Glossary

 
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Accuracy is the cornerstone of identifying fraud. When detection measures aren't up to par, it's easy to miss signs of fraud. Acco...
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Accuracy

Accuracy is the cornerstone of identifying fraud. When detection measures aren't up to par, it's easy to miss signs of fraud. According to Anura client case studies, our systems register virtually zero false positives. That means that our defenses don't block real users, ensuring any loss of potential revenue from actual customers. Most of the competition has false-positive numbers (some in the double digits), putting a significant damper on campaign effectiveness.

Our resources can find gaps the other guys can't – and that means we can make sure no stone goes unturned. When Anura says it's bad, it's bad.

Anura Script will detect and report if the visitor is using an ad blocker.
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Ad Blocker

Anura Script will detect and report if the visitor is using an ad blocker.

Ad fraud is the practice of viewing, clicking, converting, or generating false interactions with any web asset for the sole purpos...
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Ad Fraud

Ad fraud is the practice of viewing, clicking, converting, or generating false interactions with any web asset for the sole purpose of earning money directly or indirectly. These actions are solely profit-driven and have no ties to the actual content of the advertising. Fraud can involve bots, malware, humans, or a combination, depending on the end goals of the fraudsters. Get the Ad Fraud 101 eBook now!

Ad hiding is a strategy that involves hiding ads in some way on a website. In this scenario, user traffic is legitimate, but the a...
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Ad Hiding

Ad hiding is a strategy that involves hiding ads in some way on a website. In this scenario, user traffic is legitimate, but the ads are never seen. There are a few techniques that fraudsters use to hide ads, including pixel stuffing and ad stacking. 

Ad injection is a more nefarious pathway for fraud. This method uses malware to infect a website to override normal ad placement p...
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Ad Injection

Ad injection is a more nefarious pathway for fraud. This method uses malware to infect a website to override normal ad placement protocols. This opens a site up to unwanted advertising, which can be placed in spots that haven't been paid for or, worse, were purchased by legitimate advertisers. Most injected ads are irrelevant to the website in question or feature inappropriate content. Due to the malware required to achieve this strategy, ad injection poses a significant risk to the sites in use. This scam can affect companies of all sizes. 

An advertising exchange that connects advertisers to potential new consumers by way of websites owned by publishers. The idea is t...
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Ad Network

An advertising exchange that connects advertisers to potential new consumers by way of websites owned by publishers. The idea is that the ad network collects hundreds or thousands of publishers, aggregating all of their web properties into their network, and then allows advertisers to pay to have their ads shown across the network based on a variety of targeting criteria.

Ad stacking is a way to hide ads on a page for the sake of maximizing the number of impressions while saving website real estate. ...
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Ad Stacking

Ad stacking is a way to hide ads on a page for the sake of maximizing the number of impressions while saving website real estate. Using this strategy, ads are stacked on top of one another so that only the top ad is visible. While all of the ads register impressions when users visit the website in question, the user will only see one ad per stack. All of the other ads included in a stack will fail to perform as they can't be seen by visitors to the site. This technique implies that a site provides a large number of impressions, even though traffic is largely worthless. 

The company or brand paying for the offers that promote their product or service.
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Advertiser

The company or brand paying for the offers that promote their product or service.

Affiliate Marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor o...
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Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. This can be in the form of impressions, clicks, leads, or eCommerce. Download our Affiliate Marketing Fraud 101 eBook now!

Affiliate marketing is a marketing avenue in which businesses pay affiliates who can draw in new visitors or customers. Generally,...
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Affiliate Marketing Fraud

Affiliate marketing is a marketing avenue in which businesses pay affiliates who can draw in new visitors or customers. Generally, the affiliate receives some sort of kickback for every new action generated, which can be in the form of impressions, clicks, leads, or eCommerce purchases. Affiliate marketing fraud aims to cheat merchants, buyers, or legitimate affiliates through the use of misleading or fraudulent activities to earn illegitimate commissions. 

An aged lead is a lead that is 30 days or older. These leads have a much lower conversion rate which is typically reflected in the...
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Aged Lead

An aged lead is a lead that is 30 days or older. These leads have a much lower conversion rate which is typically reflected in the price.
Anura’s flexible integration provides server-to-server communication to accommodate all environments. Anura Direct is designed to ...
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Anura Direct

Anura’s flexible integration provides server-to-server communication to accommodate all environments. Anura Direct is designed to determine  in milliseconds the most common types of fraud (General Invalid Traffic or GIVT) delivering real-time analysis in time-sensitive situations. Ideally used for pre-bid, post-ping, scraper bots, email, and more.

Anura Script, our preferred method of integration, collects hundreds of data points on each visitor to help identify the most adva...
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Anura Script

Anura Script, our preferred method of integration, collects hundreds of data points on each visitor to help identify the most advanced fraud techniques. Its quick and easy JavaScript integration is flexible for any environment.  Anura’s ability to identify real customer activity vs. bots, malware, and human fraud allows you to make real-time marketing decisions that boost your ROI.  

“Anura's Core Values are part of our DNA and make up our name A-N-U-R-A” Authentic: We are REAL people providing a REAL solution t...
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Anura's Core Values

“Anura's Core Values are part of our DNA and make up our name A-N-U-R-A”

Authentic: We are REAL people providing a REAL solution to a REAL problem.

Never Satisfied: We innovate, develop, challenge, celebrate, and then we do it all again. 

United: Our culture is open and diverse, yet we are a united team in accomplishing our mission.

Reliable: We rely on each other to encourage success, excel at our tasks, and provide support.

A Lot of Fun: We enjoy practical jokes, nicknames, and identifying fraud all while having fun. 

Our mission is to increase our clients’ growth by improving marketing results through accurate and effective ad fraud mitigation. ...
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Anura's Mission

Our mission is to increase our clients’ growth by improving marketing results through accurate and effective ad fraud mitigation. We work diligently with our clients to prevent fraudsters from accessing marketing dollars by innovating game-changing technologies.

Anura is an ad fraud solution with almost two decades of development experience driving its success. Our solution helps our client...
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Anura.io

Anura.io

Anura is an ad fraud solution with almost two decades of development experience driving its success. Our solution helps our clients find and mitigate some of the most complex types of fraud giving them increased campaign performance, enhanced ROI, and peace of mind from their online marketing campaigns.

 

Stands for Application Programming Interface. This is the protocol that a developer uses to access a company’s services programmat...
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API

Stands for Application Programming Interface. This is the protocol that a developer uses to access a company’s services programmatically.

The library that hosts API's, or Application Programming Interface. The library is a collection of code that developers need to bu...
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API Library

The library that hosts API's, or Application Programming Interface. The library is a collection of code that developers need to build new projects.

When a website owner wants to increase the number of impressions they can sell, they can automatically refresh the page, part of t...
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Auto-Refresh

When a website owner wants to increase the number of impressions they can sell, they can automatically refresh the page, part of the page, or just the ad unit itself to generate more impressions while the visitor is spending time on the site. For example, if a visitor spent an average of three minutes on a site, and if just one ad unit was updated every 10 seconds, this would translate to a sale of 18 ad units instead of just one. 

It's important to note that the use of auto-refresh features isn't always ad fraud. In some cases, web users may utilize auto-refreshing add-ons to check for changing page content. This may be done when trying to purchase tickets to an in-demand show or looking for new posts on a forum. 

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Using Anura Script, we are 100% confident that this is not a real visitor. Our successful clients block or otherwise divert bad vi...
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Bad Result

Using Anura Script, we are 100% confident that this is not a real visitor. Our successful clients block or otherwise divert bad visitors to create the cleanest and most valuable traffic for themselves and their clients.

Banners are image-based rather than text-based ads that are used to promote a brand and/or to get visitors (traffic) to the advert...
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Banners

Banners are image-based rather than text-based ads that are used to promote a brand and/or to get visitors (traffic) to the advertiser’s website. 

Short for “robot,”  a bot  is an automated software program built to carry out a specific task. Bots do jobs that most people woul...
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Bot

Short for “robot,”  a bot  is an automated software program built to carry out a specific task. Bots do jobs that most people would find too repetitive or time-consuming, like answering chat questions easily found on the FAQ page or updating numbers like stock prices at preset intervals. 

Unethical programmers can re-tool bots for malicious purposes in a variety of ways; often designing malicious bots to serve malware, take over networks, steal information, plagiarize content, and steal marketing dollars from unsuspecting advertisers.

Bots usually mimic normal activity and can be hard for advertisers to detect. Bot fraud usually involves the use of bot farms or large collectives of bots that act in unison usually referred to as a botnet. 

 

As the name suggests, zombie bots turn computers into mindless drones, letting hackers control them remotely without users knowing...
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Botnet

Botnet

As the name suggests, zombie bots turn computers into mindless drones, letting hackers control them remotely without users knowing their machine’s been compromised. A collection of zombie bots makes up a botnet. Here, affected computers work simultaneously to perform a certain task. Botnets are usually responsible for  DDoS attacks.

The term used to protect the reputation of a brand from having its ads associated with questionable or inappropriate content. What...
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Brand Safety

The term used to protect the reputation of a brand from having its ads associated with questionable or inappropriate content. What makes it difficult is that each brand will have different tolerances for what they consider to be safe. For example, what Disney considers brand safe is different than what Victoria Secrets would consider safe.

C

Cache: Is a computer device, either hardware or software, that is designed to store data in a way to be able to serve it up faster...
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Cache

Cache: Is a computer device, either hardware or software, that is designed to store data in a way to be able to serve it up faster when the data is requested again. 

Fewer prospective customers fill out call-back forms than newsletter subscriptions and the like. As such, these are generally high...
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Callback Lead Scams

Fewer prospective customers fill out call-back forms than newsletter subscriptions and the like. As such, these are generally higher quality leads. That is unless they're fake. Fraudsters often fill out these forms with other people's information in order to receive compensation for doing so. The issue comes in when you call someone who didn't personally provide their consent, which may result in a TCPA-related lawsuit.

As it relates to the Anura Dashboard, is subset variable of "source," declared by you, to identify "campaign" traffic within Anura...
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Campaign

As it relates to the Anura Dashboard, is subset variable of "source," declared by you, to identify "campaign" traffic within Anura's dashboard interface. A campaign is the name used for a collection of ads that are running together to drive visitors to engagement, conversions, traffic, or revenue.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.  It is a system designed t...
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CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.  It is a system designed to identify humans versus automated software. This was initially used to block bots from entering certain areas of websites.  As bots became more sophisticated, CAPTCHA software had to evolve, however, it cannot stop human fraud. 

Chatbots are programs designed to communicate with people using artificial intelligence. Chatbots specialize in answering specific...
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Chatbot

Chatbots are programs designed to communicate with people using artificial intelligence. Chatbots specialize in answering specific questions or doing certain tasks. For instance, your bank account may have a 24/7 chatbot that will notify you when any suspicious activity happens within your account. Companies can deploy simple chatbots on platforms like Slack and Facebook Messenger or more advanced chatbot like Amazon’s Alexa. 

Chatbots can be both good and bad. Bad chatbots emulate human interaction by engaging in conversation. These bots attempt to acquire personal information and often reside on service websites like dating sites, messaging apps, or chat rooms. 

A Civil Investigative Demand (CID) is an administrative subpoena that allows federal government agencies to request extraordinary ...
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Civil Investigative Demand (CID)

A Civil Investigative Demand (CIDis an administrative subpoena that allows federal government agencies to request extraordinary amounts of information from private entities without going through any formal court procedures. - Wikipedia

A sneaky advertisement that captures your attention and entices you to click on their link (aka the bait). Once you click on the a...
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Click Bait

A sneaky advertisement that captures your attention and entices you to click on their link (aka the bait). Once you click on the ad you only see a small piece of content. To see more, you need to click next to move to each page to see additional content while getting exposed to a large number of ads. An example would be “Click here to see the 10 ugliest dogs”. When you click, they show you one image of a dog with a bunch of ads surrounding the content and a button to see the next picture.

Advertisers are all too familiar with click bots. These bots intentionally visit sites and click on ads with the goal of warping a...
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Click Bot

Advertisers are all too familiar with click bots. These bots intentionally visit sites and click on ads with the goal of warping ad campaign data and burning through an advertiser’s budget. For advertisers who pay on a CPC basis, click bots can be devastating. 

A click farm is a fraud organization that leverages large groups of cheap workers to manually click on paid ads online. Like their...
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Click Farm

A click farm is a fraud organization that leverages large groups of cheap workers to manually click on paid ads online. Like their bot counterparts, human click farms wreak havoc on the digital advertising ecosystem. Click farms have people clicking on ads with no intention of converting. They just visit sites and rack up worthless impressions.

Click farms may leverage form bots to fill out forms with bogus information, generating false leads, and creating a real nightmare for online advertisers who need reliable leads.

Click fraud is when bots, malware, or a human fraudster intentionally generates a bogus click on paid ads and links to steal money...
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Click Fraud

Click fraud is when bots, malware, or a human fraudster intentionally generates a bogus click on paid ads and links to steal money from pay-per-click advertisers or to exhaust an advertisers’ campaign budget.

Fraudsters use the concept of a Denial of Service (DOS) to attack networks in order to steal money from their advertisers. With a ...
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Click Spamming

Fraudsters use the concept of a Denial of Service (DOS) to attack networks in order to steal money from their advertisers. With a click spamming attack, the fraudster floods the network with enough clicks to attempt to overwhelm the networks billing software and trick it into paying the fraudsters.

Competitor Fraud occurs when a fraudster repeatedly clicks on the competitor’s ads to rapidly drain a competitor’s ad budget in or...
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Competitor Fraud

Competitor Fraud occurs when a fraudster repeatedly clicks on the competitor’s ads to rapidly drain a competitor’s ad budget in order for their own ads to rank higher or run unopposed. In some instances, a competitor can click on your online ads in an attempt to drive up the amount that you pay for search term keywords - even when targeting extremely expensive terms. 
Analytics are at the crux of identifying fraud, providing a way to capture concerning trends that highlight problematic activity. ...
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Comprehensive Analytics

Analytics are at the crux of identifying fraud, providing a way to capture concerning trends that highlight problematic activity. Anura's extensive dashboard allows users to customize reporting with the ability to drill down multiple levels, highlighting areas of primary concern. This tool allows you to pinpoint exactly where the fraud is coming from in order to block fraud with a few simple clicks.

Content Delivery Network is a network that takes content from your server and caches it in high-speed servers around the globe hel...
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Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Content Delivery Network is a network that takes content from your server and caches it in high-speed servers around the globe helping to serve up content faster to people regardless of their location.

Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audienc...
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Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. It can boost factors like brand awareness, sales, reach, interactions, and loyalty. (HubSpot) 

An ad unit that is targeted to the content of the website. A script will "read" the page the ad is going to show on, interpret wha...
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Contextual

An ad unit that is targeted to the content of the website. A script will "read" the page the ad is going to show on, interpret what the page is about, and then fetch an ad that is related to the content. A popular example of a contextual ad system is: Google Ad Sense.

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time a visitor completes a predetermined action such as completing a purchase, f...
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CPA (Cost Per Action)

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time a visitor completes a predetermined action such as completing a purchase, filling out a form, or downloading an app. CPA is sometimes referred to as "Cost Per Acquisition".

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time their ad is clicked. It is also known as pay per click (PPC).
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CPC (Cost Per Click)

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time their ad is clicked. It is also known as pay per click (PPC).

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time a visitor successfully completes a lead form.
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CPL (Cost Per Lead)

The billing method the advertiser is charged each time a visitor successfully completes a lead form.

The billing method the advertiser is charged for every one thousand times their ad is displayed. It is typically referred to as "C...
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CPM (Cost Per Mille)

The billing method the advertiser is charged for every one thousand times their ad is displayed. It is typically referred to as "Cost Per Thousand", however, CPM actually stands for “Cost Per Mille”, Mille is Latin for one thousand.

When you partner with Anura, we mention all companies in our marketing campaigns when they integrate us onto their platform. In tu...
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Cross-promotion

When you partner with Anura, we mention all companies in our marketing campaigns when they integrate us onto their platform. In turn,  they promote us, which creates a mutual promotion with dual-brand exposure.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is used to keep a common look and feel of your website including fonts, colors, layouts,...
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CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is used to keep a common look and feel of your website including fonts, colors, layouts, and more while making it easier to make site-wide changes within a single document.

CTV stands for “connected TV” and is any television set used to stream video over the internet. These are most often videos that a...
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CTV (Connected TV)

CTV stands for “connected TV” and is any television set used to stream video over the internet. These are most often videos that are streamed via apps that are downloaded. Devices that are classified as CTV devices are Smart TV – a TV with a built-in internet connection and media platform. (Wikipedia)

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A data center is a facility that houses remote storage of data, web servers, and servers, all of which aid in powering the Interne...
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Data Center

A data center is a facility that houses remote storage of data, web servers, and servers, all of which aid in powering the Internet. While data centers are paramount to most networks' critical systems and are vital to daily operations, they do not typically generate real visitors. Since many ad fraud attacks happen from overseas, fraudsters can take advantage of the IPs within the data center to make the traffic appear to be coming from the correct geography.  When data is received, Anura determines if the visitor originated from established data centers.

Anura analyzes data that we have collected about the visitor to provide responses regarding their quality. During the process, dat...
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Data Integrity

Anura analyzes data that we have collected about the visitor to provide responses regarding their quality. During the process, data is collected and data integrity is ensured. The purpose is to provide accurate and consistent data over the life cycle of the session. This information must remain fully intact without any alteration of data. If Anura detects any data inconsistencies, it will trigger one or more of the rules within this ruleset.

When you have questions, Anura has answers. Live phone support is available Monday to Friday, from 8 AM to 5 PM at our headquarter...
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Dedicated Support

When you have questions, Anura has answers. Live phone support is available Monday to Friday, from 8 AM to 5 PM at our headquarters in Delaware. Anura's software and technology experts are highly experienced in ad fraud detection, ensuring accurate and comprehensive information whenever clients need assistance.

Demand Side Platform, aka DSP, is a platform that advertisers use to buy advertising, typically on an impression basis. 
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Demand Side Platform (DSP)

Demand Side Platform, aka DSP, is a platform that advertisers use to buy advertising, typically on an impression basis. 

In order to hide fraudulent traffic coming from the same device, fraudsters employ technology that will make their one device look...
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Device Spoofing (UA Spoofing)

In order to hide fraudulent traffic coming from the same device, fraudsters employ technology that will make their one device look like many other devices. This is also referred to as User-Agent Spoofing.

Digital advertising, also known as digital marketing, Internet advertising, online advertising, or web advertising, is a form of m...
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Digital Advertising

Digital advertising, also known as digital marketingInternet advertisingonline advertising, or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. The typical Way to Purchase Programmatic Ads is by DSP/SSP.

Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, cellphones, digital b...
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Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, cellphones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage with consumers and other business partners. 

Anura Direct is designed to be used with clients who do not have the ability to place our JavaScript code on their web assets. It ...
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Direct Results

Anura Direct is designed to be used with clients who do not have the ability to place our JavaScript code on their web assets. It is best for server-to-server communication or when there is limited visitor information. Anura Direct delivers real-time analysis in time-sensitive situations, typically used for click analysis, pre-bid and programmatic campaigns.

Digital display advertising is graphic advertising on Internet websites, apps, or social media through banners or other advertisin...
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Display Advertising

Digital display advertising is graphic advertising on Internet websites, apps, or social media through banners or other advertising formats made of text, images, flash, video, and audio. The main purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors. (Wikipedia) 

Sometimes referred to as impression fraud or viewability fraud, display fraud is when an ad is not viewable to the human eye, but ...
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Display Fraud

Sometimes referred to as impression fraud or viewability fraud, display fraud is when an ad is not viewable to the human eye, but impressions are still counted. The most well-known fraudulent methods for this type of fraud are pixel stuffing and ad stacking. Fraud can also occur within mobile apps and on fake sites created by fraudsters. Due to impression fraud, advertisers are paying for exposure that never happened.

A domain name is an easy-to-read website address. It's what you type into the address bar on an Internet browser to view a specifi...
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Domain

A domain name is an easy-to-read website address. It's what you type into the address bar on an Internet browser to view a specific website.

Domain spoofing is the act of driving fraudulent traffic to an illegitimate domain and making it appear as if that traffic comes f...
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Domain Spoofing

Domain Spoofing

Domain spoofing is the act of driving fraudulent traffic to an illegitimate domain and making it appear as if that traffic comes from a trusted domain. Many advertisers build lists of trusted domains. When the fraudster spoofs a domain on that list, their traffic will be accepted. Another way is to use a "look-a-like" domain (aka URL substitution) to trick a user into visiting their site or accepting their traffic because their name looks like a trusted domain. 

A Drop occurs when Anura Script does not correctly receive the required data to properly analyze the visitor. This may occur for a...
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Drop

A Drop occurs when Anura Script does not correctly receive the required data to properly analyze the visitor. This may occur for a number of reasons such as a slow Internet connection or device, an integration issue, or intentional blocking or altering of our data package to avoid screening.

Dunkin’ is Anura’s Mascot. He was named after one of our favorite things, Dunkin’ Donuts.  He’s an orange, domestic shorthair cat....
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Dunkin'

Dunkin’ is Anura’s Mascot. He was named after one of our favorite things, Dunkin’ Donuts.  He’s an orange, domestic shorthair cat. He spends his day mostly sleeping. When he’s not sleeping, he visits his fellow employees, especially the ladies.

E

eCommerce is known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the in...
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eCommerce

eCommerce is known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions 

eCommerce, or online shopping, is predicated on conversions. When ads don't convert, placement becomes a question. In order to per...
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eCommerce Fraud

eCommerce, or online shopping, is predicated on conversions. When ads don't convert, placement becomes a question. In order to perpetuate eCommerce fraud, some particularly savvy fraudsters will use stolen credit cards to make transactions, creating a false conversion rate that warrants ongoing ad fraud. 

 Email marketing is sending an email to a list of potential clients to promote your product or service and to build loyalty, trust...
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Email Marketing

 Email marketing is sending an email to a list of potential clients to promote your product or service and to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either cold lists or the current customer databases. 

F

In the terms of ad fraud, false positives are when a real visitor is incorrectly identified as a fraudulent visitor. Due to the de...
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False Positive

In the terms of ad fraud, false positives are when a real visitor is incorrectly identified as a fraudulent visitor. Due to the decades of research that Anura has, we claim that we have “no false positives”.

These bots work around the clock to bring you real-time data like updates on the news, currency exchange, and weather. They also s...
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Feed Fetcher Bot

These bots work around the clock to bring you real-time data like updates on the news, currency exchange, and weather. They also specialize in collecting and sending information between websites and mobile or web applications.

These bots act as malware delivery men. They post malware-infected files on peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Dropbox. T...
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File-Sharing Bot

These bots act as malware delivery men. They post malware-infected files on peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Dropbox. Thinking the file is legitimate, the user downloads it, but they just installed malware onto their computer.

Bad  bots can fill out forms  with the aim to access restricted content and make this content publicly available. This, in turn, m...
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Form Bot

Bad  bots can fill out forms with the aim to access restricted content and make this content publicly available. This, in turn, may decrease the income generated through brands relying on premium content or subscription models.

Fraud Rates represent the percentage of fraud across your instances, sources, and campaigns.
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Fraud Rates

Fraud Rates represent the percentage of fraud across your instances, sources, and campaigns.

G

GDPR regulates the usage and collection of personal data, offering “user data protection” for European Union citizens . This prote...
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GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

GDPR regulates the usage and collection of personal data, offering “user data protection” for European Union citizens . This protection extends to wherever a citizen travels, making it a global consumer privacy policy. To be eligible for protection, data must belong to a living identifiable person. A “living identifiable person” is defined as having a name, photo, medical information, and email address, plus a digital footprint.

General Invalid Traffic or GIVT refers to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any of the kind of non-human traffic typically routed from a...
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General Invalid Traffic

General Invalid Traffic or GIVT refers to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any of the kind of non-human traffic typically routed from a data center IP address. GIVT can also apply to activity-based filtration or browsers that pre-render pages. Most of the time, GIVT is easy to identify and exclude from results.

Geotargeting fraud occurs when an advertiser targets specific geolocation. In this form of fraud, a fraudster sends ads from a dif...
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Geotargeting Fraud

Geotargeting fraud occurs when an advertiser targets specific geolocation. In this form of fraud, a fraudster sends ads from a different location, masking it to look like the location the advertiser targeted. 

General Invalid Traffic or GIVT refers to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any of the kind of non-human traffic typically routed from a...
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GIVT

General Invalid Traffic or GIVT refers to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any of the kind of non-human traffic typically routed from a data center IP address. GIVT can also apply to activity-based filtration or browsers that pre-render pages. Most of the time, GIVT is easy to identify and exclude from results.

Using Anura Script, the visitor passed all of our tests and is considered good. We feel this is a real person, with real conversio...
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Good Result

Using Anura Script, the visitor passed all of our tests and is considered good. We feel this is a real person, with real conversion value.

H

Designed to capture bots without human users noticing, honeypots are a hidden form field that humans can’t see but bots can. They’...
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Honeypot Technique

Honeypot Technique

Designed to capture bots without human users noticing, honeypots are a hidden form field that humans can’t see but bots can. They’ll immediately complete the form, letting the website owner know the user is actually a bot

The only complication with this method is that humans using screen reader software will see the form and likely fail the test. You could label the field explaining its use, so real visitors know to leave it blank.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.  It is the basic scripting language of a website that instructs a web browser on how to...
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HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.  It is the basic scripting language of a website that instructs a web browser on how to display the website’s information. Within HTML, you can add other languages such as JavaScript and CSS to build more robust sites. 

  

Human fraud is the hardest form of ad fraud to detect as it relies on a network of humans, instead of using bots or malware, to in...
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Human Fraud

Human fraud is the hardest form of ad fraud to detect as it relies on a network of humans, instead of using bots or malware, to interact with ads and create false transactions. Because actual humans are interacting with the ads, there are no obvious signs that can differentiate normal traffic from human fraud.

A human fraud farm is any setup that leverages large groups of low-wage workers to manually interact with paid ads to commit fraud...
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Human Fraud Farm

A human fraud farm is any setup that leverages large groups of low-wage workers to manually interact with paid ads to commit fraud. They will do everything from view ads, click on ads, fill out forms, complete eCommerce transactions, and more.  Like their bot counterparts, human click farms wreak havoc on the digital advertising ecosystem.

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As their name suggests, impersonator bots disguise themselves as humans and are so advanced as they sometimes go undetected. They ...
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Impersonator Bot

As their name suggests, impersonator bots disguise themselves as humans and are so advanced as they sometimes go undetected. They mimic human behavior online, filling out forms and click-through sites. As bots become more sophisticated, security mechanisms like CAPTCHA are becoming easier for bots to crack.

Impressions can be in the form of display ads, video ads, or banners. Impressions are digital advertisements displayed on someone'...
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Impression

Impressions can be in the form of display ads, video ads, or banners. Impressions are digital advertisements displayed on someone's screen. Sold in Cost per Thousand or CPM. An impression is counted every time it is displayed on someone’s web asset. 

Fraudsters create decoy web pages full of both print and video ads. These bots continually load and reload these pages to create i...
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Impression Bot

Fraudsters create decoy web pages full of both print and video ads. These bots continually load and reload these pages to create impressions, taking views away from legitimate websites, and decreasing their viewability stats.

(aka viewability fraud or display fraud) is when an ad is not viewable to the human eye, but impressions are still counted. The mo...
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Impression Fraud

(aka viewability fraud or display fraud) is when an ad is not viewable to the human eye, but impressions are still counted. The most well-known fraudulent methods for this type of fraud are pixel stuffing and ad stacking. Fraud can also occur within mobile apps and on fake sites created by fraudsters. Due to impression fraud, advertisers are paying for exposure that never happened.

In marketing terms, an influencer is someone who has a large following socially and can "influence" others to make specific buying...
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Influencer Marketing Fraud

In marketing terms, an influencer is someone who has a large following socially and can "influence" others to make specific buying decisions. Influencer marketing fraud occurs when an influencer is either using bots or other techniques to artificially inflate their engagement with the advertiser. Sometimes, the influencer isn't even a real person. 

Invalid traffic, often known as IVT, refers to any form of web traffic that is derived from a non-human source. In some cases, thi...
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Invalid Traffic (IVT)

Invalid traffic, often known as IVT, refers to any form of web traffic that is derived from a non-human source. In some cases, this kind of traffic exists for a good reason, like search engine crawlers. However, most of the time, IVT is used to refer to fraudulent traffic

IVT comes in a few different forms, including General Invalid Traffic, or GIVT. GIVT refers to bots, crawlers, spiders, or any of the kind of non-human traffic routed from a data center IP address. GIVT can also apply to activity-based filtration or browsers that pre-render pages. Most of the time, GIVT is easy to identify and exclude from results. 

SIVT stands for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. SIVT techniques are far more challenging to detect. This can include bots that closely mimic human traffic, hijacked devices, invalid proxy traffic, or cooking manipulation techniques, like stuffing. 

An IP address, or Internet Protocol address, is a series of numbers that identifies any device on a network. It’s the “device numb...
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IP Address

An IP address, or Internet Protocol address, is a series of numbers that identifies any device on a network. It’s the “device number” people and computers use to connect to other devices on the internet. The IP address gives us basic information about the devices connecting to the internet such as geo-location, type of internet connection, service provider, etc. 

An IP address is like a physical address - multiple people may use the same address. IP addresses can be compromised and used to g...
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IP Integrity

An IP address is like a physical address - multiple people may use the same address. IP addresses can be compromised and used to generate fraudulent visitors. Anura validates each visitor's IP address for integrity using a combination of proprietary factors, as well as, referencing historical data of known nefarious origins.

IP masking is any technique used to hide your real IP address and replace it using another one. This is typically used when trying...
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IP Masking or IP Spoofing

IP masking is any technique used to hide your real IP address and replace it using another one. This is typically used when trying to be anonymous on the internet or to hide your true location in the event you are doing something you don’t want others to see.

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The term used when someone hacks an iOS device in order to gain higher levels of access, typically root access with admin privileg...
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Jailbreaking

The term used when someone hacks an iOS device in order to gain higher levels of access, typically root access with admin privileges, to the device for the purpose of installing unauthorized software or features, that be the default, are prevented.

Also known as JS, JavaScript is a programming language used in web development that is a "client-side" language.  This means the c...
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JavaScript

Also known as JSJavaScript is a programming language used in web development that is a "client-side" language.  This means the code is added in the HTML of a website and then executed on the website visitor’s machine.  Anura uses JavaScript for the Anura Script integration method.  This allows us to collect hundreds of data points on the visitors environment to help us determine whether a visitor is real or fake.

JQuery is a library of commonly used JavaScript functions designed to make it easier to build JavaScript functionality within your...
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JQuery

JQuery is a library of commonly used JavaScript functions designed to make it easier to build JavaScript functionality within your website.

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation.  It is a lightweight format for passing dynamic data from one system to another.  It h...
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JSON

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation.  It is a lightweight format for passing dynamic data from one system to another.  It has become a faster, more popular replacement to XML. JSON is the format that Anura uses to pass results to our clients.

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Lead Generation is the business of advertising a product or service to consumers, whereby an interested consumer can fill out a fo...
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Lead Generation

Lead Generation is the business of advertising a product or service to consumers, whereby an interested consumer can fill out a form expressing interest and expecting more information in return. Lead generation campaigns are one of the top targets for ad fraud. See also: Lead Generation Fraud

Lead generation fraud is a subset of advertising fraud where fraudsters create fake leads for companies operating to collect money...
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Lead Generation Fraud

Lead generation fraud is a subset of advertising fraud where fraudsters create fake leads for companies operating to collect money. This lead gen fraud can have a disastrous impact on a company’s ROI for their online and affiliate marketing campaigns.

In order to commit lead generation fraud, a fraudster will use a bot, malware, or humans to fill in the lead forms using stolen information, in order to bypass detection. This will create a myriad of issues for the advertiser. 

Lead lists are contact lists purchased from a third party. They provide a quick, easy way to gain access to prospective customer i...
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Lead List Fraud

Lead lists are contact lists purchased from a third party. They provide a quick, easy way to gain access to prospective customer information. However, not all lead lists are as they appear on the surface. Many are the product of fraudsters. If you purchase one of these, your company just spent money on a list of fake names and numbers — at the very least, on names and numbers that have no connection to your industry and have not provided their consent to be contacted. In most lines of business, lead lists are generally discouraged as a lead generation strategy, since many of the names on a lead list ultimately won't result in any actual conversions. 

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Variables containing dynamic data that are passed to Anura to be used within the analytics dashboard.
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Macros

Variables containing dynamic data that are passed to Anura to be used within the analytics dashboard.

Malware is malicious software installed on an unsuspecting user's computer, either desktop or mobile, that is designed to perform ...
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Malware Ad Fraud

Malware is malicious software installed on an unsuspecting user's computer, either desktop or mobile, that is designed to perform specific tasks. For example, it can be used to steal personal information from the user or commit ad fraud. Malware ad fraud hijacks a unique device, mimicking a real user to perform tasks that steal advertising dollars by viewing or clicking on ads, watching videos, filling in forms, and other unsavory activity unbeknownst to the user. 

Anura will detect and report if the visitor is using a mobile device.
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Mobile

Anura will detect and report if the visitor is using a mobile device.

Mobile ad fraud is the process of running software on mobile devices designed to steal money from advertisers through a variety of...
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Mobile Ad Fraud

Mobile ad fraud is the process of running software on mobile devices designed to steal money from advertisers through a variety of techniques including in-app, mobile web, and malware. 

Mobile Fraud (Cellular Fraud) The FCC defines it as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or servic...
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Mobile Fraud (Cellular Fraud)

Mobile Fraud (Cellular Fraud) The FCC defines it as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or service. Types of cellular fraud include SIM swapping, cloning, and subscriber fraud.

Mobile In-App advertising is where app developers get paid to serve ads on their apps. The app requests an ad from the network, an...
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Mobile In-App Advertising

Mobile In-App advertising is where app developers get paid to serve ads on their apps. The app requests an ad from the network, and the network uses algorithms to identify and deliver the highest paying ad to the user in real time. 

Mobile apps are a huge source of advertising. Many apps are fully ad-sponsored, providing a free platform for fun or function for ...
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Mobile In-App Advertising Fraud

Mobile apps are a huge source of advertising. Many apps are fully ad-sponsored, providing a free platform for fun or function for users willing to put up with ads from time to time. 

There are a few different ways in which fraudsters can use apps to defraud advertisers, but the primary method involves hiding ads to generate false impressions. Instead of making ads noticeable, like in video or banner form, ads are hidden in places users won't see, collecting impressions but without any user engagement. 

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, featu...
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Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, E-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. (Wikipedia) 

Mobile web advertising is where web developers get paid to serve ads to mobile web visitors. 
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Mobile Web Advertising

Mobile web advertising is where web developers get paid to serve ads to mobile web visitors. 

Like digital doctors, monitoring bots make sure your website is running without any issues. These bots can detect where users are ...
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Monitoring Bot

Like digital doctors, monitoring bots make sure your website is running without any issues. These bots can detect where users are having trouble on your sites, such as areas of lag or  unresponsiveness.

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Native Advertising is designed to blend their ads with the look and feel of the site to make it harder for an individual to distin...
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Native Advertising

Native Advertising is designed to blend their ads with the look and feel of the site to make it harder for an individual to distinguish between an advertisement and regular content.

If Anura is unable to successfully identify a metric, it's value will be returned as (non-identifiable).
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Non-identifiable

If Anura is unable to successfully identify a metric, it's value will be returned as (non-identifiable).

Based on the visitor data received, Anura did not find abnormalities consistent with invalid traffic. The visitor should be consid...
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Non-Suspect

Based on the visitor data received, Anura did not find abnormalities consistent with invalid traffic. The visitor should be considered non-suspect.

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Owned and operated means a business owns and controls a website. In lead generation, they drive traffic to their own sites to gene...
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O&O Websites (Owned & Operated)

Owned and operated means a business owns and controls a websiteIn lead generation, they drive traffic to their own sites to generate leads to give more control over how they process that lead. For example, they can sell the lead, they can call the lead and transfer the call, or they can sell a product or service directly to a client.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising, or web advertising, is a form of ma...
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Online Advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketingInternet advertisingdigital advertising, or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. The typical Way to Purchase Programmatic Ads is by DSP/SSP. 

An over-the-top media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and ...
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OTT (Over-the-top)

An over-the-top media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, the types of companies that traditionally act as controllers or distributors of such content. (Wikipedia) 

P

Also called cost per call, pay per call is an agreed-upon rate paid by an advertiser for a call that meets the minimum call durati...
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Pay Per Call Fraud

Also called cost per call, pay per call is an agreed-upon rate paid by an advertiser for a call that meets the minimum call duration. In most cases, a duration of at least two minutes is required for a call to be considered a billable event, but this can vary based on advertiser needs and preferences. While more difficult to defraud an advertiser than web advertising, some fraudsters do target pay-per-call models. Calls are typically generated from landing pages that contain phone numbers but can also be bought and sold through call networks. Two techniques used to commit Pay Per Call Fraud are using an overseas call center or an avatar: 

Overseas Call Centers 
With an overseas call center model, call center workers call advertisers and ask relevant questions just long enough to pass the minimum call duration before disconnecting. The advertiser must pay, because the call was long enough, but gained no viable leads in the process. 
Avatars 
When using avatars to commit call fraud, advertisers interact with a pre-recorded message that sounds like a real conversation. Unlike a call center model that uses actual people, avatars are pre-recorded with a local dialect. The fraudster's goal is to keep the advertiser on the phone long enough to hit the call duration threshold. Successful avatars are very difficult to detect as they are often created after vetting an advertiser's phone routine. 
Pay per click is used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website ow...
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Pay Per Click

Pay per click is used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. 

A form of advertising when the buyer only pays the seller based on certain measurable results. Affiliate marketing and lead genera...
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Performance Based Marketing

A form of advertising when the buyer only pays the seller based on certain measurable results. Affiliate marketing and lead generation are 2 forms of performance-based marketing.

A lead seller sends (pings) partial lead information to their buyers to determine whether or not they would like to buy the lead. ...
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Ping Post

A lead seller sends (pings) partial lead information to their buyers to determine whether or not they would like to buy the lead. If the lead matches their criteria, the lead seller will provide the full lead information to the buyer’s system (post).

Pixel stuffing is a fraudulent technique in which a standard ad is reduced in size and placed in a single pixel. The ad technicall...
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Pixel Stuffing

Pixel stuffing is a fraudulent technique in which a standard ad is reduced in size and placed in a single pixel. The ad technically exists on the site and visitors trigger impressions. However, individual pixels aren't visible to the human eye, so viewers aren't able to view these ads. Any impressions generated using pixel stuffing are illegitimate, as visitors are unable to see any advertising in place. Because pixel-stuffed ads take up very little real estate, fraudsters can fill an entire site with pixel-stuffed ads to create the illusion of a significant number of impressions. 

After you win the RTB (real-time bidding) auction and your ad shows, you can run your ad fraud solution to collect valuable target...
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Post-Bid or Post-Click

After you win the RTB (real-time bidding) auction and your ad shows, you can run your ad fraud solution to collect valuable targeting data and make real-time decisions on how to handle the visitor that is interacting with your web asset.

Estimated amount of money saved by implementing a trusted, real-time ad fraud solution.
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Potential Savings

Estimated amount of money saved by implementing a trusted, real-time ad fraud solution.

This is the step in the RTB (real-time bidding) auction where you decide if you want to bid on the specific digital ad inventory. ...
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Pre-Bid

This is the step in the RTB (real-time bidding) auction where you decide if you want to bid on the specific digital ad inventory. During this step, you can use an ad fraud solution to scan for GIVT (General Invalid Traffic) to help you make the decision.

Programmatic advertising is digital marketing that uses software to decide when and where to place ads in front of a specific audi...
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Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is digital marketing that uses software to decide when and where to place ads in front of a specific audience using a variety of rules and attributes.  This style of buying is typically used for display and video, but can be used for a variety of other channels as well.

Programmatic fraud is a subset of ad fraud where nefarious individuals take advantage of programmatic advertising for financial ga...
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Programmatic Fraud

Programmatic fraud is a subset of ad fraud where nefarious individuals take advantage of programmatic advertising for financial gain. To employ this type of fraud, these individuals deploy bots, malware, and even human fraud, to falsify impressions and/or clicks to steal advertisers’ marketing budget.

A company or individual that owns a website where they publish a variety of content in order to build an audience. Publishers typi...
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Publisher

A company or individual that owns a website where they publish a variety of content in order to build an audience. Publishers typically monetize their audience by placing advertisements on their websites and those ads are usually managed by an ad network or supply-side platform (SSP).

Q

Quotes are a popular lead generation mechanism for businesses such as insurance companies that offer customized feedback for each ...
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Quotes

Quotes are a popular lead generation mechanism for businesses such as insurance companies that offer customized feedback for each potential client. This can be an effective way to entice prospective customers with an appealing deal, but it also opens the door for fraudsters. For companies giving insurance or financial-related quotes, lead generation fraud can compromise the integrity of databases and threaten companies' reputations as well as cause financial hardship.

R

Also known as RTB. This is the part of an ad exchange that lets buyers use their own criteria to determine if and how much they sh...
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Real-Time Bidding

Also known as RTB. This is the part of an ad exchange that lets buyers use their own criteria to determine if and how much they should bid for a specific ad unit. They can use data such as retargeting, interest-based targeting, ad fraud solution responses, etc.

A response that happens nearly instantaneously giving you enough time to make decisions before the fraudster has a chance to cause...
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Real-time Response

A response that happens nearly instantaneously giving you enough time to make decisions before the fraudster has a chance to cause an issue.

This version of CAPTCHA is a service that is popular and offered by Google. It is designed to rate interactions with its test to a...
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reCAPTCHA

This version of CAPTCHA is a service that is popular and offered by Google. It is designed to rate interactions with its test to attempt to determine the difference between humans and bots. Version 1 was the test that had a human check the box to prove they were not a bot.  Version 2 became more complex with a fair percentage of humans failing to pick similar pictures.  Version 3 requires no human interaction to do its test, but simply scores the user leaving the decision process up to the website owner. 

When information from an aged lead is used to fill out a new lead form. This is considered sophisticated fraud.
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Recycled Aged Lead

When information from an aged lead is used to fill out a new lead form. This is considered sophisticated fraud.
The last URL that a browser loaded before landing on the current URL that it is on. This can be used to learn where a source of tr...
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Referrer

The last URL that a browser loaded before landing on the current URL that it is on. This can be used to learn where a source of traffic came from before visiting the current web page. Originally, when it was incorporated into the HTTP specification, it was misspelled as 'referer' and has remained that way to this day.

Any time you query Anura to scan and analyze traffic. This can represent an impression, a click, a form fill, a credit card transa...
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Requests

Any time you query Anura to scan and analyze traffic. This can represent an impression, a click, a form fill, a credit card transaction, and many other forms of interactions with your web assets.

Residential proxies allow fraudsters to route traffic through a real person’s network, by “borrowing” their IP address allowing th...
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Residential Proxy

Residential proxies allow fraudsters to route traffic through a real person’s network, by “borrowing” their IP address allowing them to disguise themselves as that person. By using these residential IPs, fraudsters can click on ads, scrap data, fill out forms, and commit fraud of all kinds while remaining anonymous. 
ROAS stands for return on ad spend
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ROAS

ROAS stands for return on ad spend
Return on investment, or ROI, refers to the returns yielded by investing in a particular cause or opportunity.
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ROI (Return on Investment)

Return on investment, or ROI, refers to the returns yielded by investing in a particular cause or opportunity.

Rooting is the term used when someone hacks an Android device in order to gain root access with admin privileges for the purpose o...
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Rooting

Rooting is the term used when someone hacks an Android device in order to gain root access with admin privileges for the purpose of installing unauthorized software or features, that by default, are prevented.

To make accurate judgments on visitor quality, Anura has built a continually growing list of rules and heuristics. To provide tran...
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Rule Sets

To make accurate judgments on visitor quality, Anura has built a continually growing list of rules and heuristics. To provide transparency as to why traffic is scored as bad or warning, we have categorized each of these rules/heuristics into one of seven different Rules Sets. Each of these Rule Sets has multiple rules/heuristics to ensure the accuracy of the Rule Set.

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See how much you could be saving by using Anura’s certified ad fraud solution. To gain further insights, log in as an admin or con...
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Savings Input (Non-Admin)

See how much you could be saving by using Anura’s certified ad fraud solution. To gain further insights, log in as an admin or contact support to update your information.

Scraper bots "scrape" or steal high-quality, keyword-rich content from other websites and repurpose it on their own sites, skewing...
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Scaper Bot

Scraper bots "scrape" or steal high-quality, keyword-rich content from other websites and repurpose it on their own sites, skewing your website's search engine rankings. Stolen content can be hard to spot unless you make a point to search for it. 

Anura Script uses JavaScript and is our most comprehensive method for collecting visitor data. It excels at identifying even the m...
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Script Result

Anura Script uses JavaScript and is our most comprehensive method for collecting visitor data. It excels at identifying even the most sophisticated fraud in real-time. Ideally, Anura Script is used for conversions and post-click analysis.

Anura automatically hides ads from fraudsters before they have a chance to fraudulently click on them. Test the power of Anura, cl...
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Search & Social Protect

Anura automatically hides ads from fraudsters before they have a chance to fraudulently click on them. Test the power of Anura, click here.

A crawler or spider is a bot that crawls web pages on behalf of search engines. They process and analyze the content of a web page...
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Search Engine Bot

A crawler or spider is a bot that crawls web pages on behalf of search engines. They process and analyze the content of a web page to figure out its meaning and relevance. Depending on what they find, search engines can use that info to gauge a page’s reliability and organic  SERP  ranking.

SEM is a marketing channel that targets visitors by interest through the use of the search terms the visitor has typed in, in the ...
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Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is marketing channel that targets visitors by interest through the use of the search terms the visitor has typed in, in the search engine.  These ads are text-basedpaid placements and have a number of targeting criteria.  This channel is also known as PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing.

SEO is the process of improving the understandability of the true content of a web page to a search engine’s algorithm to appear m...
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of improving the understandability of the true content of a web page to a search engine’s algorithm to appear more relevant and gain higher rankings in the organic search results pages (also referred to as SERP)

Search Engine Optimization Fraud or Black Hat SEO is a practice against search engine guidelines, used to get sites ranking higher...
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Search Engine Optimization Fraud (Black Hat SEO)

Search Engine Optimization Fraud or Black Hat SEO is a practice against search engine guidelines, used to get sites ranking higher in the SERPs. These unethical (sometimes illegal) tactics don’t solve for searchers and often end in penalties from Google. Black-hat techniques include keyword stuffing (i.e. adding lots of words just so you appear relevant), cloaking—using artificial algorithms or scripts that mask where content came from when it was generated on other websites/blogs--and using private link networks which are groups designed specifically around exchanging links between members.

This is a page of results that a search engine returns in response to a visitor’s search request based on the search engine’s algo...
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Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

This is a page of results that a search engine returns in response to a visitor’s search request based on the search engine’s algorithm.  This will contain a mix of paid and organic listings ordered based on a variety of metrics used by the search engine.

Search fraud is when fraudsters click on paid ads or paid search results on search engines like Google and Bing. This is often kno...
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Search Fraud

Search fraud is when fraudsters click on paid ads or paid search results on search engines like Google and Bing. This is often known as pay per click (PPC) fraud. 
Single sign-on is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to any of several related, y...
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Single Sign-on (SSO)

Single sign-on is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. True single sign-on allows the user to log in once and access services without re-entering authentication factors. (Wikipedia)

SIVT stands for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. SIVT techniques are far more challenging to detect. This can include advanced bots ...
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SIVT

SIVT stands for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. SIVT techniques are far more challenging to detect. This can include advanced bots that closely mimic human traffic, hijacked devices, malware, invalid proxy traffic, cookie manipulation techniques, like cookie stuffing, or human fraud farms. 

On sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, there are other ways that fraudsters can earn revenue. ...
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Social Fraud

On sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, there are other ways that fraudsters can earn revenue. For example, it is well known that Facebook has fake profiles. While Facebook does not pay partners to generate traffic, fake profiles are used to earn money indirectly. A quick search on Fiverr will show that you can buy 10,000 likes for your site for $5. Advertising on social networks allows fake influencers to comment, like, and influence consumers to trust a brand 
Social media has become a powerful internet marketing tool in recent years. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube provid...
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Social Media Marketing

Social media has become a powerful internet marketing tool in recent years. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube provide space for dynamic two-way communication between brands or users alike with the ability to create content that isn't limited by pre-existing rules of engagement (therefore allowing anyone an equal opportunity). There are two types of social advertising - paid advertisement which seeks financing via money spent on ads; organic campaign where advertisers don’t invest any cash at all but rather use their own resources such as time into building relationships through likes/followers, etc., attracting new customers using these methods so they may tell others about what you offer afterward when asked: "where did u get ___?"

Ever wonder how certain posts appear in your social news feeds? Social networks like Facebook and Twitter rely on proprietary bots...
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Social Network Bot

Ever wonder how certain posts appear in your social news feeds? Social networks like Facebook and Twitter rely on proprietary bots to run data through  algorithms  and serve posts based on user behavior.

SIVT stands for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. SIVT techniques are far more challenging to detect. This can include advanced bots ...
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Sophisticated Invalid Traffic

SIVT stands for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic. SIVT techniques are far more challenging to detect. This can include advanced bots that closely mimic human traffic, hijacked devices, malware, invalid proxy traffic, cookie manipulation techniques, like cookie stuffing,  or human fraud farms. 

As it relates to the Anura Dashboard, a variable, declared by you, to identify "source" traffic within Anura's dashboard interface...
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Source

As it relates to the Anura Dashboard, a variable, declared by you, to identify "source" traffic within Anura's dashboard interface. A source is where the traffic comes from.

These bots plague comment sections, lead forms, and email inboxes spreading unsolicited messages, advertising links, and other for...
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Spam Bot

These bots plague comment sections, lead forms, and email inboxes spreading unsolicited messages, advertising links, and other forms of spam. Spambots are also programmed to  phish  for personal information that users submit through forms, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and passwords.

Internet spoofing is the practice where a nefarious visitor changes aspects of their identity or system settings to represent them...
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Spoofing

Internet spoofing is the practice where a nefarious visitor changes aspects of their identity or system settings to represent themselves as a legitimate visitor to your content. Anura has a series of rules/heuristics designed to validate the visitor and assure that no manipulation of origin or identity has occurred.

Fraudsters use spy bots mainly for surveillance and data collection purposes. Spy bots steal personal information about a company,...
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Spy Bot

Fraudsters use spy bots mainly for surveillance and data collection purposes. Spy bots steal personal information about a company, website, or person by logging  keystrokes  or intercepting  packets. Some fraudsters sell that data to outside parties such as a competitor of a marketing firm for a profit.

Anura helps create customer stickiness. Stickiness occurs when new, desired features offered to clients entices them to use your p...
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Stickiness

Anura helps create customer stickiness. Stickiness occurs when new, desired features offered to clients entices them to use your product or service service more often. This helps current customers "stick" with your product or service, creating customer retention.

Subscriptions are another common form of lead generation tool, giving users access to information like white papers, newsletters, ...
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Subscriptions

Subscriptions are another common form of lead generation tool, giving users access to information like white papers, newsletters, or e-books in exchange for basic contact details. These kinds of forms don't require a significant amount of data, so they're a relatively easy way to collect information. However, this means that subscription sign-ups are easier to scam than other alternatives. Fraudsters enter false information and, when businesses reach out, they're confronted with an illegitimate lead. 

Supply Side Platform, aka SSP, aggregates high-end traffic sources in order to monetize them through DSP’s (Demand Side Platforms)...
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Supply Side Platform (SSP)

Supply Side Platform, aka SSP, aggregates high-end traffic sources in order to monetize them through DSP’s (Demand Side Platforms) 

Anura detected issues with the received visitor data and considers the visitor to be suspect. These issues will likely represent a...
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Suspect

Anura detected issues with the received visitor data and considers the visitor to be suspect. These issues will likely represent a risk to the client's required key performance indicators.

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Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) The laws surrounding telephone use may not seem that important, but in the world of lead ...
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TCPA

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

The laws surrounding telephone use may not seem that important, but in the world of lead follow-up, it's critical to play by the rules. TCPA is a federal law passed in 1991 that prohibits telemarketing calls to landlines without the prior consent of the owner. In the three decades since the Act's passage, this legislation has expanded to include mobile phone communication, including both voice and text messages. 

The TCPA was passed in response to a growing concern involving privacy in the face of unsolicited calls – a good thing for consumers but not so good for business. With the passage of this act, the Federal Communications Commission was given the right to charge companies for making unsolicited texts or calls with fines ranging anywhere from $500 to $1,500 for each violation. For companies that make hundreds or even thousands of calls per day, this seemingly small amount can add up quickly

A great ad fraud protection service needs to be thorough. Anura is committed to covering as many bases as possible, addressing vir...
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Thoroughness

A great ad fraud protection service needs to be thorough. Anura is committed to covering as many bases as possible, addressing virtually every known area of ad fraud. With a proprietary solution that works around the clock to detect all threats to advertising, our clients report that we find 200% to 300% more fraud than the competition.

Similar to spider bots, trader bots crawl around the web for pricing information. Online retailers like eBay and Amazon use trader...
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Trader Bot

Similar to spider bots, trader bots crawl around the web for pricing information. Online retailers like eBay and Amazon use trader bots to keep an eye on their rivals and offer competitive pricing or more detailed product information.

The monthly budget spent to drive relevant traffic to your web assets.
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Traffic Acquisition Cost (TAC)

The monthly budget spent to drive relevant traffic to your web assets.

The flow of visitors across the Internet generates data that tells us where the visitor has been prior to visiting your web asset....
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Traffic Origin

The flow of visitors across the Internet generates data that tells us where the visitor has been prior to visiting your web asset. With the information gathered, Anura reviews prior origin data to determine if it has come from a known fraudulent site, or if it gives indications of questionable origination.

Sometimes called download bots, transfer bots are responsible for forced  redirects. Transfer bots attach themselves to reputable ...
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Transfer Bot

Sometimes called download bots, transfer bots are responsible for forced  redirects. Transfer bots attach themselves to reputable websites and wait for users to click through. Instead of sending users to the site they requested, transfer bots redirect them to another site, usually one set up by a fraudster or hacker.

TAG is the leading global initiative fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. TAG adva...
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Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)

TAG is the leading global initiative fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. TAG advances its mission of eliminating fraudulent traffic, facilitating the sharing of threat intelligence, and promoting brand safety by connecting industry leaders, analyzing threats, and sharing best practices worldwide.

Two-factor authentication is a security protocol that requires two distinct methods of verifying a user’s credentials, such as a p...
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Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Two-factor authentication is a security protocol that requires two distinct methods of verifying a user’s credentials, such as a password in combination with a text message and/or email containing a unique code to sign in.

U

In order to hide fraudulent traffic coming from the same device, fraudsters employ technology that will make their one device look...
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UA (User-Agent) Spoofing

In order to hide fraudulent traffic coming from the same device, fraudsters employ technology that will make their one device look like many other devices. This is also referred to as Device Spoofing.

If a client does not pass a Source or Campaign to Anura, it's value will be returned as (undefined).
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Undefined

If a client does not pass a Source or Campaign to Anura, it's value will be returned as (undefined).

A URL, short for Universal Resource Locator, is more commonly known as a web address. It includes the protocol (ex. HTTP, FTP), th...
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URL

A URL, short for Universal Resource Locator, is more commonly known as a web address. It includes the protocol (ex. HTTP, FTP), the hostname (such as www), the domain name (like google.com or the IP address), and additional path information (folder/file). 

Anura’s URL is 'https://www.Anura.io/ '

Is abbreviated as UA. This is the “agent” or software, typically a web browser, that one uses to look at websites.  It is importan...
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User Agent (UA)

Is abbreviated as UA. This is the “agent” or software, typically a web browser, that one uses to look at websites.  It is important for a website to know which web browser and version you are using as each browser may display the website differently. 

Anura identifies and analyzes the visitor's digital environment, which includes the hardware and software they used to connect to ...
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User Environment

Anura identifies and analyzes the visitor's digital environment, which includes the hardware and software they used to connect to your web asset. With that information, Anura checks for abnormalities within the environment that are consistent with bots, malware, or human fraud.

UTM Codes are used by Google Analytics to track performance from any digital marketing campaign. UTM or Urchin Tracking Module is ...
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UTM Code (Urchin Tracking Module)

UTM Codes are used by Google Analytics to track performance from any digital marketing campaign. UTM or Urchin Tracking Module is a snippet of code that you can add to the end of a URL to track the performance of campaigns and content. There are 5 variants of URL parameters you can track - source, medium, campaign, term, and content. 

V

These are analytical numbers that companies use to sell the validity of a product, solution, or ideology as the data looks promisi...
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Vanity Metrics

These are analytical numbers that companies use to sell the validity of a product, solution, or ideology as the data looks promising and is based, in part, on what makes logical sense, but when you look closely, really doesn’t give you the real picture. The data from vanity metrics give you a partial picture but can ultimately be misleading.

Verification stripping is a nefarious tactic that fraudsters use to block the protocol that is used to scan the visitor. This enab...
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Verification Stripping

Verification stripping is a nefarious tactic that fraudsters use to block the protocol that is used to scan the visitor. This enables them to hide any signs that domain spoofing or other types of fraud is occurring (e.g. pixel stuffing, ad stacking, bot traffic). However, Anura is able to identify WHO is blocking our protocol so you can take action. 

Video marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social chan...
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Video Marketing

Video marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a new medium. (HubSpot)

The IAB definition defines viewability as "Greater than or equal to 50% of the pixels in the advertisement were on an in-focus bro...
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Viewability

The IAB definition defines viewability as "Greater than or equal to 50% of the pixels in the advertisement were on an in-focus browser tab on the viewable space of the browser page, and the time the pixel requirement is met was greater than or equal to one continuous second, post ad render." In essence, this means at least half of your ad is in view for a minimum of one second. Display ads are sold based on this viewability standard. Fraudsters know how to hide ads and trick the measurement companies into thinking they were in view when, in reality, they are not. It's also important to note that the definition of viewability doesn't specify who is viewing the ad. Instead of a legitimate person, it could be a bot, malware, or a human fraud farm.

When an ad is not viewable to the human eye, impressions are still counted. The most well-known fraudulent methods for this type o...
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Viewability Fraud

When an ad is not viewable to the human eye, impressions are still counted. The most well-known fraudulent methods for this type of fraud are pixel stuffing and ad stacking. Fraud can also occur within mobile apps and on fake sites created by fraudsters. Due to impression fraud, advertisers are paying for exposure that never happened. Also known as impression fraud or display fraud.

A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a tool people and businesses use to relocate their connection to another network or location. ...
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VPN

A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a tool people and businesses use to relocate their connection to another network or location. Typically, VPNs on a residential scale allow people to remain anonymous while securely connecting through the VPN’s host. In most cases on a business scale, VPNs are used to connect to secure data centers where their infrastructure is hosted. 

When connected to a VPN the IP address would appear as the host’s IP. Some VPN services allow for more security by not storing any logs of connections for a traceless web history.  

Fraudsters use VPNs to hide while committing fraud.  

W

Using Anura Script, the visitor tripped a rule or two in our system. They are not definitely good or bad so we mark them as a warn...
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Warning

Using Anura Script, the visitor tripped a rule or two in our system. They are not definitely good or bad so we mark them as a warning. The vast majority of the time this traffic represents real people with real conversion value. We have found that this accounts for our competitor's false positives. In instances where it's been necessary, the blocking warning has aligned our results with other system's confidence scores.

Web crawlers are Internet bots that scour the web with the purpose of indexing the contents of websites. Legitimate websites, such...
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Web Crawler

Web crawlers are Internet bots that scour the web with the purpose of indexing the contents of websites. Legitimate websites, such as search engines, use web crawlers to provide the most up-to-date information available on the web. Anura checks to make sure the visitor is not a known web crawler such as Googlebot.

Web RTC is a free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via s...
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Web Real-Time Communications

Web RTC is a free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via simple application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps (as defined by Wikipedia)

Web RTC is a free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via s...
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Web RTC

Web RTC is a free, open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via simple application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps (as defined by Wikipedia)

Is a method in which one application can push data in real-time to another. This allows applications to talk to each other rather ...
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Webhooks

Is a method in which one application can push data in real-time to another. This allows applications to talk to each other rather than just responding to a request.

X

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language and is similar to other markup languages such as HTML.  It is typically designed to pass...
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XML

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language and is similar to other markup languages such as HTML.  It is typically designed to pass information from one system to another in a unified format.  This allows one system the ability to continue to make changes, without the other system having to update code to keep up with changes.

Y

Z

As the name suggests, zombie bots turn computers into mindless drones, letting hackers control them remotely without users knowing...
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Zombie Bot

As the name suggests, zombie bots turn computers into mindless drones, letting hackers control them remotely without users knowing their machine’s been compromised. A collection of zombie bots makes up a botnet. Here, infected computers work simultaneously to perform a certain task. Botnets are usually responsible for  DDoS attacks.