Frequently Asked Questions

Anura is an ad fraud solution designed to improve campaign performance by accurately identifying bots, malware, and human fraud. Our solution helps our clients find and mitigate some of the most complex types of fraud giving them increased campaign performance, enhanced ROI, and peace of mind from their online marketing campaigns.

While many other systems use a variety of “vanity metrics” for measurement, we measure fraud. Anura is here to answer one question: “Is this visitor a real person AND in front of your content?”. With that, we find that if a visitor passes our system, it will pass any “vanity metric” you check. But more importantly, it will have a higher conversion rate.

Anura works with any client that cares about reducing fraud. We work with affiliate marketers, direct advertisers, advertising agencies, ad networks, lead generation companies, call companies, ecommerce companies, and more.

Anura is priced based on usage. To find out what Anura would cost your company, please contact our sales team for details.

Anura absolutely gives free trials. Anura stands behind its product and we want you to see, with your data, how it performs before you decide to commit.

Our trial is provided at no cost or obligation. Once the trial is completed, you would have access to your data for 2 additional weeks.

Step 1: Select Anura Script or Anura Direct

We highly recommend clients use Anura Script whenever possible as it collects more data, enabling us to find more sophisticated (SIVT) levels of fraud and beyond. Anura Script can be found here. For a server-to-server response, use Anura Direct, which can be found here.

Step 2: Complete Integration

All the information needed to integrate Anura, Anura’s Real-Time Reporting API, and our connected partners can be found in Anura Docs.

Ensure the appropriate information is passed into SOURCE and CAMPAIGN. To clarify, SOURCE (where the traffic is coming from) and CAMPAIGN (where the traffic is going) are the variables used in ANURA. SOURCE data can include publisher ID, affiliate ID, etc., and CAMPAIGN variables can be client ID, campaign ID, offer ID, etc. Correctly passing these variables, will enable ANURA to assist users in granularly identifying the good, warning, and bad traffic in real-time within our Dashboard.

Upon completing the integration, we recommend enabling Domain Locking. This feature will secure your instance ID, only allowing it to work on your assigned domains, preventing unauthorized use. With Anura Direct, we can lock it down to your server IP addresses. To add this layer of security, please contact Support.

Step 3: Begin by Monitoring Your Traffic

Once the user is satisfied that the integration is set to their respective needs, the focus can be placed on the findings. Anura will identify the amount of fraud present, as well as, its origin.

Initially monitoring traffic is a good place to start, it allows users to understand how Anura reports its findings. It also serves as an assurance checkpoint that data is being processed and displayed properly on our Dashboard.

Our Dashboard will summarize your SOURCES and CAMPAIGNS around a variety of metrics helping you to identify the Good and Bad traffic. Your goal is to get more traffic from the SOURCES that have Good traffic and either eliminate Bad SOURCES or work with them to help them reduce the amount of Bad traffic they are sending to you.

The goal here is to reduce Bad traffic percentage while maintaining or growing overall traffic volumes.

Step 4: Rinse & Repeat

A successful strategy to eliminate fraud is to concentrate on a specific time frame, analyze bad SOURCES, and surgically remove some. Attempt to cut the overall fraud rate in half, while monitoring to maintain/grow overall traffic volume. Once fraud is reduced by half, "rinse and repeat".

What can I expect to happen?

As you reduce the Bad traffic that your clients or campaigns receive, the ROI will increase. As the ROI increases, your campaigns will perform better and your client's demand will naturally grow. This is how we help grow companies like Digital Media Solutions (see case study).

See our next FAQ to read more about Anura's best practices to fight ad fraud.

Our integration wizard can guide you through the implementation steps to get Anura up and running within a matter of minutes. Custom Integrations may take a bit longer. We have live support available Mon-Fri 8am-5pm est to help with any additional questions you may have. 

Anura will monitor the results of every request received. Its Dashboard is designed to allow a user to assess information quickly, or take a deep dive into the data. The time necessary for a user to feel comfortable with the system will dictate the length of the monitoring period. Once that comfort zone is reached, allow Anura's Real-Time Responses to assist in making Real-Time decisions. Our integration docs have detailed directions on how to read the real-time responses.

Having the ability to receive real-time responses affords the user the ability to surgically remove each Bad request before it is sent on to campaigns, drastically reducing/eliminating the negative impact created by fraud.

Every user has different protocols as to the handling of unwanted traffic. An additional benefit of Anura's real-time responses; it allows the user to custom design such protocols. One popular method is to redirect unwanted traffic to a 404 page.

Yes, both Anura Script and Anura Direct have API methods to get real-time responses on a transactional basis. In addition, we offer a full real-time reporting API to access all of our summarized data.

Anura can be used in a variety of ways for a DSP. Initially, Anura’s Direct method, since it is so fast, can be used in a pre-bid process to decide if a DSP should bid on the requests. There is no sense in bidding on requests that are fraudulent. Anura’s Script method could be embedded within advertising tags to do a more in-depth user analysis and to have transparency as to where the ad units are being shown. Then, using the data in the dashboard, the DSP can make a better decision as to where they buy traffic, thereby optimizing their network, reducing wasted resources and budgets, and improving their campaign’s ROI.

Anura does not stop bad traffic. We give you the tools to identify, in real-time, good versus bad traffic. You can then use this information to make the best purchase decisions from your vendors.

Our software doesn’t block visitors in any way. We give you the answer in real-time so that you can handle the visitor in any fashion you’d like. We do have integrations with a variety of platforms and plugins that allow real-time blocking.

Our software can execute and return an answer fast enough for you to decide what to do with a bad visitor in real-time.

Anura’s dashboard has the most detailed, drillable and pivotable reporting system in the industry.  If you need more custom reports you can export data as a CSV or PDF through the dashboard.

These are the responses that Anura Script gives you to a Request. A “Good” answer means the visitor passed all of our tests and we couldn’t find anything wrong with them. A “Warning” answer means that a user tripped a rule or two, but they are not definitively Good or Bad. We find that our “Warning” answer accounts for our competitors’ false positive ratings. A “Bad” answer means we are 100% confident that this is NOT a real visitor.

Absolutely. Transparency is important. While we can’t list out the individual rules and heuristics, we continually update them and as fraud evolves, we categorize all of our rules/heuristics into seven distinct Rule Sets. Each Rule Set has multiple rules and heuristics in it to ensure the accuracy of the Rule Set. This will give you a good idea what is going on and why traffic is being marked as Bad. In addition, we offer a variety of metrics that allow you to drill down to find other actionable data points.

These are the responses that Anura Direct gives you to a Request. Using the available rules in Anura Direct, NONSUSPECT means there is nothing suspicious about this request. If something is SUSPECT, it means that we are confident that the visitor behind the request is fraudulent.

JavaScript is executed on the client’s device, so it is dependent on the speed of their device and internet connection. Older hardware and/or a slower connection will slow the process along with everything else. However, it typically completes the process in less than a second.

Not all clients can support JavaScript and that is fine. You can use the Anura Direct Method, which is a Rest API.

Google does not specifically recognize any third-party fraud tool to support AdWords refunds; however, they do have a form that allows clients to submit for refunds using third-party data. https://support.google.com/adwords/contact/click_quality

Of course, we love referrals. You can simply introduce your account executive to your referral. If you would like, we can even set you up to get paid on referrals.

Forgot your password? Not a problem. Simply go to Anura’s Dashboard login, click forgot password, type in your email address, click reset my password. You’ll receive an email to reset.

If you find any errors or have any suggestions, please email our Support Department and we will respond right away.

Yes, Anura validates if the visitor on any web asset is Real or Fake; Fake being either a Bot, Malware, or Human Fraud. When the Anura code is run on a mobile device (either within an app, browser, or during the install process) it can validate that visitor in real-time.