Coin Currency News Est. 2014

Fintech expert Monica Eaton-Cardone says that blockchain may be the best way to reduce click fraud, a scheme that affects businesses engaged in pay-per-click advertising.

• One of the greatest advantages offered by blockchain technology is transparency. Because the transaction record is mutually accountable and reconcilable, there’s little risk of mistakes or abuse of the system.

Blockchain technology could have multiple applications for digital advertising, Eaton-Cardone said.

• It could largely supplant ad networks, cutting out the middleman between companies, publishers and visitors.
• It could also be easier to trace the customer’s journey and develop more useful insights for targeting purposes.
• In 2018, Toyota managed to significantly increase their campaign performance by employing a blockchain system to identify and blacklist bad actors.

 

“Blockchain technologies carry the potential to revolutionize how we manage many fraud sources—click fraud is just one of them,” Eaton-Cardone said. “Within the next decade, I anticipate much more widespread adoption.”

 

Click fraud is notoriously difficult to detect, even for tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook. That’s because online ad publishing is a “pretty opaque operation,” Eaton-Cardone said.

• There are numerous tactics that bad actors can employ to commit fraud, including bots, hit inflation and click farms.

“The result is that click fraud has, for years, been allowed to operate more-or-less unchecked. In fact, upwards of 50 percent of all ad clicks may be fraudulent,” Eaton-Cardone said.

 

Eaton-Cardone said she is not surprised that Facebook took legal action, given the tremendous financial impact of click fraud, which is expected to cause total losses of over $15 billion by 2021.

 

Eaton-Cardone, who is co-founder and chief operating officer of the global fraud prevention and chargeback mitigation company Chargebacks911, can answer the following questions (and more) in an interview or exclusive byline:

• Why can’t click fraud be eliminated?
• Why is it so difficult to detect?
• What tactics do fraudsters use?
• Are ad platforms unified on blockchain’s potential to reduce/eliminate click fraud?
• What can companies do to manage risks?
• Are there other technologies besides blockchain that may be a way to reduce click fraud in the future?