From email phishing to large-scale ransomware schemes, it can feel like digital fraud is everywhere. In advertising, the need for constant vigilance against shape-shifting threats is no picnic. But before you give in to the anxiety, take comfort knowing that we have a very potent weapon at our disposal for combatting the ever-changing threat that is ad fraud. It’s artificial intelligence (AI), and it belongs in every fraud detection arsenal.
Advertisers readily depend on AI and machine learning for things like email marketing and lead scoring, but surprisingly few marketers consider using it for fraud detection. That’s a mistake, because only AI has the scale and power to ferret out the most sophisticated fraud schemes and the anomalous patterns created by automated botnets, device farms, emulators, and other sources of invalid traffic.
AI picks up where conventional fraud weapons leave off
Traditional rules-based anti-fraud tactics and even sophisticated invalid traffic detection (SIVT) detection standards—while better than nothing—lack the scalability and responsiveness required to address today’s highly adaptive fraud techniques. In the face of unprecedented, immense, and costly fraud operations engineered specifically to fool legacy detection, AI is not so easily fooled.
The applications of AI take diverse forms ranging from speech recognition to chatbot interactions to machine learning, which is the process of feeding a computer raw data so it can autonomously learn and improve that learning over time. And in the world of fraud detection, it is machine learning specifically that is the key to identifying and filtering invalid traffic.
The gold standard of AI fraud prevention & detection
Discovering the fraud patterns created by the most experienced and savvy bad actors can only be accomplished with a combination of data mining, machine learning, and human oversight.
Indeed, an expert human team is always needed to:
- Judge what is not plausible, intentional human behavior
- Transform raw data into features (an individual measurable property) that better represent the underlying problem to the predictive models
- Recalibrate algorithms
With those components in place, anxiety about fraud doesn’t need to take over your life. Having AI on your team ensures that your defense can stifle the most threatening and scalable forms of fraud, keeping your traffic clean and your media spend legit.
For a deeper look at how AI works to combat ad fraud, get our eBook: How AI and Machine Learning Take the Adrenaline Out of Fraud. Or contact sales@impact.com to get started with a comprehensive anti-fraud defense now.
