protecting brands and their customers. Beating bad actors can maximize spends, minimize waste, and optimize outcomes for digital advertisers, according to Geoff Stupay, vp of media strategy at cybersecurity firm Human.

But as both content and crime grow “exponentially” online, marketers themselves must take the lead in finding and fighting fraud, Stupay told an audience of brand leaders at a panel moderated by ADWEEK executive editor Alison Weissbrot in New York this month.

To keep generating value without losing ground to scammers, brands need to change how they target consumers online, said panelist Vishal Kumar, senior manager of marketplace quality for ad buying platform The Trade Desk.

“Online sales are breaking records, which means consumers are also getting bombarded by even more ads,” he said. “It’s going to be vital for brands connect with their audiences in a much more meaningful way. And the number-one way to do this is to invest in transparent and high-quality inventory.” Connected TV advertising, Kumar told the audience, offers a textbook example of how to do that.

“It’s a perfect environment for brands to both share compelling storytelling and measure performance,” he said.

Panelist Cidney Falk, business development lead in the Advertiser Trust program at LinkedIn, said the potential for wasted spending alone should motivate marketers to get aggressive about fraud.

“How much do you think marketers know or care about fraud protection, and how do we get them more engaged?” Falk said. “It comes down to wasted impressions, wasted budgets on eyeballs that are not real, and marketers not meeting the outcomes that they’re trying to reach.”

LinkedIn, for one, “is investing a lot more in CTV in the coming year,” Falk told the gathering. “Making sure that we can create more transparency and controls for our advertisers around certain areas is going to be exceptionally important for us. At the same time, “take a holistic approach,” she advised the audience. “Don’t only rely on what third parties can provide for you. Establishing really good best practices and operational objectives internally is critical to being successful.”

An ever-growing ecosystem of channels, platforms, and funnels all bring “their unique threat vectors, and opportunities for fraudsters to take advantage,” Stupay of Human noted. “It’s not enough to just look at what’s going on overall. You kind of have to dig into your own personal strategy, or your company’s strategy and ask, how are we going about driving traffic? How are we playing in this ecosystem? And then where are vulnerabilities?”

Panelists shared strategies for rooting out fraud before it can spread. “Know your customer,” said Kumal of The Trade Desk. “What are the processes behind like validating their ability to actually do business with you in the first place? Some of the fraud just starts with somebody being able to access land.”

At Human, “we take each kind of contract, look at it very carefully, and vet how these people fit the ecosystem and what their reputation is before we even like decide to do business with them,” Stupay said. Human is also publicizing large-scale threats “and putting them out in public so everyone knows about things that can happen. Education and awareness are key.”

Ultimately, collaboration holds the key to combating fraud, the panelists agreed. “We can only do so much from the LinkedIn side without our third-party partners, and with organizations like TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) or the MRC (Media Rating Council) and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), to make sure there’s standardization across the board. So I think collaboration is absolutely vital,” Falk said.

All marketers should do a “self-inventory” to identify potential weak links, said Human’s Stupay. “Ask, ‘How am I driving traffic? What am I using? What are my different channels?’ And then digging into that, ‘Do I have protection for each one of these use cases that I’m using?’ Because everything is not created equal. There’s different threats within every type of vertical that you’re using. Make sure that you have a trusted partner that’s able to attack all those issues on your behalf.”