Scams have been prevalent in advertising for a long time. They’re an unfortunate part of society because someone or some entity is always looking to get ahead. Historians call the late 19th century the golden age of scams because con artists took advantage of unsuspecting people.
Scams have made their presence known on the internet in various ways. However, consumers have gotten smarter and are better at detecting them when they see them. The problem is that some scams are virtually undetectable, even to someone with a practiced eye.
Companies want to create engaging content to connect with their customers, but they have to find a way to come across genuinely to their audience. That’s the best way to ensure brand loyalty. These eight marketing tactics are spammy, and businesses should avoid them.
1. Pixel Stuffing
Some students use unethical tactics in grade school and college to reach a particular word count in their essays and research papers. In some instances, these kids would create random jumbles of text and then make them in a font size nearly impossible for the teacher to see. A similar idea occurs in a scammy marketing ploy called pixel stuffing.
When fraudulent marketers use pixel stuffing, they take a 1x1 block of pixels and place an ad in the space. The text or image is so small that the customer is unlikely to see it with the naked eye. Though the ad is nearly invisible, the marketer still gets credit for the views. These advertisements are so small the fraudster could put multiple microscopic ads on one page.
2. Cookie Stuffing
Web browsers use cookies to remember a user’s browsing information. They track what consumers click on, search for and interact with to cater products to their experience. However, sometimes people can abuse this tactic as cookie stuffing.
Cookies are text files, and someone with advanced knowledge could hack them. A marketer could access the cookies and change the information, making the data incorrect and attributing the wrong information to the user. Marketers sometimes pair with a brand to advertise a product, and cookie stuffing means they’re stealing clicks and cheating to get engagement.
3. Survey Question Stuffing
Surveys are a common way for scammers to get people’s information, so avoiding the appearance of a fraudster is challenging. Some scams are easy to detect, such as those that ask a respondent to pay to take a survey. A credible company is unlikely to ask for payment from any participant. However, other tactics are more difficult for people to spot.
Survey companies often pay people or give them an incentive like a gift card or a free item for completing a questionnaire. Some scams make customers jump through many hoops by requiring multiple surveys with many questions before they give out a payment. The customer will likely exit the survey before completion, but the scammers still get to keep the answers without compensating the user.
4. Ad Stacking
Another scammy strategy some marketers use is ad stacking. Fraudsters will layer multiple advertisements on top of each other, though they only occupy one ad space. When a user clicks on it, the marketer gets credit for all the ads in the stack. Therefore, each advertiser must pay for the clicks, even though the engagement is not genuine.
Fraudulent marketers typically stack images on top of each other, but sometimes they can use a video. They’ll use a script to have a muted video playing in the background. The video will often play on a loop, thus resulting in more impressions. They can also put the ads together on a banner rotation. This makes the ads last long enough to qualify as an impression before being followed by the next advertisement.
5. Click Injecting
Click injecting, as it sounds, is the practice of injecting fraudulent clicks into ads. Some may know it as click spamming, a tactic exclusive to Android devices. These cellphones will broadcast that the phone is installing an app when it first launches.
The phone will look at all the ad signals it receives when it sends the message. Then, it will give credit to the last ad network before installing because it most likely led to the user downloading the app. A click injection will happen right before the app finishes the installation, giving credit to the fraudulent marketer.
6. Victim Blaming
Some scams happen within the webpage, making it difficult for the consumer to see, but other scammy tactics occur in the messaging from the company to the audience. Sometimes, a spokesperson in an advertisement will blame the consumer for why the product doesn’t work like the ad says it will.
For example, a company may try to sell a supplement aimed at helping men lose weight and gain muscle by taking their pills. In its TV commercials, the advertisement could say, “The only men who don’t gain muscle are the ones who don’t work hard.” These advertisements try to tap into psychology to persuade people to buy their products. This marketing tactic comes across as a scam, and marketers should avoid using it.
7. Emotional Tampering
Another manipulative form of marketing happens when a campaign tries to toy with people’s emotions and vulnerabilities. For example, a lifestyle coach may try to sell a weight-loss program. A topic like weight is sensitive for many people. Advertisements for such a program may use social pressures and emotional manipulation to make a sale without helping the person succeed.
A coach who wanted to help someone lose weight would try to get to know the person individually. If they’re selling to hundreds upon thousands of clients, it’s nearly impossible to cater to each. Every person trying to lose weight has different needs and preferences, but these marketers are looking for a sale instead of actual results for the users. Some people will succeed, but these results aren’t guaranteed.
8. Celebrity Endorsing
When a company needs to sell a product, it often turns to public figures and celebrities to endorse it in advertisements. A business selling male enhancement pills may turn to a former professional athlete to appeal to the middle-aged male demographic. These sponsors can resonate with the audience, but the advertisements don’t build authority on the subject matter.
Hiring someone with credibility in medicine to speak on the efficacy would be an improvement for this product. A former pro athlete could be a wonderful person who believes in the product, but they don’t provide the same authority as an experienced doctor or pharmacist who can back up claims that the supplement works.
Avoiding Scammy Marketing Tactics in 2022
Marketers must be creative when creating campaigns to sell a product and develop original ideas for persuading their audience to make a purchase. When making an ad campaign, it’s vital to sound like an authority figure on the product and avoid too much emotional manipulation of the consumer. A credible marketing team shouldn’t make their customers feel bad for themselves. The audience has become wiser and can detect when a tactic feels scammy.
Other scammy marketing tactics go right over the user’s head. Pixel and cookie stuffing often occur without the consumer detecting anything. Ad stacking and click injecting are hard to detect unless someone has advanced knowledge of their hardware and software. These marketing tactics are unethical and should be avoided at all costs.
Devin Partida writes about topics concerning tech and the internet. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of ReHack.com.
