Secure 2024: Forrester Wave™ Q2 2022 Showcases Leading Bot Management Solutions
HUMAN Blog

Protecting Data & Driving Growth

Organizations today are tasked with providing exceptional customer experiences and driving growth, all while preserving consumer trust and loyalty. This is no easy feat considering the challenges businesses face today while navigating the ever changing landscape: 3rd party cookie deprecation, privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, and rapid digital transformation - just to name a few. 

The simultaneous convergence of these changes has reinforced the value of 1st party data and the need to protect it. The value of 1st party data can be seen throughout the ecosystem through recent acquisitions, the “walls” of walled gardens getting higher, and the rapid growth of retail media networks. 

While marketers are working to quickly adapt to this new world, bad actors have capitalized on the dramatic shift to digital channels. In our recent Marking Fraud Benchmarking Report and Survey, we learned that in the last 12 months 63% of marketers have faced marketing fraud. However, less than half of these stakeholders regularly clean their first party databases. This means that fake and fraudulent leads and contacts are living in their data. 

Let’s break marketing fraud down a bit.

The Impact of Marketing Fraud

Marketing fraud happens when fraudsters use bots to infiltrate these segments and skew consumer trust and experiences, while simultaneously contaminating the data by using fake or stolen credentials of real humans. Customers are willing to shift their dollars to brands they trust, with 70% of consumers saying brand trust is more important today than in the past — a shared belief among age groups, gender and income. That trust is impacted or broken when bots disrupt the customer experience.

Oftentimes organizations are trying to offer a value exchange with consumers for providing 1st party data, where both the consumer and the business reap a benefit, like offering a discount for providing an email address or phone number. Promotions, referrals, and incentives campaigns have become the leading tactic for today's marketers to drive users to site and to hit growth goals. But as we know, where the money flows, the bots go.

With 3rd party cookie deprecation and privacy regulations such as GDPR/CCPA, organizations are quickly trying to take stock of existing 1st party data strategies.  As the risk of getting it wrong continues to increase, companies are searching for simple, efficient and clean solutions to data collection and management. What was already a key component of any business has become mission critical. 

Today, consumers are asking more from brands and expect customized experiences. In our 2021 Holiday Shopping Consumer Survey, more than half of respondents said they would go to a competitor if sophisticated bots were interfering with their holiday shopping plans. Your site is your digital front door and sometimes even your first impression, and you don’t want that experience ruined by sophisticated bots. Marketers that are able to deliver relevant experiences across the purchase journey achieve cost savings of up to 30% and revenue increases of as much as 20%.

Organizations are spending billions of dollars on 1st party data between storage costs, marketing costs, acquisition costs, and ultimately the business decisions that rely on the validity of these segments. 

Raw 1st party data must be analyzed and segmented in order to create value. The quality and cleanliness of that data is critical to create that value. When bots infiltrate, they threaten numerous aspects of the business and their data leaving them vulnerable to attacks and regulatory fines. 

How to Fight Marketing Fraud

Fraud can’t be fought alone. We know this to be true because of all of our investigations - we were able to takedown operations like Methbot and massively disrupt fraudsters like Pareto by working with our customers and partners. We launched the Human Collective to bring together organizations from across the digital ecosystem to share resources, knowledge, and insights to protect the internet, and each other, from the threat of sophisticated bots. Adapting to ongoing changes and battling the bad guys is much easier done together.  

Protect your data. Protect consumer trust. Protect the internet.