Tag: Trafficguard

Australia – Digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform TrafficGuard, has launched its Performance Max (PMax) Channel Solution to provide robust safeguards for businesses that rely on Google’s Performance Max in their digital marketing strategies.

This solution allows TrafficGuard to detect and categorize invalid traffic, generated by Google’s Performance Max AI wrongly recognising the ‘positive’ signals from illegitimate traffic, and optimizing towards these ‘users’.

Furthermore, It customizes exclusion lists tailored to each customer needs and subsequently guides Google’s Performance Max AI to avoid engaging with these undesirable elements, including low-value clickers and bad actors. 

This strategic approach not only safeguards businesses from illegitimate traffic but also influences the AI to focus on elevating the presence of higher-value, authentic users, resulting to an increased return on ad spend as budget is optimized to target more genuine people, valuable insights so users can spot trends and optimize digital media channels accordingly, and time and resources saved with automated invalid traffic and fraud protections.

TrafficGuard’s Pmax channel solution also provides a Data Collection Filter, which enables businesses to mitigate their exposure to unwanted data collection, which is critical in the prevention of the inadvertent collection of children’s data by businesses utilizing PMax and ensures businesses comply with local data privacy and child protection legislation.

Mathew Ratty, CEO of TrafficGuard, said, “We launched our Pmax Channel solution to give marketers greater visibility and control over their Performance Max campaigns. It provides in- depth reporting analysis, audience targeting solutions, and invalid traffic filters that enables marketers to maximize ROI, safeguard their campaigns and make informed decisions.”

“At the same time, they can influence the PMax algorithm to ensure the data it optimizes towards is as close to your target audience as possible. This enables businesses to prevent the negative effects of the black box algorithm, as they can influence it to their advantage,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Elie Shuggi, chief product officer at TrafficGuard, mentioned, “This solution addresses a crucial need within our marketing community. Trusting black box algorithms has become increasingly challenging, and we believe TrafficGuard’s PMax solution offers the protection they seek.” 

Patricia Freijo, the vice president of customer growth at adtech platform TrafficGuard, bags an award as one of the winners of ‘Empowered Women in Tech’. MARKETECH APAC’s Empowered Women Awards 2023 is an inaugural awarding exercise by the digital media to recognise outstanding women marketing leaders in the industry. 

Prior to joining TrafficGuard, Patricia has worked with tech brands Dataxu and Foursquare. She has a wealth of experience in sales and business development, having expanded revenue, created strategic partnerships, and implemented new marketing technology across multiple regions such as the US, SEA, and AU.

Protecting the ad industry from fraudulent acts

The often rigid and sometimes hard-hitting world of tech is not particularly seen as an area where women can thrive, but Patricia, as an empowered leader in the industry is defying all odds. 

As the vice president of customer growth for the APAC region at ad fraud prevention platform Trafficguard, she drives commercial growth and leads the team in positioning the company as the leading fraud prevention solution provider in the area. 

Becoming synonymous with Patricia’s name is creativity where she carries with her a track record of developing creative solutions that drive results. At the company, she has expanded its customer base and established partnerships to increase revenue. 

One of her notable accomplishments is managing the commercial partnership between TrafficGuard and Google Cloud across APAC. She has co-pitched TrafficGuard’s solutions to regional brands using Google Cloud and conducted an invalid traffic workshop for regional marketers at Google’s HQ in Singapore.

A growth-centric approach to leadership

Patricia as a leader puts a premium on a growth mindset. This is evident even with herself where within her role, elevation had not been far-fetched, immediately expanding to include regional efforts in EMEA and ANZ on top of SEA. 

She takes a growth-centric approach to her work and consistently expands her market knowledge to stay updated with industry trends, making her a mentor and go-to person for her team. Patricia is highly engaged with the team and lives by the principle of leading by example, willing to work alongside her members to achieve shared goals. 

Collaboration is, nonetheless, at the heart of what Patricia values in leadership. She makes sure to build a positive work environment and leads the charge in unifying the team in product, data, and customer success areas to truly sustain a diverse range of team capabilities.

Winning the game in inclusivity 

As a woman in tech, Patricia faced challenges in the male-dominated industry and struggled to be seen as a trusted advisor. Upon moving to Asia, she noticed a lack of women in management positions in adtech, which affected her confidence due to external and internal barriers. 

Needless to say, she has overcome and continues to weather these challenges. She makes the best out of the situation by joining ad tech networking groups, connecting with female leaders who became her mentors, and learning to become a mentor herself while volunteering with organisations such as ‘She Says’. 

Moving forward, her passion and determination won’t be dampened and she refuses to let gender perceptions limit her potential by working towards personal growth and success for the company. 

“As women daring to challenge the status quo and advocating for change and inclusion, we are forging a path towards a thriving future for ourselves and generations to come,” commented Patricia. 

Aside from Patricia, check out who else made it to Empowered Women Awards 2023 Winners’ list.

Singapore – Digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform Trafficguard has appointed Elie Shuggi as its new chief product officer. He will be responsible for scaling the company’s product offerings and supporting its growth globally. 

Elie brings over 20 years of experience leading global products in major Fortune 500 companies across banking, insurance, and e-commerce. This appointment comes just weeks after the company announced an AU$3m funding raise to support its growing roster of global blue chip clients such as entertainment giant Disney, online travel leader Lux Escapes, and sports betting businesses such as William Hill and Better Collective.

In his new role, Shuggi will be in charge of growing TrafficGuard’s organisational and product capabilities including advancing a ‘Self Serve’ product designed for SMEs, and a social product, focussing on the rampant ad fraud problem impacting social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. 

Commenting on his appointment, Shuggi said, “I’m thrilled to be a part of this high-performing company and its mission. Helping develop and scale the business’s product portfolio is a challenge I’m truly looking forward to tackling, with the added benefit of working alongside a talented, high-calibre team.”

Mat Ratty, CEO of TrafficGuard, shared that ad fraud is in many ways, a pandemic – one that is affecting companies more than anyone thinks and impacting traditional metrics which govern spend and investment, and it is a $127b problem plaguing the advertising industry today and they are at the forefront of disruption and innovation in this space. 

“TrafficGuard is fast becoming the measurement and verification tool of choice for enterprises and SMEs globally. We are in rapid growth mode, and Elie’s experience will complement and drive our product ambition forward – especially towards SMEs, who are the hardest hit by bad actors in ad fraud. We are excited to welcome him to the TrafficGuard team and look forward to bolstering our product portfolio and truly helping brands reach their maximum market potential,” said Ratty.

TrafficGuard said that this is its third key leadership hire after the recent promotion of Matt Sutton to chief operations officer and the hiring of Chadwick Kinlay as chief marketing officer. Together, they bring over 25 years of experience and world-class leadership to the business.

Australia – Matt Sutton has recently been elevated to the position of chief operating officer at TrafficGuard, the Australia-headquartered provider of global digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform. Sutton was formerly its global chief revenue officer. 

According to his LinkedIn profile, the new COO role will see him leading the global rollout of the marketing tech’s omnichannel strategy and technology across the globe as the platform drives adoption of surgical fraud solution under its tech stack offering for advertisers across all industry verticals. 

Previously as the company’s global chief revenue officer, he led the commercialisation of the platform across the globe. 

Founded in 2015, TrafficGuard is a subsidiary of ASX-listed tech company Adveritas. TrafficGuard detects, mitigates and reports on digital ad fraud. Its platform analyses impressions, clicks, conversions, and events to mitigate ad fraud at its earliest reliable detection. 

Singapore – Digital advertising in travel in the Asia-Pacific region is seen to incur a loss of US$56b in ad fraud amidst the ongoing rollouts by national governments to resume travel, new research from digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform Trafficguard alongside Juniper Research.

The research reveals that bots make up to 80% of all invalid traffic for travel advertisers, a stark contrast to the 15% to 30% affecting other industries. A host of factors could be attributed to this phenomenon, including the loophole in the travel industry, where it has a proliferation of third party online travel agencies (OTA’s), some of which are authorised and some are not.

As airline websites and travel apps (OTA’s) are home to a host of data such as flight, pricing, booking, and discounts, bad bots can result in higher fees for OTA’s, as they make it appear as though far more people are viewing than booking flights. 

Mat Ratty, CEO at Trafficguard, said, “Where there is money to be made, there will be fraudsters. This is prevalent across all digital channels. What we do know is that the online travel market and airline categories are hugely competitive. As such, a lot of budget is spent on searches which have expensive PPC keywords.”

He added, “There’s also a lot of programmatic campaigns with tailored messaging to consumers who have shown an interest in a particular airline or destination. These channels are rife with ad fraud.”

Many travel companies will spend huge sums of money to drive consumers to download their travel applications. They will often use pay per install performance networks that are paid for each installation they drive. According to the analysis, performance networks that are being paid to drive these installations are delivering upwards of 50% invalid traffic on average, resulting in many fraudulent installations and misattribution of post install events such as flight and hotel bookings.

Matt Sutton, chief revenue officer at Trafficguard, commented, “Bearing the brunt of this will be the advertisers who are paying for traffic that will never generate any value. As time passes, ad fraud tactics will also be elevated, and it is imperative for advertisers, airlines, and OTA’s to be aware of the prevalence of ad fraud in this sector.”

He added, “Large sums of money is lost to digital ad fraud yearly, with the amount increasing each passing year. Having a proper system in place will allow you to save your ad spend, and make sure that your advertisements reach the right audiences.”