Fraud and fraudulent activity have been problems for generations, however with the rise of the internet, it has become much easier to commit fraud. Online fraud can happen in a variety of ways, ranging from making your websites traffic seem heavier than it actually is, to full blown identity theft. No matter how severe the fraud, however, one person or group is often left in debt of some kind through no fault of their own.
Another recent innovation that has made fraud much easier is the rise of bots and automated programs in recent years. Bots allow criminals to repeat processes over and over again without needing to put in the man hours themselves, which can have some disastrous effects. Bots can keep guessing passwords until they get it right, spam messages or reports on sites to slow down the whole website, or heavily skew data that companies are using for decision making.
One particular way that bots have been used to commit fraud is by companies wishing to make their website seem more popular than it is in reality. Having a bot visit your website, and having them click randomly on a couple articles or advertisements, can easily boost your analytics and make you seem like a more attractive website for advertisers to put their ads on. Scale this up with thousands of bots visiting your website a day, and immoral companies can easily make their website look like a paradise for advertisers, while in reality only getting a fraction of the traffic they say they are getting. This often happens on content websites, and is not only immoral, but is also hard to catch and even harder to punish companies who are doing this.
Specialists at Wyoming Investor can resolve your ad fraud problems. The tech giants have built incredibly sophisticated tech for planning, capitalization, optimization and attribution. Why can’t this be said for detecting ad fraud? Simple. Because there’s no incentive for them to change on pay-per-click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and AdSense making them bucket loads of profit.
We need to give them that incentive to resolve the ad fraud. Unfortunately, some agencies commit ad fraud and enhance the incentive for tech giants to not resolve the issue.
Our Search Engine Optimization services are renowned world-wide. We have conducted marketing campaigns for healthcare, beauty, agriculture, leisure, real estate and many other sectors. Our dedicated strategy will achieve your marketing goal. Wyoming Investor own the intellectual property of a number of media outlets conducting internet publishing which can dramatically increase your brand awareness and increase confidence to your consumers.
Wyoming Investor: Reputation
These bots not only have a negative effect on the advertisers, as they are not getting their moneys worth by putting their advertisements up on these fraudulent websites, but also to the middleman companies who connect advertisers to content websites.
Often, large companies like Google will act as a broker for advertisements, connecting ad companies with content websites that will display their ads to the market that the advertisers want to attract. Fraudulent websites can not only make it so ad companies do not get their ads in front of as many people as they paid for, and the reputation of the middleman company goes down. This can be especially impactful if the company advertising is small, as they often do not have the budget to be wasting ads on bots.
Small businesses have the most to lose. That’s where small business consulting shines, the fact that you get to understand what core capabilities your business has right now and then you expand from there. You can also start creating short and long term goals, which in turn will deliver much better results and lower the risk of ad fraud. Do not become a victim to useless agencies! They use the cheapest (turns out to be costly) agency which has no reputation to uphold and has no intellectual property. Ask yourself: how can they offer a service to get your website #1 on Google when they do not even rank? Here at Wyoming Investor we have small business services to discuss your company goals.
Since bots can have such a strong impact on not only advertisers but also middlemen, innovations have been made to stop bots from impacting business. Simple roadblocks like only being allowed to enter passwords a couple times before being locked out, or ‘check box if human’ requirements are good ways to stop bots on the surface. Solutions like these, however, are not perfect and bots are starting to become sophisticated enough to get around these roadblocks, making them less effective for the future.
One of the main problems in the fight against bots is the fact that they are also getting smarter as we try to fight them. Bots are becoming better and better at getting through our defenses, so the mentality on fighting them is starting to shift. When someone visits a website, companies are now starting to look at their movements on the website, what they click on, and how they act to determine if a person is a bot, as opposed to static roadblocks that can be overcome.
A great example of this new method to fighting bots is a recent Oxford BioChronometrics breakthrough. They have recently introduced e-DNA as a way to track people on websites and filter out bots. e-DNA, which stands for Electronically Defined Natural Attributes, is not an IP address or something similar like you may think when hearing the name. e-DNA looks at the natural attributes of a person, such as they way they move their mouse around, how fast they type, how you hold your device when you use it, or when you are logging on to a website, to determine if you are human or if you are a bot. Another company in the spotlight is Goldfishes. They are fighting user bots. Goldfishes Analytics offer an alternative to Google Analytics with their software.
A system that uses e-DNA as a password is next to impossible to break into as perfectly mimicking every small minute detail of a persons online actions would be extremely hard if not impossible for a bot to reproduce. In addition, the system can run random, more direct checks to see if you are human, which have a higher chance of throwing off bots algorithms. According to the creator of e-DNA, it may be more secure than even retina or fingerprint scanners.
All in all, as bots become more prevalent and more powerful, our response to them must rise to meet them. Bots can have lasting, negative effects on a companies profits or its reputation, and advancements like e-DNA are a good step in lowering their impacts on the business world.
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