Proxies for Ad Verification – Everything You Need to Know

Residential proxies are enabling marketers to ensure that the right messaging and imagery are being served to the correct audience and leading to the designated landing page without malicious third-party intervention. Here’s how.
4 min read

In this post, we will cover:

Why Residential proxies are the most effective for advertising-related use cases 

Residential Proxies are considered to be one of the best-suited networks for advertising. The reason behind this is that Residential proxy networks are made up of millions of devices that belong to real individuals (peers) around the world. 

These peers enable marketing departments and advertising agencies to view ad campaigns from a real-user perspective. So if a Spanish language campaign is launched in South America, for example, they can view said ad as a local user would in Buenos Aires. The campaign manager can ensure that the wording as well as the images are on point and have not been altered in any way. 

Ad verification pertains not only to how ads display but also to how they ‘behave’. It is used in order to check ad responsiveness from different devices and Operating System (OS) types (such as cellphones, and IOS, respectively).

It is also used to determine that the correct URL (Uniform Resource Locator)  and UTM (Urchin Tracking Module parameter) are being used. These are important both in terms of tracking campaign success as well as ensuring that malicious third parties do not divert company paid traffic to ‘web domain squatters’ (i.e., a web page that looks like your brand’s site but is actually a copy that defrauds users out of their personal information and/or financial details). 

Residential IP networks enable companies to send a virtually unlimited amount of concurrent requests, a capability which means that campaigns being launched in multiple GEOs can be monitored simultaneously.

Creative ways in which businesses use Residential proxies in the advertising industry 

Company A: Ad verification and compliance services

This company checks websites for embedded ads that belong to their customers’ websites and/or services. They utilize Residential proxies in order to identify sites that operate using illicit activities such as ‘click fraud’. This is mainly done in an attempt by pernicious ad space providers to save costs on PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic generation. 

Residential proxy networks come into play specifically when target sites are being accessed in order to check the domain’s behavior in relation to their customer’s ads. For example, websites that redirect their users to the ad endpoint without the user actually clicking on it

It, thereby creating ‘a fraudulent traffic footprint’. 

Company B: Advertising Intelligence 

This company provides advertising services that specialize in tracking and monitoring ads, measuring the effectiveness/impact of a given campaign, as well as deriving brand/consumer-related insights from digital marketing interactions. They are able to accomplish all of the above goals by utilizing a Residential proxy in order to monitor and verify ad campaigns from different geolocations, types of user devices, and IP addresses.

Company C: AI [Artificial Intelligence] social media influencer advertising 

This is a digital media platform that helps facilitate a meeting between brands/advertisers and relevant industry social media influencers. They use Residential IPs in order to collect data from social media and LinkedIn pages and posts. The information collected helps them create an advertising feedback loop. This means that they can now more accurately predict and deliver measurable ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend)  tweaks for each individual campaign. They collect data using their own crawlers, which are supplemented and work using an external Residential network as a foundation to work off of. 

The bottom line 

Carrying out geo-specific ad/link verification, brand protection as well as preventing malicious practices such as ‘click fraud’ have become essential to any marketing team. One of the most efficient ways of regularly carrying out these activities is by using a Residential proxy network that routes unlimited concurrent traffic through real user devices. 

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