CHEQ Reveals Ireland 2nd Biggest Target of Ad Fraud in Europe

CHEQ has found that Ireland has emerged as the second biggest global target of sophisticated ad fraud in Europe.

CHEQ, a cybersecurity firm, revealed that Ireland now sees a 70% rate of sophisticated attacks on digital ad campaigns which is compared to 30% of fraud classified as basic attacks. The analysis of Ireland is based on more than 3.4 million interaction campaigns in Ireland.

CHEQ Breaks Down Fraud Attacks

Digital campaigns in Ireland designed to secure more new customers online have instead suffered from a rise in sophisticated fraud attacks involving bots and malicious users. The Media Rating Council (MRC) defines high-risk or “sophisticated invalid traffic” attacks on digital marketing spend as deploying advanced methodologies. This includes bots and crawlers pretending to be legitimate users, deliberately manipulating data, and the use of hijacked devices.

The effect is wasted ad spend, skewed data metrics, and lost revenue opportunities through campaigns targeting bots instead of real customers. In contrast, basic data attacks or “general invalid traffic” as defined by the MRC makes up 30% of the attacks in Ireland.

These attacks require less detection to reveal and involve attacks such as known data centre traffic, and basic bots, spiders, and crawlers. The rise in highly sophisticated attacks in Ireland comes as spending on digital advertising has reached €726m in 2020 in the country, up 8% compared to 2019. Online display advertising in Ireland grew 12% to €367m in 2020, with social and video as the primary drivers.

CHEQ found that all of these channels faced sophisticated attacks including coordinated criminal attacks and affiliate fraud in sectors, including online gambling and eCommerce which rely on online customer acquisition to achieve revenue growth. Other countries that are seeing more than 50% of sophisticated attacks include China, the second-largest digital advertiser behind the US.

China has seen campaigns bring in a 54% rate of sophisticated attacks. Russiam the tenth biggest spender on digital advertising pays $3.8 billion annually and saw a 59% rate of sophisticated attacks on campaigns.

CHEQ founder and CEO Guy Tytunovich said, “The sophistication of customer acquisition fraud has vastly increased. In particular, click fraud on paid search and paid social campaigns, and resurgences in affiliate marketing fraud rely on hiding behind the intrinsic complexities of online advertising to hide activity. Digital customer acquisition fraud in Ireland threatens to deprive advertisers of reaching real and valid audiences while denying brands and publishers revenues from real customers.”

CHEQ is the global leader in customer acquisition security. Founded by former military intelligence and cybersecurity personnel, CHEQ is the first cybersecurity solution designed for the enterprise Go-To-Market team, providing the most accurate and robust solution for securing your customer acquisition. CHEQ works with some of the largest companies in the world including Fortune 500 brands in securing billions in customer acquisition against fake users and bots.