Q&A with Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder at Anura

Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder at Anura, has been a leader in the online advertising industry since 1993. In 2003, he started eZanga.com, a digital marketing firm specializing in pay per click and pay per call advertising. His commentary has been featured in a variety of publications and he’s been named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

MEDIA 7: Please take us through your career journey. How did you come up with the idea of Anura?
Rich Kahn:
I began my initial career in Internet Marketing back in 1993. Being so enthralled with what the internet could do, I quickly put together a newsletter sharing all of what I was learning about the new medium. As the newsletter grew, my readers would inquire about advertising within my newsletter, and that sparked my first digital marketing company.

In an effort to grow my audience, I purchased a list of ‘opt-in’ email users from an Internet company, however, ultimately it ended up being fraudulent. As a result, this list almost cost me my company along with many other problems. This was my first experience with fraud on the Internet.

In late 1994, with the introduction of the web browser, I quickly saw a whole new direction of where the internet was heading. Technologies were being built to make it easy for the average person to take advantage of this awesome and advanced new technology. 
I got involved in all different kinds of technology and developed some of my own throughout the years. In the late 90’s I built a company that paid users to surf the web, where I was written up in WIRED magazine about this company. The article found that some of my users were using software to earn money while they were not online. To combat this user fraud, I built my first fraud detection software and began my journey of mitigating fraud.

In the early 2000’s I was an advertiser promoting a variety of offers such as lead generation and e-commerce. However, my ROI was not where I thought it should be, so I figured there must be something going on with the traffic I was buying. After doing some research I realized it was fraud…which I had seen before. This took place around 2005, which made me seek out a fraud solution, but nothing existed. So, what does a developer do when a solution doesn’t exist? We build one! That was the birth of the Anura solution.

When you accurately remove fraudulent traffic your ROI will increase. If ROI increases, client demand increases.


M7: Can you please briefly describe the impact Anura’s platform will have if a company starts implementing it? How will it ensure a better ROI for them?
RK:
When our clients first implement Anura, our first goal is to establish a baseline of their fraud rate. We then curate a game plan to effectively reduce and eliminate the fraud. On average, we find 25% fraud with new clients, however, Anura has seen extremes well above this number. Our ultimate goal is to build a plan for them to utilize our data in order to cut the fraud rate in half while maintaining or growing their overall volume. Once we reach that goal, typically within a few weeks, we set a further goal to cut that in half again. As their fraud rate drops, their ROI will increase. If they are selling this traffic, their clients will see a lift in ROI and want to spend more with them since the traffic is more valuable.

Think of it this way, when you accurately remove fraudulent traffic (which never truly converts), your ROI will increase. If ROI increases, client demand increases. When client demand increases, your company grows! 
Finally, once we get the fraud rate to a reasonable level, our clients can then surgically mitigate each and every fraudulent visitor using our real-time signals to make real-time decisions, one of the many benefits of our solution.

M7: Any challenges that you face regarding handling and maintaining such a highly advanced platform?
RK:
Absolutely! Fraud is has grown to a $42 billion problem as of 2019 and is expected to grow to over $100 billion within the next couple of years. With this extreme growth, more and more people are getting into the fraud game and learning how to take a piece of this multi-billion-dollar industry. That means more and more talented fraudsters are entering the space and creating unique malicious attacks across the web.

Over the last 16 years, we have developed a very specific process to help us identify new anomalies occurring across the billions of transactions we see each day. This helps us stay on top of all new fraud attacks coming across the internet. The challenge that we face is that fraud is evolving on a daily basis and we continually spend significant resources battling the new fraud attacks so that we can keep our clients protected.


Clients are much more inclined to provide valuable feedback about your product or service in order to improve it to be the best it can be to suit their wants and needs..

M7: What is your go-to resource – websites, newsletters, any other – that helps you stay updated with facts, in a world of Ad Fraud?
RK:
Honestly, the stuff that we are learning is not something that you will find on any website, newsletter, or social media. Our go-to resources is the data we collect across our client base. Combining the data with our own machine learning and experienced engineering team gives us what we need to stay on top of ad fraud and keep our clients protected.

M7: Your podcasts are extremely informative. How do you manage to strike a balance between work and such other commitments?
RK:
It’s not easy to keep on top of all the work that we need to do while also committing time to podcasts and blogs to educate the general population on ad fraud. We believe it very useful to invest this time to share our fraud findings to the public, as it is a subject not many are familiar with but could be a victim too. In some cases, we are able to help companies like Google, find large amounts of fraud in their network, and give them the tools to block it. A few years ago, Anura released a whitepaper on the largest fraud find in history…over $3 Billion a year in fraud. We gave the detailed analytics to Google and they were able to block the apps that were committing fraud. We consider that a win for all of us good guys!


Combining the data with our own machine learning and experienced engineering team gives us what we need to stay on top of ad fraud and keep our clients protected.

M7: What are the major advertising and marketing tools that you use to hike up the brand awareness of your company?
RK:
We are heavily focused on content marketing, in order to educate the public about fraud, while also bringing brand awareness. In addition, we like to use a variety of digital advertising channels to market our services to people that are in the market for a solution. Like many, we also utilize our social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, to push all of our latest content and updates. However, our favorite channel to use is industry tradeshows, so we can give the human touch to such an advanced product. Plus, nothing beats face to face interactions. Unfortunately, due to COVID, tradeshows are on hold for now, but we are hopeful that we will get back to them in the next few months.

M7: The best advice you have ever received?
RK:
A while ago a good friend of mine, a serial-entrepreneur, gave me a vital piece of advice that he uses at every one of his businesses. He said, “As the owner of your business you need to talk directly with your clients and listen to what they have to say.”

After all, they are the users of your product/service and typically know more about it than most of your employees. Let’s face it, your company thrives because of your clients, and they are willing to pay for your product/service to solve a problem within their own company so they can be successful as well. Clients are much more inclined to provide valuable feedback (both positive and negative) about your product or service in order to improve it to be the best it can be to suit their wants and needs as your clients.

In my career, I have built many successful platforms that are client-facing. I have used this advice for all of the platforms I have built and have had great user feedback because I have always listened to my clients.

ABOUT ANURA

Anura.io is a best-of-breed ad fraud detection solution. Anura is designed to allow our clients to identify and remove fraud from their campaigns so they can see an immediate increase in quality traffic and performance, in real-time. We are able to allow our clients to experience immense growth with our product, reducing fraud, TCPA violations, and ultimately increase conversions and revenue, allowing them to invest back into themselves and evolve as companies. Anura.io is constantly evolving by using artificial intelligence combined with machine learning, unlike most of the SaaS based solutions that update their systems quarterly or even less frequent. Instead of adding more “bells and whistles”, our development team spends their day maneuvering the evolving tactics that fraudsters are using to get around solutions in place; this is why it is so important to us to constantly evolve our product.

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Jasper Expands by Acquiring Image Platform Clipdrop from Stability AI

PR Newswire | February 23, 2024

Jasper, one of the world's biggest generative AI app companies, has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Clipdrop, an AI image creation and editing platform, from Stability AI. This acquisition signifies a significant step forward in Jasper's capacity to deliver the most comprehensive, multimodal copilot for enterprise marketing teams. Clipdrop is an image creation and editing platform used by millions of creative designers and brands worldwide. Founded in 2020 by Google alumni Cyril Diagne, Damien Henry, and Jonathan Blanchet, Clipdrop enables users to edit existing images, create new ones, and develop an expansive number of variations in size, detail, and style. For marketers and brand leaders, this technology can be a catalyst for accelerating their ad strategies and developing on-brand creative. "Marketing is visual," said Timothy Young, CEO of Jasper. "The addition of Clipdrop to Jasper will advance our vision to be the most comprehensive end-to-end marketing copilot in the industry, powering all the formats, channels, and functions enterprise marketing teams need. A copilot this robust will enable the enterprises we serve to go beyond simple AI prompts to achieve more personalized marketing, better informed automation, and improved optimization across their entire strategy." The Clipdrop team will join Jasper effective immediately and continue to lead research and innovation on multimodality in Jasper from their headquarters in Paris, which has become a hub of AI innovation in Europe. With this acquisition, Jasper expands its footprint to Europe and plans to continue to invest there from both a talent and customer acquisition standpoint. The company is eager to contribute to Paris's vibrant AI community. "Jasper has been a valued partner, leveraging Stability AI models for many years," said Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI. "We're thrilled to see Clipdrop expand their offering by joining forces with Jasper. We will continue to partner with Clipdrop on research and deliver our cutting-edge models to their platform." "We are excited about what Clipdrop technology can do inside Jasper's copilot for marketing teams," said Damien Henry, Clipdrop co-founder. "There are natural synergies between the two companies and a clear focus on creating the best multimodal platform for marketers. We can't wait to get started." In addition to leading further development of AI-assisted image creation and editing, Damien Henry will play a larger leadership role in research and innovation for the entire Jasper product. The acquisition of Clipdrop closed on February 20, 2024. Business customers will be able to access it through the Jasper API immediately, over time the functionality will be more deeply integrated into the copilot. Individuals can still purchase Clipdrop as a standalone product via Clipdrop.co

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Social Media Advertising

Attain and Experian Collaborate to Help Unlock Cross-Device Outcomes for Advertisers

PR Newswire | January 08, 2024

Attain, a leading permissioned commerce data platform that powers real-time purchase measurement and outcome signals for brands, is pleased to announce a strategic collaboration with Experian, the world's leading global information services company. By leveraging Experian's identity graph, this collaboration will unlock cross-device outcomes for advertisers in a cookieless environment. With the growing number of devices and platforms used by consumers, the need for precise audience targeting and refined marketing strategies has become increasingly important. Through this collaboration, Attain will integrate the Experian identity graph into its system, expanding the reach and addressability of its active user base of more than six million consumers. "We are continuously impressed by the caliber of Attain's customer base and our ability to fortify it with additional identity markers," said Greg Koerner, Vice President of Digital Advertising Sales, at Experian. "By harnessing the power of Attain's extensive outcome data and the Experian identity graph, we can easily offer marketers new avenues for reaching their target audience across multiple devices and channels." This integration will enable Attain to seamlessly connect with consumers across multiple devices, including mobile and CTV (connected television), offering innovative solutions to advertisers in an ever-changing digital landscape. With over 126M households, 250M individuals, nearly 500M MAIDs (mobile ad IDs), and 200M CTV IDs in Experian's identity graph, this integration will unlock vast opportunities for marketers to reach their target audience and measure campaign performance accurately. It will also allow Attain to align advertiser data and showcase significant correlations across various media channels, making their marketing tools more powerful than ever. "We're taking a major leap forward in enhancing our advertising capabilities by incorporating Experian identity graph into the Attain platform," Brian Mandelbaum, CEO of Attain, said. "With this integration, we can seamlessly align advertiser data and demonstrate outcomes' true impact and correlation across different media channels. This not only provides our customers with a more comprehensive view, but it also enhances the effectiveness of their advertising strategies." This collaboration will enable Attain to offer advertisers a more holistic reporting approach and provide them with a more comprehensive understanding of cross-device outcomes. Those utilizing the Experian identity graph through Attain's services can resolve to a single consumer profile, combining IPs and Universal IDs with CTV IDs and MAIDs. About Attain Attain's mission is to empower marketers to drive better outcomes by providing access to first-party permissioned commerce data. Powered by a portfolio of apps, retail loyalty account linking, receipt capture, and survey results, Attain is uniquely positioned to provide deeper insights into how, what, when and where consumers spend their money. For more information on Attain, visit attaindata.io. About Experian Experian is the world's leading global information services company. During life's big moments – from buying a home or a car, to sending a child to college, to growing a business by connecting with new customers – we empower consumers and our clients to manage their data with confidence. We help individuals take financial control and access financial services, businesses make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders lend more responsibly, and organizations prevent identity fraud and crime. We have 22,000 people operating across 32 countries, and every day, we're investing in new technologies, talented people, and innovation to help all our clients maximize every opportunity. With corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, we are listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and are a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Learn more at www.experianplc.com or visit our global content hub at our global news blog for the latest news and insights from the Group.

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Ad fraud is growing exponentially. Experts estimate that, by 2023, the costs associated with scams and misdirection will cost businesses approximately 100 billion dollars. Anura Solutions works diligently with clients to prevent fraudsters from accessing marketing dollars. With over fifteen years of...

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