Mumbai: TrafficGuard, headquartered in Perth, Australia, is a global leader in advertising verification, offering a comprehensive suite of solutions to help advertisers optimise their campaigns. By leveraging extensive data and expertise, TrafficGuard ensures enhanced search advertising performance through real-time verification of engagement and proactive prevention of invalid traffic.
With a presence in key locations like Singapore, the UK, Brazil, India, and the US, TrafficGuard serves a diverse clientele of over 3000 customers worldwide. As a key component of Adveritas, a publicly traded company on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: AV1), TrafficGuard plays a crucial role in safeguarding ad spending and maintaining the integrity of advertising data.
Indiantelevision.com in an email interaction spoke to the TrafficGuard South Asia & India vice president Himanshu Nagrecha.
Edited Excerpts:
On TrafficGuard’s official launch and some of the initial challenges and obstacles that TrafficGuard faced during its launch phase
TrafficGuard was officially established in 2015, primarily to protect the advertising industry. Our headquarters are located in Perth, Australia. TrafficGuard offers a comprehensive solution to measure, control and prevent ad fraud, with the aim of strengthening the digital advertising ecosystem and enabling fraud.
Initially, our first challenge was to convince marketers of the importance of ad fraud protection. Today, we can say with confidence that we have successfully overcome this challenge by taking a proactive approach to ensure companies' performance data remains clean and help them scale and optimise their ads with confidence.
On the USP that makes it stand out in the market
TrafficGuard is a trusted platform that secures advertising spending from leading global companies across a variety of industries. Our unique approach to combating digital ad fraud involves using a multi-channel strategy. The key features that set us apart are real-time (IVT) blocking of invalid traffic before it affects campaigns. It is based on predictive machine learning algorithms that continuously improve fraud detection.
Our platform's advanced machine learning models deliver the first truly predictive anticipatory fraud prevention, enabling real-time detection and mitigation of IVT. We take a surgical and transparent approach, leveraging cross-channel data and approximately 200 fraud indicators to eliminate IVT cases while protecting valid traffic volumes and addressing a key weakness of legacy solutions. We provide clear and defensible reports on each invalid assignment, demonstrating our commitment to transparency.
We understand that digital advertising involves multiple stakeholders, so we protect the entire ecosystem and serve brands, mobile apps, ad agencies, ad networks and other intermediaries online. Unlike traditional risk management tools, TrafficGuard focuses on optimising digital advertising performance by giving all parties access to fraud-free data to optimise campaigns faster and more effectively, resulting in higher reach, more efficient user acquisition, higher user lifetime value, better advertising ROI and stronger. . advertiser-vendor partnerships.
On TrafficGuard's long-term vision as a global advertising verification company
At TrafficGuard, we strongly believe that making advertising decisions based on accurate data leads to the best performance. Trusting the data enables us to act swiftly and boldly to achieve optimal results. We are committed to ensuring that advertisers don't pay for fake or phoney engagement, regardless of where you advertise online or your budget size.
With our traffic verification and budget protection services, we empower businesses to gain the clarity they need to unlock the full potential of their advertising efforts. Our goal is to offer an all-encompassing solution that safeguards advertisers' spend across various channels, thereby enhancing campaign effectiveness and return on investment (ROI). By using our services, advertisers can confidently run campaigns, knowing they are protected and can optimise their strategies for success.
On TrafficGuard’s plan to adapt to the evolving landscape of digital media and incorporate new technologies to better serve its clients
Besides improving on the technology, we are continuously listening to the customer as well as adapting our product to new fraudulent tactics with the use of AI & ML. We have solutions like custom validation and shadow campaign which helps not only to block invalid traffic but gives clients the opportunity to customise their campaign to reach real targeted users that have a higher propensity to convert. We are also in the process of developing our social product ensuring that advertisers can protect their ecosystem as a whole.
In addition to advancing our technological capabilities, our traffic monitoring system remains vigilant by actively engaging with customer feedback. In TrafficGuard we use AI and ML techniques to combat the ever-evolving landscape of fraudulent strategies, these tools empower us not only to root out invalid traffic with precision but also to extend a helping hand to our clients. We've introduced features such as custom validation and shadow campaigns, enabling us to not only identify and eliminate invalid traffic but also allow clients to tailor their campaigns for optimal engagement with genuinely interested users, and increasing conversion potential. Furthermore, As the horizon expands, we are currently immersed in the creation of a comprehensive social solution, one that grants advertisers the power to shield their entire ecosystem.
On the company’s plan to position itself to take advantage of the anticipated growth and trends in the Indian ad tech market
Globally, ad fraud is a major challenge and India is no exception. As the digital economy continues to grow and brands increase their ad spend, ad fraud tactics become more sophisticated, resulting in higher ad spend each year. In particular, Google's PPC, mobile acquisition and affiliate campaigns have an average of 5-25 per cent invalid traffic.
For performance marketers seeking growth and user acquisition, an independent ad fraud solution is essential to protect campaigns from malicious actors and ensure quality traffic. This means a combination of real, genuine users who convert efficiently and clean data that enables optimization. Working with Ad Tech marketers this year confirmed the prevailing concern about ad fraud and frustrated marketing budgets. Marketers are actively looking for reliable solutions that cover all stages of the marketing funnel, including PPC, mobile app UA, affiliate and social channels.
On the essential steps and best practices to mitigate the risk of ad fraud and invalid traffic
Preventing fraud is better than fixing fraud at a later stage. The right thing to do is to have it in place at the very beginning of your digital advertising journey. This will help you to get cleaner traffic and aid your understanding of which channels actually work for you and optimise efficiently based on this.
Ad fraud is a long-term prevention, as we know that it will not go away and will continue to become complicated and complex as digitization progresses. Finding a third-party, non-biased partner is key to ensuring that you are protected.
You also require an ad fraud partner that can cover omnichannel & full funnel solutions. Ad fraud occurs at every stage in one form or another. To optimize more effectively, it’s essential that an ad fraud prevention solution can cover the majority of all of your channels so that the data is clean and consistent.
On AI playing an integral part in detecting and preventing ad fraud
Ad fraud aimed at exploiting advertising budgets requires a proactive approach to effectively combat advanced ad fraud. Artificial intelligence, which has been around for decades, has seen significant advances, especially in algorithms, processing power and storage capacity, making it mainstream. The use of artificial intelligence, especially machine learning (ML), can offer advertisers greater efficiency and accuracy compared to manual analysis. ML solutions have already proven effective in detecting fraudulent activity in real-time, reducing potentially harmful effects.
Notably, research by Statista shows that ML solutions will save $3.5 billion in ad spend in Asia Pacific in 2022, highlighting the role of AI and ML in protecting advertisers from fraud and protecting their investments. Thanks to extensive, fast and predictive data analysis, these technologies allow advertisers to detect anomalies and prevent significant damage before they occur, strengthening their efforts to combat ad fraud and protect their interests.
On blockchain technology’s role in revolutionising the transparency and security of ad tech industries globally
Blockchain technology has emerged as a pioneering solution in the advertising industry, revolutionising secure and transparent collaboration between advertisers and publishers. Unlike traditional advertising systems, which are plagued by challenges such as ad fraud and lack of transparency, blockchain provides a decentralised and falsifiable digital ledger that records all advertising transactions. The main advantage of using blockchain in advertising is its ability to effectively combat ad fraud.
Ad fraud, often caused by bots and fake clicks, has resulted in significant financial losses for advertisers. However, blockchain allows advertisers to create a more reliable system to ensure that their ads reach real users. In addition, the implementation of blockchain in advertising provides more accurate and comprehensive data views. Advertisers and publishers can access real-time data on ad performance and audience demographics. With this information, advertisers can refine their targeting strategies and improve campaign performance, while publishers can optimise ad delivery and increase revenue.
On the key strategies that marketers should adopt to stay ahead of the competition and maximise their ad spending
To stay ahead of the competition and maximize advertising spend, marketers should implement several key strategies.
An audience-centric approach to advertising requires a deep understanding of target audience preferences, pain points and behaviours. This data strategy allows you to create customised and effective advertising campaigns that respond to the right people. Marketers use data analytics and artificial intelligence technologies to gain insight into customer data and ad performance metrics, allowing them to make data-driven decisions, optimise campaigns in real-time, and identify new opportunities.
In addition, implementing a multi-channel marketing strategy helps to reach the target audience on different platforms and devices, increasing brand awareness and attracting potential customers. Creating quality, relevant and valuable content plays a critical role in engaging your audience, driving user retention and driving word-of-mouth marketing. Finally, regular measurement and analysis of ad performance are essential to evaluate campaign effectiveness and understand the return on investment (ROI) so that marketers can effectively allocate their budgets. By following these strategies, marketers can navigate a dynamic environment, outperform competitors and ensure that their advertising spend delivers optimal results.
