Protecting Your Ad Campaigns from Ad Fraud

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Ad fraud poses a risk to the ad tech industry compromising the technology industry as a whole. This causes nearly 60% of digital display ad budgets to be lost due to fraud cases annually, according to the ANA and White Ops, 2016. Most ad fraud focuses mainly on non-human traffic that is not visible to humans and is misrepresented by fraudulent publishers. These include simple bots, sophisticated bots, botnets, invisible ads, arbitrage, domain spoofing, site bundling, ad injection, cookie stuffing and click farms

Why is Ad Fraud Difficult to Curb?

The digital markets enable ad fraud to thrive due to the nature of programmatic advertising marketplace as an open market environment with innovations that enable fraudsters to thrive. The programmatic environment also has misaligned incentives across its supply chain that causes inertia and passive treatment in addressing the ad fraud problem.

How to Protect Your Ad Campaigns against Ad Fraud

In order to optimize your ad campaigns, you must ensure that you look out for ad fraud cases to optimize visibility and brand safety of your ad campaigns. The nature of programmatic advertising allows for the use of the long-tail website which becomes hosts of ad fraud. Ad fraud can be curbed by handpicking website placements and taking a publisher-centric approach to ad campaigns when dealing with both public and private market purchases. Adwatcher.com advises adopting extra vigilance, especially when making audience-based ad campaigns in order to mitigate against ad fraud. This can be achieved through the following process:

Use Pre-Bid Contextual Data Segments

This is done by leveraging contextual brand safety segments during ad purchases in order to protect your ad campaign and making them available through the digital signal processor. Data from providers such as comScore is pre-bid hence minimizes chances of fraud making it easier than filtering it after purchase. This enables selection of segments with invalid traffic and visibility tiers ensuring that the ad campaigns not only avoid fraud but also are visible.

Source for an Ad Verification Vendor

Ad verification vendors, such as Integral Ad Science, ensure access to campaign metrics for ad campaigns, that enhance visibility and access to, invalid traffic thus ensuring safety for the brand. This requires having your own ad server, in which you incorporate the vendor’s tracking code in the ad tags.

Analyse the Campaign Data

Audit the ad campaigns for signs of fraud after receiving metrics like invalid traffic levels and use the information to optimize the ad campaigns by shutting down low-quality publishers and placements and reallocate your budget to higher-quality sites.

Maintain a Universal Blacklist

Blacklists are lists of domains that ensure that your ads are served elsewhere, which if handled well, should block low-quality sites from your campaigns. This may provide a competitive advantage against other, less-diligent advertisers.

Adopt Private Marketplaces Deals

Most fraudulent publishers do not access private marketplaces since they lack sales or ad ops teams to support such deals hence making it a safer option for ad campaigns.

How Digital Process Innovation Can Influence Organisational Change In The Finance Sector

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The finance sector as we know it is being transformed by new technology. Digital innovation is everywhere, from Big Data to risk management software, and it’s all coming to change in the way that the sector is organised and run. NEX Optimisation are undergoing an ambitious project to use distributed ledger technology to provide a single source of truth regarding financial transactions. Their services (as well as selected third parties) can then be applied within this environment. This is just one example of how digital processes can be used to streamline regulatory and financial resources, and so we’ve taken a closer look at the impact digital process innovation is having on financial organisations around the world.

Integration

As globalisation continues at a rapid rate, the financial sector is under pressure to keep up with demand. Finance leaders are expected to orchestrate change by closely controlling how their finance systems work alongside other parts of the business. The concept is simple – the finance sector needs to be able to deliver insight and risk analysis around the world, which could see them becoming integrators of information in as little as three years. The strategy, budget, forecast, workforce management plan and capital expenditure plan all need to become more integrated in order for financial organisations to be global business services offering end-to-end solutions.

Demanding More From CFOs

As digital processes innovate and change the way that the finance industry operates, CFOs will be under more pressure to perform. Technology has already made it possible for real-time, event-driven updates to be delivered which is giving CFOs new opportunities. Among these opportunities is the chance for better understanding of the processes and wider finance systems that are currently in place. They will be able to quickly identify areas where there is room for improvement or new ways of working, including making processes more efficient or even outsourcing work where possible.

This increased understanding could see a demand for a new type of finance team emerging. According to industry experts, a broader range of skills is going to be required from finance teams in the near future. Finance employees will need to be able to analyse effectively and communicate their findings with the rest of the business, instead of simply relying on their accounting skills and qualifications. They’ll need to be able to spot reoccurring patterns and problems, as well as coming up with solutions to the problems that arise in this new digital age.

CFOs Must Continue To Innovate

At the moment, innovation within the financial sector is only just beginning. Already it’s shaking the industry and prompting finance leaders to question the structure of their organisations, as well as how to achieve their targets. It’s clear that, within the finance sector, technology is becoming a force for making processes more effective and efficient. CFOs will need to continue to innovate their processes in order to stay ahead of disruption and keep up with the latest technologies, otherwise they risk being left behind. As soon as 2020, innovation could be measured, just like other essential elements of the industry such as marketing and IT. This just goes to show how valuable digital process innovation is considered to be within the financial sector.

What Are The Best Ways To Get Online Exposure for New Products and Services?

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The success of any business, or product, depends directly on social influence and exposure gains. More exposure means that more people see what you have to offer, and why your business or product is a better choice than your competitors. Here are the best ways you can raise your online exposure profile.

Social Media Marketing

If your company does not have a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page, you are missing out an important part of your marketing strategy and a huge opportunity for growth. Social media has grown in importance in the online marketing world significantly in the past ten years, and it has the power to reform the rankings of successful businesses and put yours at the top. Being able to reply individually to all customers – whether they are reviewing your service or product, sharing a complaint, or asking a question  – will show that you really make time for your clients, and care more about them than the contents on their bank account. Google+ has also gained a lot of traction in the past couple of years and is able to rival the daily users of even the dominant social media page Facebook. Having eye-catching titles that come out on top of a Google search for your specific niche will encourage more customers to try your product than someone further down the list. There is also the opportunity to do competitions and promotions across your social media accounts, where the conditions are sharing the pages and following all accounts that your company have to offer. Therefore promoting your business, without having to spend the time physically sharing it.

Blogger Outreach

Getting as many positive reviews about both your brand and products out there as possible will be a great way of gaining exposure. Get a positive review on a high traffic website, and you’ll see your sales rocket. Professional journalists or bloggers tend to have a loyal following of readers that will trust their reviews and recommendations, and if they have a large following, you will be able to reach a mass amount of people overnight. However, it can give you an endless stream of work if you are approaching bloggers individually and the promotion of your company could potentially read too much like an advert, turning off interested customers. Luckily, there are companies that help to bridge the gap between your business and the blog websites; simply reading through a review of FATJOEs Blogger Outreach Service will show you how simple it can be to reach your market, without doing all the legwork yourself. Companies that offer these services have creative writers that work your link in by using a natural, non-affiliated, anchor text in a guest blog catered to the host blog’s style, to ensure it isn’t overly promotional.

Create YouTube Videos Showing Off Your Products and Services

Not only can you embed any videos you make onto your website, but the comments section allows for further feedback from your customers. The videos themselves will allow potential customers to have a more in-depth look at your products and can be very persuasive if you manage to weave in a strong sales pitch. Customers can also gain a greater understanding of your services if you create a video addressing some common questions. If you have a unique style or way of doing things, you can display that here. It’s a chance to be personable with people who are interested to know more about your business, so keep it friendly and engaging.

There are many more ways to gain online exposure for your business, but these examples above are the most surefire way of increasing your visibility online.

5 Ways to Keep Your Employees Safe at Work

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As a business owner, your employees are perhaps your most valuable assets. Any entrepreneur worth his salt knows that to please his customers, he must first address the happiness of his team – making sure workers are healthy, safe, and fulfilled in their roles.

When it comes to give and take, it’s not enough to provide extra holiday or bonuses to compensate hard work. As an employer, it is your duty to look after your workers, but above-par health and safety regulations will also benefit your business, so it’s worth going the extra mile. With this in mind, here are five ways to keep your employees safe at work.

Be Prepared

With the humdrum normality of everyday life in the office, it’s easy to think that your workplace is immune to danger. The reality is, none of us expect natural disasters or crime, and yet those unfortunate events still happen. The best way to protect your business is to prepare for the worst. Know that a break-in, cyber attack, or other crime could befall your workplace at any time, and have a written plan of action ready.

Follow Preventative Measures

Many people only install burglar alarms or extra locks after a burglary, so stay ahead of the game and prevent one happening in the first place. We often hear about the importance of data security, but it’s easy to forget that leaving your office building vulnerable to intruders puts real people at risk. If in doubt, contact your local law enforcement officials and ask them to run a risk assessment on your premises. Once you’re aware of your vulnerabilities, you can set about sealing the cracks in your defense.

Safeguard Your Vehicles

If your employees use vehicles for work, make sure they are regularly inspected, and that security measures are in place to protect their belongings. If you own three or more company vehicles, consider taking out fleet car insurance to reduce your overall expenses without compromising on complete coverage.

Check In With Your Employees

People are unpredictable, and you can never truly know what’s going on under the surface. Violent behavior often masquerades under a guise of normality until something provokes an outburst; so keep a close eye on each member of your team. If you run a large-scale business, make sure your managers are checking in with their employees regularly and keeping tabs on their mental health.

Follow Health and Safety Requirements

It goes without saying that you should follow health and safety requirements in your workplace, but during busy periods it’s easy to let your standards slip. Make sure your employees and managers are abiding by workplace safety rules, and arrange for regular inspections to make sure no one is cutting corners. It never hurts to be over-prepared, so talk to a workplace safety expert to ensure you have the appropriate measures in place.

Without the people who show up day after day, your business simply would not run. Therefore, it makes sense from a financial point of view (as well as a moralistic one) to keep your employees safe at work.

Why Data Cloud Storage Improves Business Performance

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Technological infrastructure is a real headache for most businesses. Large or small, companies have to be ready for the unexpected, like a hard drive suddenly dying or an employee’s PC repeatedly showing the blue screen of death shortly after every reboot. When systems aren’t functioning right, any kind of strategy goes out the window because when you cannot deliver, your business is toast.

Here are a few reasons why cloud storage supports business performance.

Distributed File Architecture Supporting a Global Workforce

Companies no longer rely on an internal network to provide file access to everyone who needs it. With the increasing use of outside contractors, part-time employees, and home workers that require access to documents, spreadsheets, and other files from the company server, it becomes a real headache for IT departments. For smaller companies that don’t really have an IT department at all, the inconvenience is felt even more.

Using a cloud service designed for businesses that enable anyone with a mobile app or web browser to access the necessary company files, once they’ve passed through two-factor authentication, makes it simpler. There’s no complicated setup necessary because everyone can be given access to the folders they need in the secure cloud. File audit trails and multi-factor authentication protocols ensure that companies can keep track of who’s accessing what and verify that only the approved people can access shared files.

Stay Focused on Core Competencies

Running a proper data center with all the equipment and staff required is expensive and involved. Trying to do so on a small budget or as a small business takes the focus away from providing services to customers and the technology team that is supporting that effort.

Whether looking to place group files on a secure cloud service or purchasing a sales package that works in the cloud, taking advantage of professional companies that already offer excellent data cloud services ensures you get the talent without having to find and hire it. Be sure to compare one cloud service with another, like they do at cloudstoragebuzz.com, to see which one is right for your business.

Scalable Storage as Needed

Growing businesses need ever-increasing amounts of storage. This puts a strain on the existing network and requires adding larger local drives to PCs while ensuring there are enough network drives to handle the storage capacity requirements as they grow. Needless to say, this is one problem that the IT team could well do without.

The beauty of using a cloud service is that they have sufficient storage capacities to allocate increasing storage to businesses on an “as needed” basis. Basic plans sometimes have an unlimited data capacity, but most business plans require additional payment for extra terabytes of storage at affordable rates.

In many ways, cloud storage takes some of the heavy lifting away from IT departments – and people tasked with this responsibility in SMEs – so the company can focus on its core operations. The cost per megabyte or gigabyte is low with so many cloud providers competing, so it just doesn’t make sense to try to handle it all in-house any longer.