Ad fraud in the financial sector

Over the past few years, the banking and financial services landscape has transformed massively. Where once the large conglomerates and legacy banks dominated the industry, the rise of ‘Challenger Banks’, modern banks that compete directly with traditional institutions, has created a revolution in financial services.

With so many providers now competing for a share of the market, and challenger banks investing in more digital marketing tactics, traditional providers are having to adapt how they present their services to an audience. Relying solely on having a physical presence isn’t enough anymore as businesses are investing more time, research and money into reaching customers digitally.

Investing large sums of money into adopting digital channels in your marketing strategy is a smart move for financial institutions, but even more so if you know for a fact your budget is returning the maximum investment possible. ROI can be increased by investing in appropriate channels, streamlining communications, and by removing invalid traffic.

Setting Out the Facts

Invalid traffic, including advertising fraud, is any advertising engagement that is not of legitimate interest. This ranges from fake clicks from bots, competitors or even internal employees. Ad fraud is categorised as a form of invalid traffic that is generated by malicious malware with the intention to steal your ad spend.

A general lack of awareness and regulation, combined with the sophistication and adaptability of fraudsters has meant that ad fraud and other forms of invalid traffic can cost up to 30% of an advertiser’s budget.  The impact for financial service providers is further compounded with ad fraud leading to other forms of cybercrime like credit card fraud, payment fraud and bank fraud.

Ultimately, in such a complex and mechanical industry as advertising, it’s unlikely that banks and providers can gain a true understanding of how invalid traffic is affecting their bottom line without specialist assistance.

Ad Fraud vs ROI

Ultimately, where money goes, fraud follows – and this is no different in ad fraud. I’ve seen high-street banks losing a staggering $2 million a month to invalid traffic and fraud that could be redistributed to legitimate marketing activity or invested back into the business – but was instead completely wasted.

The most sophisticated fraudsters are operating completely under the radar and making millions from financial service providers, every day. No matter the channel, geography or type of financial institution, you are impacted by the direct and indirect losses of invalid traffic and ad fraud.

Intelligent Protection

The fraudsters you’re up against are constantly evolving in intelligence, which means you have to leverage sophisticated strategies to combat them.

Tap Into Machine Learning – Instead of reacting to fraud as it evolves with new rules, machine learning can mitigate fraud from known and unknown tactics and stop fraud before the fraudster gets paid. In fact, Juniper Research forecasts that by 2022, machine learning could save advertisers over $10 billion a year in ad spend that would have been wasted on fraud.

Be Full–Funnel - Often it isn’t just one person or one team, or even one business that needs access to accurate, real time performance data. By measuring and responding to traffic across your whole advertising journey, you don’t need separate solutions for different campaign types or channels.

Take Expert Advice – Many financial service providers will enlist specialist companies to advise and combat fraud and safeguard security, but proactivity in this area hasn’t yet reached their digital marketing functions. Ad fraud prevention specialists block invalid traffic at multiple levels and block it as early as possible.

Quality Data, Quality Optimisation

Invalid traffic and ad fraud are significant problems, impacting marketing teams, the c-suite and even customers. Reconciliation solutions that help remedy the consequences of fraud are useful, but preventative tools that stop invalid traffic before it hits your budget are even more effective at maximising budgets and resource efficiencies.

Removing invalid traffic creates an opportunity to capture real users and increase average revenue per user (ARPU) and life-time value (LTV). This increases profit and ensures your marketing efforts target actual prospects. A tried and trusted industry partner will balance transparency, automation and accuracy to take the burden of manual reconciliation off the financial service provider and focus on areas of protection most in need across all paid marketing channels

By stopping fraudulent bots from profiting off your advertising budget, you can gain a competitive edge over other legacy banks. With more budget, flexibility and efficiency, you can also compete against up-and-coming challenger banks and ensure you keep up in the ever-evolving financial market.

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