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Reputation and traffic quality are crucial in online advertising and affiliate marketing. Brands, developers, ad networks, affiliate agencies and others involved strive to build long-lasting relationships and provide reliable sources for global ad campaigns. Ad fraud is one of the most complex and delicate matters that poses a threat to these relationships.
It’s estimated that around $100 billion will be lost to fraudsters in 2023. On average, 33% of traffic in the first six months of 2020 was fraudulent. The danger is real.
There are however tools that provide ad fraud protection to marketers, and FraudScore is one of them.
FraudScore Review: All About it
FraudScore is an independent (third-party) anti-fraud solution. Established in 2015, the solution has gained a reputation as a dynamic and trustworthy tool. Developed by a team of ad fraud experts, data scientists, and digital marketers, FraudScore is trusted worldwide by direct advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks, mobile developers etc.
FraudScore is one of the few solutions on the market that works with both mobile and desktop traffic. The tool provides protection against ad fraud in all its forms including impressions fraud, click fraud, affiliate fraud and mobile installs fraud.
There is a multitude of impressive features which you can learn about in our review.
Features & Benefits (8 kill Features of FraudScore)
- Covers all the stages of the ad funnel – starting from prebid & impressions level, to clicks, conversions and installs, as well as post-install events analysis. There are special anti-fraud tools for each type of traffic / stage of the ad funnel. This approach gives FraudScore an opportunity to be an all-in-one anti-fraud solution able to process various types of ad campaigns.
- Know-how approach to traffic analysis – it’s important to mention that FraudScore doesn’t work with a binary approach as some other solutions on the market do. Instead of a black-and-white verdict – “fraud” or “not fraud” – FraudScore applies a so-called “fraud score” method (hence the company name). Each install or conversion, channel, traffic source, offer, etc… gets a specific fraud score – an evaluation that shows the probability of ad fraud in each particular case, with a deep and detailed explanation of fraud patterns found. FraudScore analyses over 150 metrics and fraud algorithms, and provides results that are divided into four traffic quality categories: Good traffic, Low Index Fraud, Middle Index and High Index Fraud. This unique approach gives clients a reliable way to build strong fraud cases and explain their position for every incident, while also allowing room for negotiations.
- Transparent and user-friendly reports – The FraudScore team has managed to develop ad fraud reports that are recognized by marketers as one of the easiest to use. FraudScore managers have experience in online advertising and they have used their knowledge to design reports that can be understood and analyzed by marketers that don’t specialize in fraud. There are options to drill down the fraud reports from various slices: from affiliates, offers and advertisers to all sub-affiliates, IPs, or different GEOs, detected fraud types or sources and many more. Moreover, all reports can be shared with partners via Excel, a short link or a PDF file, or you can even set up accounts for your traffic partners.
- Works with both mobile and web traffic – a very important feature – the ability to process both mobile and web campaigns. FraudScore prevention and detection algorithms not only cover all the stages of the ad funnel but are capable to do so for both mobile and web traffic. As nowadays marketers usually drill into various scenarios and traffic sources, this feature is a big plus.
- Unbiased results – we’ve already mentioned that FraudScore is an independent third-party solution. What this means is that FraudScore is not affiliated with any advertising platforms, agencies, or providers. FraudScore is unbiased and doesn’t take anyone’s side in traffic quality evaluations. This sets FraudScore apart from many other fraud solution services.
- Personal manager and fraud case support – every FraudScore client gets a personal manager. When the client needs an explanation or support in reading the report and using FraudScore data in arbitrage, the FraudScore analytics team joins the arguments and helps in negotiations as a third-party anti-fraud provider.
- Quick and easy integration with the industry’s lead platforms (HasOffers, Affise, Offerslook, FuseClick, AppsFlyer, Adjust, AppMetrica, RedTrack.io, Cake, Everflow). Option to integrate via API, PostBack, Pixel, JStag etc… the FraudScore team can also implement custom integrations.
- A 30-day free trial – FraudScore offers a one-month trial period, with no restrictions for the system capacities. Marketers are welcome to test the system, investigate its reliability and use FraudScore’s team support to read the reports and build fraud cases. FraudScore’s team even encourages marketers to try several anti-fraud solutions at a time and compare the results apples-to-apples.
Product Range
As we’ve already mentioned, FraudScore has separate solutions for different types of traffic – from DSPs, to CPM, CPC, CPA and CPI. We’ll try to cover it all and give some exclusive insights:
- FraudScore Action – developed for CPI, CPA, CPL traffic analysis, and is widely used by advertisers, CPA networks, and advertising agencies. The product identifies fraud and gives extensive evidence and reports to build fraud cases. The reporting system allows drilling down to numerous slices: affiliates, advertisers, affiliateSubs (1-5), affiliate managers, sources, countries, geos, etc… The reports can be sorted by any parameter including the fraud score, the percentage of ad fraud, the amount of fraudulent conversion, and more.. FraudScore’s system also automatically reports on the top-10 most fraudulent offers and affiliates with an option to drill down to detailed statistics.
- SmartReject – Smart Reject is a special feature developed by FraudScore to block fraudulent conversions from campaign statistics. In general terms, inside your marketing platform, SmartReject analyzes the quality of pending (and approved, if you allow it) conversions – whether a conversion is genuine or fraudulent – and can reject or approve them accordingly. So the campaign receives only approved conversions and marketers are paying only for quality traffic.
- FraudScore.RT – This is a product specifically developed for CPC/CPM campaigns. Key customers are DSPs, SSPs and ad networks. It’s a real-time fraud detection platform that filters fraudulent clicks and impressions almost instantly and prevents fraudulent clicks from turning into conversions. Each click is marked with the detected ad fraud type and can be further investigated to build a fraud case.
- SafeClick – This is another solution to fight click fraud. SafeClick checks if the click is fraudulent or genuine, and based on the click quality sends it either to the target URL or redirects it to the fallback URL. The fraudulent clicks get cleared from the traffic, and the legitimate ones are passed on. SafeClick performs on the frontline before fraudsters can undermine statistics and conversion rates. FraudScore also gives its clients an option to set the filters (bans) for SafeClick according to their demand. It helps marketers work with click traffic quality according to their deep understanding of traffic sources’ reliability.
Results
- International Affiliate Network – by using FraudScore, the network managed to decrease the time that managers have spent on building fraud cases from at least 2 working days to 10-20 minutes.
- A DSP platform managed to get a major international contract with a direct advertiser and in two working days realized difficult KPIs for a campaign in the “online shopping” vertical. FraudScore was used to clean the traffic in order to meet strict deadlines and campaign KPIs.
- A game developer managed to save 25% of traffic budgets on clearing out the traffic from ad fraud and delivering traffic budgets to trustworthy sources.
- A mobile performance agency reduced high index fraud from 26% to 2.4% in four months by using FraudScore as a SaaS anti-fraud provider and partner in traffic quality evaluations.
Pricing
Prices differ depending on the type of traffic that you score with FraudScore antifraud, and the amount of traffic that you have.
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Conversions and Installs:
- There are discounts for companies who pay three and six months upfront. 5% discount for three months, and 10% when you pay for six months.
- There is also a special offer for app developers who have less than 15,000 paid installs monthly – please contact FraudScore team for the details of this offer.
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Clicks
Clicks pricing starts from $290 per month. There is also a custom plan available. Detailed pricing below:
FAQ
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Does FraudScore give a trial period? How long does it last?
Yes, there is a 30-day free trial period available for all first-time clients. The FraudScore team assists through the whole process of integration and onboarding and helps with understanding the reports and how to use them in dealing with detected ad fraud.
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Can I get a discount?
Technoven readers get a 20% discount on the first invoice. Moreover, there are discounts for in-advance payment:5% when you pay for three months, and 10% when you pay for six months. There is also a discount available for a year subscription. We recommend to contact the FraudScore team to learn the details: sales@fraudscore.mobi
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Why is it important that FraudScore is an independent anti-fraud solution provider?
FraudScore is not affiliated with a marketing platform or anything similar. The only task of the solution is to detect ad fraud. There is no reason to show less or more fraud in scored traffic, so FraudScore reports are pure unbiased data. Unfortunately, there are solutions on the market that are made by the same teams that represent marketing platforms, affiliate agencies, etc… These solutions can be suspicious – some companies trust their traffic to anti-fraud that is affiliated with the platform (or agency). There are logical doubts about the traffic quality verdict from such solutions. FraudScore stands out from such providers because it is an independent company and third-party solution provider.
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If FraudScore detects fraud how will we learn about it? Are there any signals?
Yes, there are “Alerts” in the system and each user that has access to a FraudScore account can set the alerts for themself. Alerts will be received to the account email registered in FraudScore. There is a special article about that in the FraudScore knowledge base.
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How often does FS update its algorithms?
The anti-fraud solution is the sole product of FraudScore, so the whole team is devoted to constant updates and product range evolution. It is a very important to FraudScore to be able to be the first to detect new ad fraud types and patterns.
Final Verdict on FraudScore Review
It’s our firm belief that an anti-fraud solution is a kind of insurance for your ad campaigns. It’s good to have one when you are in trouble. And when you happen to have a discussion with our partners about suspicious campaign statistics, you need reliable tools to prove your point. This is why we recommend trying FraudScore’s anti-fraud platform.
On the one hand, the solution is developed and supported by fraud detection specialists and data scientists, ensuring that FraudScore is a high-tech solution. And on the other hand, the reporting system is designed by marketers and analytics together, so that it is indeed easy to read, understand, and work with. FraudScore performs as a shield against malicious traffic and has real results and customer reviews that prove its efficiency. So it’s definitely worth trying!
Click here to get a 20% discount on your first invoice:
