Con artists have always been a problem for those working in lead generation. Unfortunately, with such a convoluted digital marketing model, fraudsters have several possible entrance points.
Especially in the case if you intend to buy leads from an aggregator, who in turn may have purchased them from an affiliate network, which in turn may have bought them from a sub-affiliate network, and so on.
In 2022 and beyond, fraudsters have access to many tools that enable them to illegally submit leads, typically using stolen user information concealed behind proxies or VPNs.
It might be challenging to effectively prevent lead generation fraud when the technology used to generate fraudulent leads improves yearly.
Let’s analyze the inner workings of these applications.
The Climate of Lead Generation Fraud
Programs based on lead generation and performance marketing typically pay a commission whenever a user completes a desired activity, such as filling out a form, signing up for a service, or making a purchase.
Finally, let’s define the term “lead generation fraud.” Fraudulently generating a commission payment through any form of misrepresenting user action or user data.
For example, the site of collection, opt-in status, email address, user data, lead age, IP address, and similar metadata connected with the IP address may all be fabricated.
The crook’s end game is to steal your money by submitting low-quality work or phony leads
Programs designed to generate leads may also motivate customers to purchase or download an app.
As a result of the availability of various resources that facilitate fraud, chargebacks and fraudulent app installs are unfortunately widespread in performance-based marketing. Abuse of leads can occur in both CPA and CPL models of advertising.
Preventing Lead Generation Frauds
Now that you know what could go wrong let’s talk about the many ways to protect your lead generation program from fake leads and fraudulent chargebacks and the best ways to validate users.
The choices depend a little bit on your lead capture, such as whether you use Ping Tree, Ping & Post, or directly on your landing page. However, with the following tips, you can fully protect both ways.
Bot Traffic & Form Submissions
Checking for bot trends in your traffic might be a good indicator of lead gen fraud. Affiliate fraudsters frequently resort to automated programs called “bots” because of how efficiently they can execute mundane activities like submitting bogus leads or facilitating fraudulent account creation.
Bot traffic can be easily identified with a short API request that examines the IP address or device details. Suspicious leads can be found using a variety of signals, including the rate of submissions and the way the device behaves.
To help people better understand bot behavior, IPQS has created a comprehensive tutorial for stopping bots from submitting forms.
Many websites still resort to using captchas to prevent fraudulent lead generation. However, this is now seen as an old-fashioned method.
IPQS has a simple script that can be installed on your forms and landing pages to identify malicious bots, even if their actions are disguised to look human.
In addition to providing better quality leads, this method significantly improves the user experience compared to conventional captcha services.
Ad Campaigns Metrics
Perform an analysis of the click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates (CR) generated by the affiliates or lead source.
Affiliates with a conversion rate significantly higher than average may be a huge warning sign that potentially malicious conduct or fake traffic is taking place. Tracking your affiliates and sources can also help determine the origin of most of your company’s fraudulent activity.
After deciding whether leads have disconnected phone numbers, low-quality consumers, or generated reversals, you can concentrate on reducing the high-risk sources.
Email Addresses & User Data Verification
Checking email addresses as they are entered into your system for accuracy can yield a lot of information.
For example, you can clean your mailing lists of lessons that are likely to bounce or that have been discontinued. Additionally, email addresses recently revealed following a data breach that could be sent from stolen user information can be identified.
Finally, calculating an email risk score is a great approach to filtering high-risk leads since fraudsters often use legitimate information to trick lead scoring services.
Additional data points, notably those from ping tree approaches, can be verified in addition to the email address.
You can learn a lot about lead quality by completing phone validation on the number the information has provided, whether it’s a cell phone number or a landline.
Filtering low-quality leads can be aided by using Google Voice, VOIP, and other potentially dangerous services. The vitality of a lead can also be gauged by verifying their physical mailing address.
The user’s email, phone number, IP address, and other information can be merged with these using our APIs to do a single, streamlined background check.
Replace Captchas
It’s possible that by utilizing Google ReCaptcha or a comparable captcha service, you’re hurting your site’s visitor flow.
Users who are legitimately trying to access content may grow frustrated if they encounter delays. Increases in page load time of as little as half a second can have significant effects, such as a 5% decrease in bounce rates.
There are multiple Captcha alternatives present on the internet now that have proven to boost lead quality and quantity.
Bottom Line
Establishing an overall risk score for each lead and detecting fraudulent affiliates that provide the majority of false leads is feasible by employing a combination of user validation methods to validate lead-generating data.
The approaches described above can be used for ping and post lead creation and directly within forms.
It is advisable to use a lead generation fraud system that suspend sources that send a high volume of bogus leads whenever possible. This becomes more difficult when sub-sources and sub-affiliates are involved.
Consider employing an affiliate fraud prevention package to handle your campaigns and sources for the greatest lead fraud defense.
