Mobile, where there is growth, there is fraud

Everyone knows that mobile advertising is rocketing like there is no tomorrow and that includes mobile lead generation. Waves of online email submit, competition and survey sites have helped companies to massively ramp up how they operate and generate leads. But the fundamental principles are the same as with general online lead generation

‘Context is king’

While people are now surfing while on the move, context is super important in the way that you generate leads online. When people are on a mobile device, time is usually limited and this means the way that companies develop their online page flows is critical. When a user is viewing a mobile page there is little time for confusion about what that user needs to do and how a exchange of the users information can happen.

If you look at a site like comptown.uk a large amount of the offer and what needs to be filled out is presented above the fold. When trying to get clever and creative it causes the user to not really understand what is going on, which in turn can lead to users bouncing off the site on the very page where you are trying to capture their details.

A confusing sign up page can lose a mobile users interest really fast (remember they are usually on the move and have 101 distractions going on around them), you’ve got to get them interested and engaged quickly.

Average bounce rates on mobile are seen to be almost double that of the desktop counter parts, this comes from a wide range of factors but the majority include:

• Slow load times • Too hard to fill in information needed • Easy to make information errors due to on screen keyboard

The difference between mobile ad-fraud and mobile lead-fraud

There is a huge push right now to combat the ad-fraud that is costing companies huge amounts. This is due to teams of people who own apps and want to monetise through ad revenue. It has bizarrely become an industry in it’s own right with huge sums of money at stake with a Forensiq study revealing that $1bn a year is processed through ad fraud. However there is one reason why mobile fraud has been escaping many digital marketing teams. That reason is because the fraud is all IP based and for all the noise behind it, currently there is only so much you can do to catch out IP fraud.

On the other hand lead fraud is data based, not event based. This one reason makes catching the fraudsters via bad data so much more efficient. This is because you are doing matches against the lead that is being offered to you, instead of an event based CPM where you may have to pay up front. This leads to a harder time trying to make a case against fraud once the event has taken place.

If you have a lead management platform in place it allows companies to accept or reject the lead based on the criteria and specification it has set out in real time. If the lead being offered does not match the specific criteria and validations then the buyer doesn’t have to pay for the lead and all users have full reporting as to the reason why.

The biggest legal cases regarding mobile ad fraud have all originated from disagreements on whether the traffic was actually sent or not. At least with mobile lead generation and having a platform in place, this is one worry that you don’t have to think twice about when it’s correctly set up.

If you would like an insight into how we process different types of leads and the meaning of each stat then get in touch with our team