Edgemesh Launches Ad Protect, a Solution to Help Retail Brands Identify and Prevent Ad Fraud

Edgemesh, provider of the eCommerce acceleration platform that delivers the fastest online experiences, announced Ad Protect, a major feature upgrade to its Edgemesh Server product that identifies and protects brands against ad fraud and click fraud at the infrastructure-level – dramatically reducing retailers’ advertising budget losses due to ad fraud.

Ad spend losses to fraud will reach $68 billion globally in 2022, up from $59 billion in 2021, according to Juniper Research. The U.S. is expected to account for 35% of ad fraud losses this year, estimated to reach $23 billion. Edgemesh takes a unique approach to fighting ad fraud by combining real-time bot detection and IP reputation with machine learning to detect fraudulent clicks and then tag these visitors for real time exclusion from ad campaigns.

By analyzing the network used (VPN, datacenter, etc.), combined with the history of users’ actions, Ad Protect automatically detects bots and users who are continually clicking on ads but not generating conversions. It keeps track of the ad-click rate per visitor, and once crossing a threshold, will automatically tag that user and IP address. Edgemesh Server customers then integrate this tag with their ad platform to automatically exclude bad actors from future ad-campaigns, providing real-time adaptive campaign protection across any platform that supports retargeting including Google Adwords, Facebook, Criteo, Bing and TikTok.

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Edgemesh’s own research found that a high volume of fraudulent clicks deliver zero revenue-making impact on ad spend. In fact across its e-commerce customers, the average daily loss exceeds $5,300 for Facebook Campaigns, $5,700 per day on Google, and thousands of dollars daily more across other platforms as well. So on average, businesses using Ad Protect have the potential to save more than $180,000 per month on ad fraud just based on Facebook and Google campaigns.

“Edgemesh Server offers brands a comprehensive solution that both accelerates their online storefronts and now helps to accelerate their business by protecting their ad budgets. Digital media buy is one of our customer’s largest costs, and with Ad Protect we’re helping customers automatically defend that spend against bots, click farms and competitors so they can put money behind ads that target real customers,” said Jake Loveless, CEO, Edgemesh.

Unlike the other software approaches which simply tag the browser and use a “ping check” to determine whether the interaction is from a real user or bot-based, Edgemesh Ad Protect works at the infrastructure-level to examine user activity and requests to determine the legitimacy of the interaction with the brand’s website. Ad Protect monitors every request, header, SSL certificates, the speed with which the visitor moves from page to page, and even the browser “fingerprint” to provide a highly effective way to detect malice and prevent ad fraud.

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“We manage hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on traffic and engagement campaigns, and were astonished at how much bot traffic can skew performance,” said Abdul Alaa, CEO, Arcane Media. “We’ve implemented Edgemesh’s ad fraud solution across every brand and e-commerce store we manage, and it has altered the way our clients think about their ad strategy and spend. Within a week, clients saw an average decrease in cost-per-lead of over 28%. The improvement in return on ad spend (ROAS) makes this one of the most valuable tools for agencies.”

Edgemesh Server’s ad fraud detection and prevention service includes the following components:

• Detection: Identifying costly clicks through automated clicking via bad bots or human-based repetitive clicks of ad links
• Bot tagging and de-targeting: A core feature, bot tagging (BTAG) allows carving out exceptions to audiences, campaigns, and even display ads by leveraging the retargeting apparatus of ad platforms. By adding a single additional rule to audience definition, customers get real-time protection by utilizing the ad platform’s own retargeting smarts to remove, or de-target visitors who have displayed fraudulent behavior.
• Ad waste detection: Automatically detects users who are continually clicking on your ads but not converting. Edgemesh Server keeps track of the ad-click rate per visitor, the IP reputation score and the engagement activity for every paid session. Once crossing a threshold, Edgemesh Server will tag that user and IP address as a bad actor, allowing the real-time detargetting system to then exclude them from future ad click opportunities.

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