#adfrauddetectiontools

Ad fraud is not just a basic bot traffic problem anymore. It’s an issue contaminating the entire marketing funnel silently. Here’s what the data says, and what leaders must do next. 

Imagine spending ₹100 on a digital campaign and losing ₹20–30 before a single real customer ever sees your ad. Not due to a bad creative. Not a flawed targeting strategy. But because the digital advertising ecosystem, the programmatic advertising pipelines, the affiliate networks, and the ad placements, are structurally misplaced

For app marketers, with fraud checks now bundled into most attribution platforms, it’s easy to assume traffic quality is covered. But these validations are mainly built to ensure installs are attributed correctly, not to deeply assess how users behave after they enter the app. And that’s where things start to drift. 

The challenge for marketers isn’t spotting obvious fraud anymore; it’s making sense of why validated traffic still underperforms. Cohorts don’t retain as expected. Conversions don’t scale the way spend does. Business impact feels weaker than what the top-line numbers suggest. 

Many marketers still view ad fraud from a linear lens. They think bots are easy to spot, and platforms flag it. However, this assumption is no longer true.  

Over the years, advertising has transformed into a deeply interconnected, automated, and omnichannel ecosystem. Brands no longer run isolated campaigns. They operate across open web, apps, platforms, affiliates, influencers, CTV, and ecommerce media simultaneously.  

The Indian Premier League (IPL) continues to shatter records, not just on the field but also in the advertising arena. The 2025 season has witnessed a remarkable 29% increase in the number of advertisers compared to the previous year, with over 55 brands vying for attention during the first five matches alone. 

However, with this vast opportunity comes significant risk. The surge in advertising can lead to overspending, ad fatigue among viewers, and an uptick in fraudulent activities targeting high-profile events like the IPL.  

This blog explores how strategic implementation of ad monitoring, frequency capping, and fraud detection can be the difference between a successful IPL campaign and a costly misstep.  

Many advertisers still believe ‘if an ad is viewable, it means the user actually saw it.’ 

But that’s not the case anymore. Impressions and viewability still dominate reporting, but they don’t reflect whether audiences actually watched or engaged with an ad. That is why the digital marketing industry and advertisers have now started shifted their focus towards a more reliable metric – attention measurement. 

The recent campaign analysis conducted by our experts shows this major shift: attention metrics reveal intent and creative effectiveness in a way traditional KPIs simply can’t

Ad fraud is an evolving threat and no longer linear. It is becoming more advanced everyday with AI and automation also contributing towards speed and scale. What once looked like normal bot activity has now become far more sophisticated, subtle, and harder to distinguish from genuine user behavior. 

This sophistication of ad fraud raises a lot of questions in the minds of advertisers, marketers, publishers, brand owners, or anyone involved in the digital advertising ecosystem for that matter. 

Hence, the purpose of this blog. To ensure you get answers to the most asked questions about ad fraud in one place. We will talk about everything from what is ad fraud to knowing how to respond to it with clarity and confidence. 

Many advertisers still believe ‘if an ad is viewable, it means the user actually saw it.’ 

But that’s not the case anymore. Impressions and viewability still dominate reporting, but they don’t reflect whether audiences actually watched or engaged with an ad. That is why the digital marketing industry and advertisers have now started shifted their focus towards a more reliable metric – attention measurement. 

The recent campaign analysis conducted by our experts shows this major shift: attention metrics reveal intent and creative effectiveness in a way traditional KPIs simply can’t. 

Most branding campaigns today are measured by impressions, clicks, and viewability scores. These numbers can confirm that ads were displayed on a screen—but they reveal very little about whether the audience actually paid attention. An ad might be technically viewable, yet ignored, skipped, or scrolled past in a split second. 

That’s why marketers are increasingly turning to attention measurement. Unlike traditional metrics that focus on exposure, attention metrics uncover whether ads truly capture consumer focus and influence behavior. In today’s crowded media landscape, it’s not enough to win screen space—you need to win meaningful human attention.