How to detect fraudulent activities on affiliate traffic.

1. Sven Hezel
sven@24metrics.com

2. Example Company Inc.
• Monthly Marketing Spend
$ 150.000
• Commission Payout
$ 5
• Percentage of Fraud
15%
Annual Financial Damage
$ 270.000
AN OVERVIEW OF FRAUD

3. IS YOUR TRAFFIC HIGH-QUALITY?
Our research suggests that
18% of all Paid Web Traffic
is Fraudulent.
It goes further than that
with Mobile where Fraud
can be as high as 40%.
Clean
82%
Fraudulent
18%

4. COMMON BEST PRACTICES
• ARPU Analysis
• Referer URL Checks
• Affiliate Screening
• Conversion Rate Analysis
• IP Address Checks

5. THE NETWORK DIAGRAM
ADVERTISER
Network 1 Network 2
Affiliate 1 Affiliate 2 Affiliate 3
Your traffic presumably
comes from a limited
number of affiliate ID’s.
Only a careful and complex
analysis can bring your
business back on the right
track. FRAUDSTER

6. BUT IN REALITY …
ADVERTISER
Network 1 Network 2
Affiliate 1 Network 3Affiliate 2 Affiliate 3
Sub-affiliate 1 FRAUDSTER
Networks are very often
signed up as affiliates to
other networks.
Fraudsters can only be
driven away for a limited
time.

7. ISSUES WITH TRADITIOANAL SCREENING
• Analysis require at least 300 conversions
• Precious time is wasted
• Affiliates sign under multiple fake accounts
• Networks exchange offers on a daily basis
• Having to deal with cancelation isn’t helping
and fraudsters simply keep at it …

8. FIRST STEPS TO TACKLING FRAUD
Check your affiliate’s IP on
sign-up, as it might be a
proxy.
Limit countries that can
join in.
Ask for SMS validation of
their new account.
Stop wasting money
START SIMPLE.

9. CONVERSION RATE ANALYSIS
Gain new insights by
checking daily and hourly
conversion rates.
You can easily plot similar
graphs in Excel or Google
Sheets.
Clicks
Convs
Hours

10. PROXY DETECTION
Proxies are very often
identifiable just by their
name.
There are a variety of free
resources on the web to
check IP info such as
whoer.net or freegeoip.net.

11. COUNTRY DETECTION
Pixels should only be fired
after performing a GEO IP
Check.
If possible, also store city
names in your data for later
analysis.

12. IP PATTERNS & DUPLICATES
Lead campaigns should
never total more than 3% in
duplicate IP’s.
IP patterns are more subtle
and result from Modem or
3G resets.
Excel’s Pivot Tables are a
great tool in the absence of
specialized software.

13. USER AGENT ANALYSIS
Real traffic comes from a
balanced mix of browsers
and operating systems.
Anomalies are always the
result of fraud or unwanted
traffic.
Fraud Profile for Affiliate 5738

14. SESSION TIME
Session time includes the
duration a user takes to
download and install an app
or make an account on a
website.
Below-average registration
times indicate
automation/ bots.

15. REFERER URL
Direct affiliates should
always have referral links
when the product goes
through a webpage.
If this isn’t the case, then
you talk to your affiliate.

16. WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR
High conversion rates at unusual times or
extremely high (>30%) or low (<0.1%)
conversion rates is always suspicious.
An increase in traffic without prior notice
from your business partners should be carefully
analyzed.
Affiliates with dubious profiles signing up,
generally shortly after some other affiliate just
joined is a bad sign.

17. THANK YOU!
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CONCLUSION
Sven Hezel
E-mail: Sven@24metrics.com
Tel: +49 8941613283
QUESTIONS?
You can Download this presentation here:
http://www.24metrics.com/downloads/