Fake Ads — the Phantomest Menace
Fake ads, aka advertising fraud, can be targeting your business and your well-deserved clientele right this moment. Luckily, that’s a tackable problem: to protect the branded content, you need to know what the cheap knock-offs of your promotional materials look like.
Here are the top 4 red flags to watch out for and warn your customers about.
1. Unrealistic price
It’s hard to fathom that someone sells the newest iPhone or a Dior perfume for the metaphorical 5 bucks. The sense of “eluding profit” is one of the baits used in the commerce tactics. It’s not necessarily bad: companies often use that trick to boost sales during the discount seasons, think of black Friday frenzy. Scammers appeal to the same core instinct of “grab it ‘til it’s gone”. And the weak spot they hit is charging a price too low to refuse. There are no valid stats of how often buyers fall for this ploy, but it seems to work: you can find plenty of $10 airpods and $50 collection sneakers online. And It is estimated that digital ads fraud will increase to $172 billion in the near future.
Needless to say, the ridiculous prices = shoddy counterfeit. And it can directly impact your reputation if it’s your brand’s logo pressed on a sneaker’s eyestay.
Keep in mind: When avarice comes into play, we often become irrational. If someone does this to your brand, keep your clientele warned and explain that quality products can’t cost cheaper than dirt.
2. Terrible production ad quality
Laziness has its positive side too: 90% of scammers neglect the quality of their promo- campaigns. The companions to their escapades are:
● Poor grammar and errors
Fraudsters don’t even proofread tier promos and go trumpeting about their “once-in-a- lifetime” deals right away. Often, a product can have deliberate misspelling in its name to mimic a legitimate brand to keep the game in the grey area: PloyStation, NoVidia, Goochie, iPhony, etc.
● Low-quality images
Overly compressed, heavily pixelated, or barely relevant images are also a sign of alarm. They can be stolen from the legitimate company’s website and re-uploaded again only to undergo more compression and lose a chunk of quality. Often, fraudsters don’t care that much that they nick thumbnails and upload them as full-blown pics, which probably can trigger eye bleeding.
● Suspicious websites
Bad actors almost never invest in quality web-design. If they have a website, in 99.9% cases it will be a poorly tinkered webpage, built with a free constructor, hosted on a shady domain from a country you know nothing of, and also it can have suspicious links. Namely. If a website’s link doesn’t have an https element, which indicates that the website employs TLS/SSL-powered secure connection. And if it’s not there, odds are this website was built for phishing purposes: stealing passwords, credit card details, private info, and so on. Keep in mind: Sometimes, fraudsters can actually put in effort and make a quality fake site — in this case check its link for typos and misspellings. Explore their domain, contact info, physical address, web security protocols, check how complete the catalogue is.
3. Absent contact info
In rare cases the website can look okay and even display quality. But it’s like a theatre stage — all facade with nothing behind it. A genuine business has a story to tell and wants to earn your trust: they tell about their history, successful cases, and happy clients. You should be able to easily find a real "About Us" page that doesn’t sound like GPT-made gibberish, a legitimate physical address (not a random P.O. box), and a customer service phone number
or email. If you’re clicking around in circles only to find a single, flimsy contact form and zero trace of
the people behind the brand, that’s a cue to leave. This intentional vagueness is the scammer’s favorite tool: it lets them disappear the second your payment clears, leaving a customer with a worthless product or nothing at all. (Or even their private data compromised.)
Keep in mind: The contact section can contain bogus phone numbers and email addresses. Always double-check.
4. Pressuring tone and urgency
As we’ve mentioned, scammers like exploiting the false sense of the eluding profit. The same applies to the unhealthy pressuring tone of ads that hysterically screams at the viewer to grab that TV stick or a luxury bag right this second. Optically, such advertisements are accompanied with toxic, screaming colors, some bizarre emojis, and tempting price tags that serve to hype the viewer up. These moves are used to suppress critical thinking. Bonafide companies avoid using such tactics as they cast a shade of vulgarity on their reputation. Keep in mind: Such ads have a tendency to pop up frequently on holiday seasons.
Kiss the Fraud Goodbye
Luckily, the scammers can be stopped. Here’s what to do:
● Ads monitoring. Delegate this task to a valid brand protection agency — they track down all unauthorised ads campaigns and help them get reported/taken down.
● Educate your customers. It’s a good idea for a brand that produces quality products to show the step-by-step process of how they make their stuff. It will give your target crowd a better understanding of how much effort it takes to churn out something worthy and why it can never be cheaper than a certain price.
● Raise awareness. Warn the clientele about the fraudsters’ ways and share these red flags. It can be as effective as hunting down the clone websites and messenger channels, as prepared customers won’t be easy to dupe anymore.
And of course kill them with kindness. Your company will always have something that no scammer will offer: individual approach to customer’s needs, engaging stories to tell, and actual product that people want.
Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
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