Ad monitoring has become an essential process for any business utilizing digital ads. With ad fraud on the rise and businesses losing a lot of money without even realizing it, ensuring that your ads are working the way they should is crucial. But, no matter how noble your quest for ad monitoring is, it can still be a challenge. Monitoring ads can be time-consuming and, in some cases, impossible or ineffective due to geo-restrictions, IP blocks, and more.
Join us as we explore how a residential proxy can help improve ad monitoring. Discover how these proxies can improve the accuracy of your monitoring efforts while also circumventing detection for more reliable ad monitoring.
What Is Ad Fraud?
Ad fraud is an umbrella term that covers any malicious activity aimed at defrauding ads. In this case, businesses spend money to have their digital ad displayed on a specific website, but the web owner has no intention of actually displaying the ad the way it should. Often, the ads will be completely hidden, or they’ll use unethical tactics to interact with the ads.
This means the ad budget is used up, but the business isn’t getting any return on their ad spend. The sneaky website owner ends up with all the money, while the business gets no real traffic or sales.
Common Types of Ad Fraud
There are many different types of ad fraud, and new methods are introduced all the time as fraudsters become more adept. However, to demonstrate how advertising fraud occurs, we’ll take a look at three common types of ad fraud: click fraud, pixel stuffing, and ad stacking.
Click Fraud
Click fraud is a type of advertising fraud where fake clicks are simulated on your ad. This can be done through automated bots or operations such as click farms. To you as the advertiser, it looks like your ad is performing well as you’re getting clicks. However, when you look into conversion rates and sales, you’ll notice a different story, as bots and click farms never complete transactions in this case. This type of ad fraud is frequently used with pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Pixel Stuffing
Pixel stuffing is another type of ad fraud. In this case, your ad is being displayed on this site. However, the site owner has shrunk it down to the size of a single pixel. This means no one will be able to actually see or interact with the ad as it won’t be visible to the naked eye. However, since the ad is still technically displayed, it does pick up impressions any time someone opens the web page. This is used in ads where you pay per impression rather than per click.
Ad Stacking
Ad stacking is another type of advertising fraud that works with ads that you pay per impression. In this case, multiple ads are stacked on one another. As such, only the top ad is visible, but all the ads count impressions when the web page is opened. This way, the fraudster can profit off many different ads even when they only have limited space to display them.
Benefits of a Residential Proxy for Ad Monitoring
Now that we better understand ad fraud and some of the methods fraudsters use, we can look into solutions. The best solution is to monitor your ads frequently to ensure that they are displayed and work the way you intended.
Ad monitoring can be difficult for a number of reasons. One is that it can be difficult to monitor your ads when they’re being displayed in a different location due to geo-restrictions. Another challenge is monitoring your ads without being detected. The moment the fraudster realizes your check on your ads, they can block your IP to keep you from uncovering the fraud.
Let’s look at how residential proxies can help you navigate these challenges and the benefits of using them for ad monitoring.
Enhances Accuracy
To accurately monitor your ads, you need to be able to check all of them. Utilizing proxies for ad monitoring can enhance the accuracy of the process by enabling you to check your ads unhindered. When you use a proxy, your real IP address is hidden and a new one displayed. This means that you can check your ads no matter in which part of the world they’re being displayed by simply changing your IP to that location. Monitoring your ads as if you’re a local user will also make it possible for you to ensure they look and act the right way.
Circumvents Detection
As we mentioned, advertising fraudsters are very careful about getting caught. As such, if they detect you snooping around their site, they’ll issue an IP ban to ensure you can’t gain access to the website. If you can’t access the site, you also can’t monitor your ad and ensure it’s working correctly. With a residential proxy, you not only change your IP, but the new one is also from a real device, making the connection look authentic. As such, the website owner will think it’s a genuine user and won’t block your IP.
Prevent Ad Fraud
Even when placing your own ads on different platforms, such as your eCommerce store or social media, there’s still the risk of your ads being defrauded. However, when you use a proxy that reroutes all connections through a single server, you have much better control over your ads and keep them from becoming defrauded.
Final Thoughts
A residential proxy has many wonderful uses for businesses. These range from improving data collection to enabling multi-accounting. However, these proxies are also very beneficial when it comes to improving your ad monitoring and protecting against ad fraud. Whether you need to check your ads anonymously in other markets or want to secure your ads on your eCommerce store, residential proxies can simplify and improve the process.
