Protecting Your Ad Campaigns from Ad Fraud

/in , /by

Ad fraud poses a risk to the ad tech industry compromising the technology industry as a whole. This causes nearly 60% of digital display ad budgets to be lost due to fraud cases annually, according to the ANA and White Ops, 2016. Most ad fraud focuses mainly on non-human traffic that is not visible to humans and is misrepresented by fraudulent publishers. These include simple bots, sophisticated bots, botnets, invisible ads, arbitrage, domain spoofing, site bundling, ad injection, cookie stuffing and click farms

Why is Ad Fraud Difficult to Curb?

The digital markets enable ad fraud to thrive due to the nature of programmatic advertising marketplace as an open market environment with innovations that enable fraudsters to thrive. The programmatic environment also has misaligned incentives across its supply chain that causes inertia and passive treatment in addressing the ad fraud problem.

How to Protect Your Ad Campaigns against Ad Fraud

In order to optimize your ad campaigns, you must ensure that you look out for ad fraud cases to optimize visibility and brand safety of your ad campaigns. The nature of programmatic advertising allows for the use of the long-tail website which becomes hosts of ad fraud. Ad fraud can be curbed by handpicking website placements and taking a publisher-centric approach to ad campaigns when dealing with both public and private market purchases. Adwatcher.com advises adopting extra vigilance, especially when making audience-based ad campaigns in order to mitigate against ad fraud. This can be achieved through the following process:

Use Pre-Bid Contextual Data Segments

This is done by leveraging contextual brand safety segments during ad purchases in order to protect your ad campaign and making them available through the digital signal processor. Data from providers such as comScore is pre-bid hence minimizes chances of fraud making it easier than filtering it after purchase. This enables selection of segments with invalid traffic and visibility tiers ensuring that the ad campaigns not only avoid fraud but also are visible.

Source for an Ad Verification Vendor

Ad verification vendors, such as Integral Ad Science, ensure access to campaign metrics for ad campaigns, that enhance visibility and access to, invalid traffic thus ensuring safety for the brand. This requires having your own ad server, in which you incorporate the vendor’s tracking code in the ad tags.

Analyse the Campaign Data

Audit the ad campaigns for signs of fraud after receiving metrics like invalid traffic levels and use the information to optimize the ad campaigns by shutting down low-quality publishers and placements and reallocate your budget to higher-quality sites.

Maintain a Universal Blacklist

Blacklists are lists of domains that ensure that your ads are served elsewhere, which if handled well, should block low-quality sites from your campaigns. This may provide a competitive advantage against other, less-diligent advertisers.

Adopt Private Marketplaces Deals

Most fraudulent publishers do not access private marketplaces since they lack sales or ad ops teams to support such deals hence making it a safer option for ad campaigns.

What Are The Best Ways To Get Online Exposure for New Products and Services?

/in , /by


The success of any business, or product, depends directly on social influence and exposure gains. More exposure means that more people see what you have to offer, and why your business or product is a better choice than your competitors. Here are the best ways you can raise your online exposure profile.

Social Media Marketing

If your company does not have a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page, you are missing out an important part of your marketing strategy and a huge opportunity for growth. Social media has grown in importance in the online marketing world significantly in the past ten years, and it has the power to reform the rankings of successful businesses and put yours at the top. Being able to reply individually to all customers – whether they are reviewing your service or product, sharing a complaint, or asking a question  – will show that you really make time for your clients, and care more about them than the contents on their bank account. Google+ has also gained a lot of traction in the past couple of years and is able to rival the daily users of even the dominant social media page Facebook. Having eye-catching titles that come out on top of a Google search for your specific niche will encourage more customers to try your product than someone further down the list. There is also the opportunity to do competitions and promotions across your social media accounts, where the conditions are sharing the pages and following all accounts that your company have to offer. Therefore promoting your business, without having to spend the time physically sharing it.

Blogger Outreach

Getting as many positive reviews about both your brand and products out there as possible will be a great way of gaining exposure. Get a positive review on a high traffic website, and you’ll see your sales rocket. Professional journalists or bloggers tend to have a loyal following of readers that will trust their reviews and recommendations, and if they have a large following, you will be able to reach a mass amount of people overnight. However, it can give you an endless stream of work if you are approaching bloggers individually and the promotion of your company could potentially read too much like an advert, turning off interested customers. Luckily, there are companies that help to bridge the gap between your business and the blog websites; simply reading through a review of FATJOEs Blogger Outreach Service will show you how simple it can be to reach your market, without doing all the legwork yourself. Companies that offer these services have creative writers that work your link in by using a natural, non-affiliated, anchor text in a guest blog catered to the host blog’s style, to ensure it isn’t overly promotional.

Create YouTube Videos Showing Off Your Products and Services

Not only can you embed any videos you make onto your website, but the comments section allows for further feedback from your customers. The videos themselves will allow potential customers to have a more in-depth look at your products and can be very persuasive if you manage to weave in a strong sales pitch. Customers can also gain a greater understanding of your services if you create a video addressing some common questions. If you have a unique style or way of doing things, you can display that here. It’s a chance to be personable with people who are interested to know more about your business, so keep it friendly and engaging.

There are many more ways to gain online exposure for your business, but these examples above are the most surefire way of increasing your visibility online.

5 Marketing Tactics to Reach Your Demographic

/in , /by

It is important for businesses to promote the right message to the right customer. Yet, choosing the right marketing channels can often be complex, especially when attempting to promote your brand to a specific audience. To ensure your success, read the following five marketing tactics to reach your demographic.

1. A Social Media Strategy

Facebook has approximately 1.5 billion users, which proves the large majority of planet Earth is using social media to connect with loved ones, colleagues, acquaintances and, of course, businesses. Any company hoping to succeed online must, therefore, have a strong social media presence.

Yet, with so many online campaigns to compete with, you might find it difficult knowing how or where to start – or you might be tempted to replicate your competitors’ post. However, those dedicated to developing a solid presence and connecting with their key demographic must create original, engaging social media posts that boost brand recognition and increase traffic. Firstly, consider your brand and who you’re marketing too. If you’re appealing to Millenials, then speak their language. Network and connect with Instagram and Twitter stars, converse with your customers and be unique.

2. A Video Marketing Campaign

Video marketing has easily become one of the most compelling forms of social media marketing, with people watching more daily minutes of video on Facebook over YouTube. Videos are not only engaging, but they are incredibly shareable, too – so, if you do it well, you can trust people will share your content with their followers, which can boost your online reach. It might, therefore, be helpful to enlist the help of video marketing experts, such as working-beautifully.co.uk.

3. Traditional Marketing Tactics

Many modern businesses are focusing all their attention developing engaging, creative online marketing campaigns; however, it is still beneficial to focus on a traditional marketing strategy to reach your demographic. It is important to define your target market to identify how they commonly consume information. For example, most people over the age of 55 still consume marketing and information via traditional printed press.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Companies striving to connect with their target audience in the digital world must boost their website’s ranking in the search engines. It is vital to get to grips with the various SEO tactics that can help improve your search rankings, so you can maximize your online visibility and drive traffic to your website. For example, you could increase your site’s load time, utilize keyword optimization and embark on an effective outreach program.

5. A Content Marketing Strategy

If you want to reach your demographic, you must start creating content that will appeal to your audience. Segment your audience to produce different forms of content that will increase your reach. Video marketing might be one of the most powerful engagement tools, but there are also other forms of content to target your audience, such as blog posts, case studies, infographics, white papers and podcasts.

Aim to create engaging, informative content that complements your branding, which can establish your business as a thought leader. It is, therefore, a great way to help users make an informed decision regarding your brand, products and services, while increasing your trust and credibility within an industry.

The Benefits Of Mobile Apps For Your Brand

/in , /by

Lots of the most successful companies have mobile apps for their customers and clients at the moment. However, many small business owners are yet to take the step. With that in mind, this post will highlight some of the benefits of releasing a mobile app for your business. Hopefully, this article will set the record straight once and for all.

Benefit 1: You’ll reach more people

There is no getting away from the fact that consumers like using mobile apps when making purchases. That is because it’s convenient, fast, and reliable. Also, your application will appear in relevant app stores, so some people might download it having never encountered your company before.

Benefit 2: You’ll sell more products or services

The ease with which consumers can make purchases using mobile apps means they tend to spend a little more than they otherwise would have done. In most instances, they only have to click a couple of buttons to spend their cash, so you’ll sell more products or services.

Benefit 3: You’ll have direct access to your customers

When customers download mobile apps, they give you direct access to their smartphones. You can place advertising or news alerts on your app to ensure you always get the best results from any new marketing strategies.

If you’re ready to release a mobile app after reading that information, you just need to build a relationship with professional developers. You’ll also want to make sure your company’s CTO takes a look at the infographic below.


Designed by Global App Testing

Selling Your Products: DIY Or Distributors?

/in , /by

When you manufacture a product that you are proud of, the goal of your business is to get that product into the hands of as many people as possible.

There are two primary options for this:

DIY Selling

As a DIY seller, you will be responsible for:

  • Selling the product for yourself. This can mean pitching and selling to retail stores; selling the product online using an ecommerce site; or selling through a third party.
  • Dealing with customer issues, returns, and refunds.
  • You will also be responsible for photographing the product to be sold online.
  • You will package and send all products.

The alternative option…

Distributor Selling

A distributor effectively acts as a middleman, so your products are no longer your responsibility when they have left your warehouse.

  • The distributor will buy your products directly, and then sell them on wherever they see fit.
  • A distributor will usually sell to a retail store. The store is then responsible for customer service, sending the items out if they sell online, and all the associate work.

When you have a product to sell, it’s vital that you work out which is best for you. Below is an overview of all the different areas you have to consider, as well as some suggestions as to which option might best suit your needs.

Workload

If workload is a problem for you, then you may want to consider distributor selling. After all, you’re a manufacturer; you just produce the product. You may not have the skills and connections required to pitch the products to store; nor do you have the time to build a good customer service department or send large amounts of packages on a daily basis.

If you opt for DIY selling, then you have to be aware that your workload is likely to be substantial. You’re going to be responsible for the entire process; the manufacturing of the product, the pitching to stores, the advertising, the sales, and the customer service. If you are a small business then this is usually manageable due to the smaller quantities of products you are responsible for. Larger businesses, dealing with higher product numbers, may find this more difficult; outsourcing some of these tasks to a distributor will likely be beneficial.

Profits

Of course, it’s important to consider which of the above options will make you the most money.

It is easy to assume that DIY selling is the winner here, but there are hidden costs that you have to be aware of. When you sell your own products, you can charge the retail price for them, which should mean that you make more money. Distributors will buy at a wholesale price, which is usually substantially lower than the retail price.

However, with DIY selling — if you want to do it right — you are going to incur additional experiences. You’re going to have to find top Magento developers to help you build the most user-friendly ecommerce store; you will need to pay for web space and a domain name; you’re going to have to take product photographs; and you’re going to have to pay shipping costs to get the items to customers. You will have to run the numbers and ensure that these costs are factored into your purchase price.

Despite this, DIY selling is more lucrative if you are a small business, so stick with this method if it is working for you. As you grow in future — or if you are already anticipating a high number of orders, you may want to consider expanding into distributor selling.

Simplicity

When it comes to evaluating the choices on the basis of simplicity, there is a clear winner: distributor selling. Distributor selling takes a huge number of problems off your hands; you don’t need to worry about marketing, pricing, interacting with customers, or any other such issues. You can just focus on what you’re good at; making the best product you possibly can.

Involvement In The Business

As useful as the simplicity of distributor selling is, it does rather separate you from the process. This is useful, but it also means that — ultimately — your business is in the hands of others.

This separation from your end customer can be problematic, especially when considering the future of your business. You will not have the opportunity to directly see what customers are buying, which products are doing well, and which are performing poorly. Instead, you will get this information second-hand, often months after the data was collected; you only find out when the distributor places another order.

If you’re in the early days of your business, you need customer feedback. You need to know, as quickly as possible, which items are proving a hit– so you can make more of them. You also need to know which items aren’t really working out; you shouldn’t keep manufacturing a product which is not selling well. Gathering this data for yourself with DIY selling is worth doing, so this may be your best choice in the founding years of your business.

By the time you have been in business for awhile, the need for immediate feedback and direct customer interaction is reduced. You will have built a name and a reputation, and you should also have honed your business instincts so you can have an idea of what products might be a success.

So Which Is Best?

Reading through the above, the solution is rather stark.

If you are a new business, a small business with no immediate plans for growth, or a lifestyle business, then your best option is almost certainly DIY selling. You have more control, you have access to the data, and you stand to make more money from individual sales. It’s unlikely businesses of this size are producing enough products to make selling for wholesale price a viable option.

If you are a medium to large business, or have immediate expansion plans that want to turn into a reality, then distributor selling might be the best choice for you. You can focus more on your product and less on your sales techniques, and you’ll be manufacturing a high enough volume to make wholesale prices worthwhile.

Hopefully this guide has been able to assist you in making the right decision for your company. Good luck.