Lead Scoring and Verification

Written By: Caitlin Svahn, Interactive Media

Buyer/Planner

Edited By: Tim Lavelle, Director SEO/Social Media

Lead Scoring and Verification

Introduction

As technology continues to evolve, becoming simultaneously more sophisticated, yet more complex,

fraud in the direct response/lead generation space has been growing as well. In fact, the Wall Street

Journal recently reported that up to 36% of all web traffic is considered to be fraudulent in nature.

One of the most popular fraudulent activities currently in use involves using bot-traffic to generate fake

display advertising impressions, running up the count and over-charging advertisers for impressions that

couldn’t have been clicked, or even seen, by real human beings.

Another popular scam relies on sending fraudulent leads to advertisers, either by using fake names and

contact information, or by using real names, contact info and other details that have been stolen,

purchased, or otherwise created in a fraudulent fashion (lying about the leads’ interest in a product or

service).

Fortunately, a variety of lead scoring products are now available to help put a stop to this under-handed,

and otherwise expensive activity.

Preventing Lead Generation Fraud

Digital advertising agencies like U.S. Interactive Media utilize lead scoring and verification systems to

ensure that all leads being collected and then sent to a client were populated by real people who are

actually interested in the related product or service.

As leads come into our database, the information is matched to similar details from a Neustar database

to verify that the lead’s information matches up. Our system and Neustar compare the lead’s name,

phone number and address to automatically filter it out if any of those details don’t match.

Reasons to exclude a lead include that the address and phone number having been associated together

before, or that the lead’s address doesn’t actually exist, though there are other possibilities that trigger

rejections as well.

If the lead does pass through the initial verification step, then Neustar’s lead scoring service is used to

rate the lead based on how well it fits with the client’s preferred customer profile, leveraging data like

demographic information, salary details and other basic information to determine whether or not the

lead is a desirable one, or one that should be rejected from delivery.

All leads must exceed a certain rating – set up for each specific campaign – in order to successfully pass

the verification process and be sent to the client. This two-step process, the initial review, then follow-

up lead-scoring piece, ensures that only legitimate, well-qualified leads get delivered to our clients.

Preventing Display Advertising Fraud

U.S. Interactive Media also leverages advanced techniques to prevent fraud in the display advertising

space by integrating fraud detection partners into its agency trading desk, Quantum 11. Fraud detection

technologies integrated into Quantum 11 are able to detect fraudulent activity, then refuse to serve

display ads, preventing impressions inflation.

In addition to protecting clients from fraudulent impressions, we can also confirm whether or not our

system is actually receiving inventory placements that have been bid on, ensuring that all of our ads are

shown on appropriate websites, and to the targeted demographic group.

Our system also watches for suspect IP addresses, and blacklists suspected fraudulent IPs on a system-

wide level, in real-time. For example, if the system notices that an IP is reporting more impressions than

we had originally bid on, that IP address will be automatically blacklisted.

Since many of our direct response clients optimize their display advertising campaigns based on leads,

it’s important to ensure that they aren’t receiving fraudulent impressions, and that every dollar spent

has the potential for generating real responses.

The Future of Fraud

Based on a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, digital advertising budgets are projected to

continue growing each year at a double-digit rate. The additional dollars being allocated to online

advertising are likely to encourage even more fraud, making it especially important to actively combat

emerging techniques.

At U.S. Interactive Media, we will continue to protect our clients’ spends by leveraging the latest

technologies, monitoring campaigns in real-time, and manually reviewing performance to ensure that all

campaigns continue to deliver high-quality traffic.

Though the digital advertising industry faces a potential epidemic growth of fraudulent activity, we’ve

taken strides to protect our clients from these types of scams, ensuring that we will continue to deliver

premium quality, high-converting leads, and that our clients will be able to reach their marketing and

business goals.