Suppose you’re an organization that wants to promote its products, services, or causes to the public. In that case, it’s understood that you’ve found online ad campaigns to be increasingly valuable to your business.
Retargeting ads, for example, can be helpful when you’re seeking to engage your consumers and direct them to your website.
Like other forms of online advertising, retargeting ads can leave your business susceptible to ad fraud. Fraudsters implement bot programs when engaging with online ads, and retargeting ads fall under this umbrella.
Once you understand how bot program usage can lead to fraud, you can move forward with taking the necessary steps to protect your retargeting ad campaigns as you continue in your marketing efforts.
What Are Retargeting Ads?
The first thing that must be understood is that retargeting ads are directed toward consumers. These are consumers that could become future customers and have visited your website in the past.
The difference between them and others is they didn’t take any action while on your website, including:
- Making a purchase
- Filling out a subscription form
- Watching informative videos
- Sharing a blog post
Tracking cookies are deployed via your marketing ads. They are to identify the people that visit your website and better serve them with personalized content.
As the marketer, you buy ad space through a demand-side platform. Which integrates solutions like the supply-side platform, and you occupy space on other websites.
An example is a consumer searching for gluten-free pasta on health food websites. However, they leave the website before buying anything. When they visit another site, they might see ads via the SSP that show sales and deals for gluten-free pasta-related products.
If you want to ensure you’re able to recapture leads and convert them into paying customers retargeting ads are one tactic that can be used.
Retargeting ads can recapture leads and convert them into customers.
Retargeting ads can increase your company engagement rates by upwards of 400%. This increase is because retargeted ads show consumers content they’ve expressed past interest in.
This makes them keener to find out more by engaging with the ad.
How Likely Is Bot Fraud to Affect Your Retargeting Campaigns?
Retargeting ads work based on previous consumer website visits but are still susceptible to ad fraud. This can happen with any online advertising, not just retargeting ad campaigns.
Some sources don’t inform companies of the risk of online ad campaigning. Most use the selling point that the ads are too complex for fraudsters, but if you understand how ad campaigns work, it is more complex than it seems.
While there are extra steps the fraudster has to take, more is needed to deter them entirely. This is because fraudsters continue to update their practices.
They are using more modern techniques and technology.
For example, fraudsters can easily pass traditional anti-bot security using CAPTCHA. Once they are past the CAPTCHA, they can create the logic to move from one webpage to another destination site.
Once the site is reached, they will click on the presented ad content. Which means all of this can come relatively easily to someone with a basic understanding of coding. After the initial setup, the bot can run on its own.
In some cases, the fraudster will use an IP masker to ensure that the webpage doesn’t realize the same bot is repeatedly moving. Again, this process is slightly more complex than others, but this doesn’t reduce the risk of ad fraud altogether.
Some fraudsters hope you lull yourself into a false sense of security, leaving your retargeting ads vulnerable to attacks. We recommend that you take the safe route and take the necessary measures to protect your ad campaigns.
How Does Retargeting Fraud Hurt Your Marketing?
Now that you’ve got some background in retargeting fraud, it’s essential to understand the impact it can have. The most significant impacts are as follows:
Increased Digital Ad Spend with Lowered ROI: When it comes to ad fraud, the most obvious impact is that it causes you to spend more on your ads without seeing the desired conversions increase.
This can negatively affect your ad spend, impacting your overall return on investment.
Potential TCPA Violations: If a bot clicks on a form on your website, it will fill out the form to finish the conversion process. Bots aren’t actual people; therefore, to fill out the form, it will need to borrow from the data profiles of your actual customers.
Because the bot is using accurate data, it can lead to consumers receiving ads they weren’t interested in, leading to complaints. If this continues, your business could face potential TCPA violations ranging in cost from $500-$1,500.
Damage to Brand Reputation: Another common issue associated with retargeting ad fraud is that it can hurt the brand image you’ve worked to build.
This can also happen if you face TCPA violations. Mainly because your violations can become headlines. Together this leads to an increase in negative attention, which affects future business dealings.
Skewed Marketing Metrics: To make the best decisions for your business, it’s crucial to review the data the company has collected. When you use retargeting ads, this data can become skewed.
For example, if a bot is working behind the scenes of your ad campaign, it can cause you to believe specific topics are more popular than they are. Because of this false popularity, it can lead you to dedicate more marketing funds to these topics, which causes you to waste your budget.
As mentioned before, the increase in spending with lower conversions is a warning sign.
Stop Ad Fraud in Your Retargeting Ad Campaigns
Are you still asking what you can do to halt retargeting fraud? One method is to use advanced fraud solutions to detect the use of bots and stop the activity before it generates false leads.
When you can identify and track where the fraud begins, you can then pinpoint websites that cause issues. Further ensuring your campaigns aren’t displayed on these websites.
You should be able to access the data that tracks and flags fraud and then escalate the fraud problem.
Contact Real Performance Marketing to get the most out of your chosen solution. Let us help you stop fraudsters before they cost you the clicks you’ve worked hard for.