Tackling Traffic Fraud in Affiliate Networks – Admitad cases

Affiliate marketing and affiliate networks, alongside all digital marketing, are full of ongoing challenges: not everyone plays by the rules. Fraud and low-quality traffic are constant issues, presenting obstacles not only to us but also to our advertisers. Ad fraud cost forecast to grow from $100 billion in 2024 to $172 billion by 2028 which makes it a big issue for all parties involved. According to Juniper Research, 22% global ad spending was lost due to ad fraud in 2023.

Over the years, we’ve tackled these issues head-on, refining our strategies to provide our clients with traffic they can trust. This journey has turned out to be a continuous effort to maintain quality and build genuine partnerships.

What Is Traffic Fraud?

Traffic fraud in affiliate networks involves any action intended to gain unearned profits by manipulating traffic or data. $1 of every $3 spent on marketing is lost to ad fraud. Fraudsters employ tactics like using bots to inflate traffic counts, faking conversions, hijacking legitimate conversions, and even resorting to phishing or spam. Low-quality traffic, on the other hand, involves sending visitors who are not genuinely interested in an advertiser’s product or service—sometimes from irrelevant sources or regions, or through prohibited methods that don’t yield value.

How Admitad Combats Fraud

For the Admitad traffic quality control team, combatting fraud and low-quality traffic is an everyday mission. We employ advanced testing methods, continuous monitoring, and data analysis to detect both standard and unique forms of violations—some that occur for the first time, or very rarely. Our team has built a sophisticated detection system, which has evolved into a comprehensive defense structure, combining our in-house anti-fraud solutions with industry-standard tools.

Through years of constant refinement, we now have a global, multi-tiered approach to detect and prevent fraud:

• Screening Publishers and Their Traffic: At multiple levels, we assess publishers and their traffic.
• Brand Monitoring: For advertisers, we monitor brand mentions in advertising to ensure quality and compliance.
• Anomaly Detection: Our algorithms scrutinize traffic data for unusual patterns.
• Multi-Account Monitoring: We’re vigilant about identifying duplicate accounts to prevent manipulation.

One of the solutions we use (but not the only one) – is the Brand Auditor tool, that we created. Our automated monitoring service actively seeks out and identifies any malicious ads or cyber fraud before they can affect your brand, business, or budget. Brand Auditor monitors and tracks traffic anomalies across all major search engines, isolating threats based on parameters such as keywords, geography and frequency.

Why Transparency Matters

Our success is tied to our advertisers’ confidence. To foster transparency, we maintain open communication with them, offering insights and analytics that allow them to monitor traffic quality within their affiliate programs. For advertisers already using CPA channels, we recommend integrating robust attribution analytics on their sites to ensure quality tracking. Our proactive approach has proven invaluable; in cases where advertisers noticed suspicious activity, we were able to verify it quickly, adjusting our fraud detection systems for even better results.

Real-Life Fraud Cases We’ve Encountered

Through collaboration and vigilance, we’ve identified numerous fraud cases, each contributing to our learning and strengthening our systems. Here are some of our most notable cases:

Case 1: Artificial Orders from publishers

One day, we noticed a sudden spike in questionable user behavior and received complaints from several advertisers about fake orders with invalid contact information. By analyzing traffic patterns, we identified the responsible publishers and took swift action, thus protecting our advertisers. This case allowed us to improve our anomaly detection systems, and since then, complaints of this nature have almost disappeared.

Case 2: Lead Fraud Using Proxy Servers

One advertiser running a CPL (Cost Per Lead) campaign noticed an influx of leads with fake information. As we dug deeper, we found clusters of suspicious accounts driving traffic to this and similar CPL campaigns. The majority of traffic from these accounts came through proxies, suggesting fraudulent intent. After tracking down these accounts and cutting off their traffic, the issue was largely resolved. Complaints from advertisers fell to nearly zero after this intervention.

Case 3: Fake Leads and Identity Manipulation in Financial Offers

This complex case involved fraudulent applications on financial campaigns and even identity falsification. We identified patterns of unusual traffic on financial programs, revealing multiple publishers creating fake leads. Working closely with our advertisers, we blocked over a thousand accounts that were generating almost all the fraudulent traffic. This cut fake leads by 90% for that advertiser.

In a similar instance, we found a group of multi-account holders attempting to deceive us with falsified documents edited with Photoshop. When confronted, they insisted these documents were real, even going so far as to send AI-generated videos to support their claims. This case prompted us to enhance our document verification process, adding extra layers of scrutiny.

Continuous Improvement in Quality Control

Over time, our efforts have paid off. We’ve seen a steady decline in complaints and account suspensions from advertisers, a testament to our evolving approach. Yet, we know there’s always room to grow. We’re committed to enhancing our analysis and monitoring tools to detect fraud even earlier, and we’re strengthening our partnerships with advertisers to give them confidence that, with Admitad, they’ll receive genuine traffic and robust support.

This story illustrates our commitment to traffic quality as a priority in building long-term partnerships with advertisers and publishers alike.