Full text of the review published at TechNoven.

Reputation and traffic quality are crucial in online advertising and affiliate marketing. Brands, developers, ad networks, affiliate agencies and others involved strive to build long-lasting relationships and provide reliable sources for global ad campaigns. Ad fraud is one of the most complex and delicate matters that poses a threat to these relationships.

It’s estimated that around $100 billion will be lost to fraudsters in 2023. On average, 33% of traffic in the first six months of 2020 was fraudulent. The danger is real.

There are however tools that provide ad fraud protection to marketers, and FraudScore is one of them.

FraudScore Review: All About it

FraudScore is an independent (third-party) anti-fraud solution. Established in 2015, the solution has gained a reputation as a dynamic and trustworthy tool. Developed by a team of ad fraud experts, data scientists and digital marketers, FraudScore is trusted worldwide by direct advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks, mobile developers etc.

FraudScore is one of the few solutions on the market that works with both mobile and desktop traffic. The tool provides protection against ad fraud in all its forms including impressions fraud, click fraud, affiliate fraud and mobile installs fraud. There is a multitude of impressive features which you can learn about in our review.

Features & Benefits (8 kill Features of FraudScore)

  • Covers all the stages of the ad funnel — starting from prebid & impressions level, to clicks, conversions and installs, as well as post-install events analysis. There are special anti-fraud tools for each type of traffic / stage of the ad funnel. This approach gives FraudScore an opportunity to be an all-in-one anti-fraud solution able to process various types of ad campaigns.
  • Know-how approach to traffic analysis — it’s important to mention that FraudScore doesn’t work with a binary approach as some other solutions on the market do. Instead of a black-and-white verdict — “fraud” or “not fraud” — FraudScore applies a so-called “fraud score” method (hence the company name). Each install or conversion, channel, traffic source, offer, etc… gets a specific fraud score — an evaluation that shows the probability of ad fraud in each particular case, with a deep and detailed explanation of fraud patterns found. FraudScore analyses over 150 metrics and fraud algorithms, and provides results that are divided into four traffic quality categories: Good traffic, Low Index Fraud, Middle Index and High Index Fraud. This unique approach gives clients a reliable way to build strong fraud cases and explain their position for every incident, while also allowing room for negotiations.
  • Transparent and user-friendly reports — The FraudScore team has managed to develop ad fraud reports that are recognized by marketers as one of the easiest to use. FraudScore managers have experience in online advertising and they have used their knowledge to design reports that can be understood and analysed by marketers that don’t specialize in fraud. There are options to drill down the fraud reports from various slices: from affiliates, offers and advertisers to all sub-affiliates, IPs, or different GEOs, detected fraud types or sources and many more. Moreover, all reports can be shared with partners via Excel, a short link or a PDF file, or you can even set up accounts for your traffic partners.
  • Works with both mobile and web traffic — a very important feature — the ability to process both mobile and web campaigns. FraudScore prevention and detection algorithms not only cover all the stages of the ad funnel, but are capable to do so for both mobile and web traffic. As nowadays marketers usually drill into various scenarios and traffic sources, this feature is a big plus.
  • Unbiased results — we’ve already mentioned that FraudScore is an independent third-party solution. What this means is that FraudScore is not affiliated with any advertising platforms, agencies, or providers. FraudScore is unbiased and doesn’t take anyone’s side in traffic quality evaluations. This sets FraudScore apart from many other fraud solution services.
  • Personal manager and fraud case support — every FraudScore client gets a personal manager. When the client needs an explanation or support in reading the report and using FraudScore data in arbitrage, the FraudScore analytics team joins the arguments and helps in negotiations as a third-party anti-fraud provider.
  • Quick and easy integration with the industry’s lead platforms (HasOffers, Affise, Offerslook, FuseClick, AppsFlyer, Adjust, AppMetrica, RedTrack.io, Cake, Everflow). Option to integrate via API, PostBack, Pixel, JStag etc… the FraudScore team can also implement custom integrations.
  • A 30-day free trial — FraudScore offers a one-month trial period, with no restrictions for the system capacities. Marketers are welcome to test the system, investigate its reliability and use FraudScore’s team support to read the reports and build fraud cases. FraudScore’s team even encourages marketers to try several anti-fraud solutions at a time and compare the results apples-to-apples.

Product Range

As we’ve already mentioned, FraudScore has separate solutions for different types of traffic — from DSPs, to CPM, CPC, CPA and CPI. We’ll try to cover it all and give some exclusive insights:

  • FraudScore Action — developed for CPI, CPA, CPL traffic analysis and is widely used by advertisers, CPA networks and advertising agencies. The product identifies fraud and gives extensive evidence and reports to build fraud cases. The reporting system allows drilling down to numerous slices: affiliates, advertisers, affiliateSubs (1–5), affiliate managers, sources, countries, geos, etc… The reports can be sorted by any parameter including the fraud score, the percentage of ad fraud, the amount of fraudulent conversion, and more.. FraudScore’s system also automatically reports on the top-10 most fraudulent offers and affiliates with an option to drill down to detailed statistics.

  • SmartReject — Smart Reject is a special feature developed by FraudScore to block fraudulent conversions from campaign statistics. In general terms, inside your marketing platform SmartReject analyzes the quality of pending (and approved, if you allow it) conversions — whether a conversion is genuine or fraudulent — and can reject or approve them accordingly. So the campaign receives only approved conversions and marketers are paying only for quality traffic.

  • FraudScore.RT — This is a product specifically developed for CPC/CPM campaigns. Key customers are DSPs, SSPs and ad networks. It’s a real-time fraud detection platform that filters fraudulent clicks and impressions almost instantly and prevents fraudulent clicks from turning into conversions. Each click is marked with the detected ad fraud type and can be further investigated to build a fraud case.

  • SafeClick — This is another solution to fight click fraud. SafeClick checks if the click is fraudulent or genuine, and based on the click quality sends it either to the target URL or redirects it to the fallback URL. The fraudulent clicks get cleared from the traffic, and the legitimate ones are passed on. SafeClick performs on the frontline before fraudsters can undermine statistics and conversion rates. FraudScore also gives its clients an option to set the filters (bans) for SafeClick according to their demand. It helps marketers work with click traffic quality according to their deep understanding of traffic sources’ reliability.

Results

  • International Affiliate Network — by using FraudScore, the network managed to decrease the time that managers have spent on building fraud cases from at least 2 working days to 10–20 minutes.
  • A DSP platform managed to get a major international contract with a direct advertiser and in two working days realized difficult KPIs for a campaign in the “online shopping” vertical. FraudScore was used to clean the traffic in order to meet strict deadlines and campaign KPIs.
  • A game developer managed to save 25% of traffic budgets on clearing out the traffic from ad fraud and delivering traffic budgets to trustworthy sources.
  • A mobile performance agency reduced high index fraud from 26% to 2.4% in four months by using FraudScore as a SaaS anti-fraud provider and partner in traffic quality evaluations.

Pricing

Prices differ depending on the type of traffic that you score with FraudScore antifraud, and the amount of traffic that you have.

Conversions and Installs:

  • There are discounts for companies who pay three and six months upfront. 5% discount for three months, and 10% when you pay for six months.
  • There is also a special offer for app developers who have less than 15,000 paid installs monthly — please contact FraudScore team for the details of this offer.

Clicks

Clicks pricing starts from $290 per month. There is also a custom plan available. Detailed pricing below:

FAQ

  • Does FraudScore give a trial period? How long does it last?

Yes, there is a 30-day free trial period available for all first-time clients. The FraudScore team assists through the whole process of integration and onboarding and helps with understanding the reports and how to use them in dealing with detected ad fraud.

  • Why is it important that FraudScore is an independent anti-fraud solution provider?

FraudScore is not affiliated with a marketing platform or anything similar. The only task of the solution is to detect ad fraud. There is no reason to show less or more fraud in scored traffic, so FraudScore reports are pure unbiased data. Unfortunately, there are solutions on the market that are made by the same teams that represent marketing platforms, affiliate agencies, etc… These solutions can be suspicious — some companies trust their traffic to anti-fraud that is affiliated with the platform (or agency). There are logical doubts about the traffic quality verdict from such solutions. FraudScore stands out from such providers because it is an independent company and third-party solution provider.

  • If FraudScore detects fraud how will we learn about it? Are there any signals?

Yes, there are “Alerts” in the system and each user that has access to a FraudScore account can set the alerts for themself. Alerts will be received to the account email registered in FraudScore. There is a special article about that in the FraudScore knowledge base.

  • How often does FS update its algorithms?

The anti-fraud solution is the sole product of FraudScore, so the whole team is devoted to constant updates and product range evolution. It is a very important to FraudScore to be able to be the first to detect new ad fraud types and patterns.

Final Verdict

It’s our firm belief that an anti-fraud solution is a kind of insurance for your ad campaigns. It’s good to have one when you are in trouble. And when you happen to have a discussion with our partners about suspicious campaign statistics, you need reliable tools to prove your point. This is why we recommend trying FraudScore’s anti-fraud platform.

On the one hand, the solution is developed and supported by fraud detection specialists and data scientists, ensuring that FraudScore is a high-tech solution. And on the other hand, the reporting system is designed by marketers and analytics together, so that it is indeed easy to read, understand, and work with. FraudScore performs as a shield against malicious traffic and has real results and customer reviews that prove its efficiency. So it’s definitely worth trying! For more information or to apply for a free trial — contact FraudScore’s team at sales@fraudscore.mobi

  • I recommend to use FraudScore anti fraud solution. It really helps to avoid unnecessary risks and to cut off the fraud at the very beginning. Well done, guys!
    Olga Saburova, Account Manager at MobioNetwork
  • There are lots of manuals about earning money over the internet. Most of them are about making fraudulent mobile installs. As soon as new “manual” comes out we see peaks of low quality traffic. But as soon as we began using FraudScore service we cut managers who were working on checking traffic quality two times. Using their convenient report with set of filters, you can generate different type of reports showing you the traffic quality in different contexts. This helped us to find lots of cheaters and poor quality affiliates.
    Nickolay, CEO at Mobiaff.ru
  • FraudScore’s fraud monitoring system is particularly useful in this regard as it allows daily check on affiliates conversions and indicates the level of fraud detected for each conversion. The fact that the system not only monitors normal desktop traffic, but, also tracks and accurately reports on mobile traffic in relation to Emulators, VPN’s, Bot farms and IP pattern recognition allows us to make informed decisions when reviewing assigned affiliate caps and encouraging more traffic.
    Darren Williamson, Managing Director at CAN
  • FraudScore has easy to handle and fast APIs which permitted us to integrate fraud analysis findings into our own dashboards. Their own interface is very intuitive and offers infinite possibilities in terms of filtering and digging into data. FraudScore team is very receptive to users feedback and continuously introduces improvements to their product.
    Luis Barrague, COO at Headway Digital, Spain
  • For more than two years of working with mobile traffic we have been tried a lot of anti-fraud services offered by the market. Therefore we can confidently say that the truly worthwhile solution is the FraudScore. Strong technologies, convenient interface and the most effective support – it’s all about FraudScore. Since we started collaboration with this service the volume of fraud traffic in Zorka.Network has been almost reduced to zero.
    Oleg Gorelik, Affiliate Director at Zorka.Network
  • Fraudscore has been our first line of defense against measuring questionable traffic. As the mobile digital advertising landscape continually expands, it becomes complex as it relates to user attribution measurement. The need for precise data has never been more important to the success of our business and our clients marketing efforts. FraudScore’s engineers made integration seamless and user friendly. The user interface allows us to interpret the data correctly and in real-time to make the right decisions as it relates to protecting our clients brand integrity. I highly recommend their services.
    Moufid Al-Joundi, Curate Mobile
  • FraudScore has easy to handle APIs which permitted us to integrate fraud analysis findings into our own dashboards. Their own interface is very intuitive and offers infinite possibilities in terms of filtering and digging into data. FraudScore team is very receptive to users feedback and continuously introduces improvements to their product.
    Luis Barrague, HeadWay Digital
  • At Brisk Ads we take drastic measures to combat fraud, and with the help of FraudScore we are able to detect and eliminate any suspicious traffic. With the in-depth reports provided, we are able to identify any questionable sources; making sure that our clients only pay for legit and profitable users.
    Omar Mostafa, Brisk Ads
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