Ad fraud is hitting B2B where it hurts: Lead gen

Ad fraud isn’t only a problem for consumer marketers. It’s increasingly infiltrating B2B—primarily through fake leads. With high demand for qualified prospects and lead generation a top mandate for most B2B marketing teams, the opportunity for abuse is significant.

Fake leads typically fall into two categories: bot-generated form fills and fabricated prospect lists.

Jeffrey Feuer, CEO of Customer Solutions Group, has spent over 30 years qualifying bulk leads in sectors like insurance and education. His clients—many buying names from aggregators such as LendingTree—often find that most leads aren’t sales-ready. That’s where Feuer’s call centers come in, filtering out bad data, fake phone numbers and other non-starters before they reach the sales team.

For B2B marketers, the risk is highest when offering gated content or incentives. Subscription services and promotional offers are especially vulnerable. One tactic Feuer recommends is a “honey pot” field—an invisible form field bots are likely to fill, but humans won’t.

Dig deeper: Personalization’s double-edged sword: Balancing relevance with intrusiveness

Other threats come from human-entered fake data—often created offshore—that earns revenue for shady aggregators while wasting time and budget for marketers. Fraud detection software can flag patterns like gibberish text or excessive submissions from the same IP address.

The hidden threat of fake prospect lists

The data industry has long battled quality concerns, especially in B2B, where job turnover and company changes create constant churn. But poor data isn’t just inefficient—it can be costly and reputationally damaging.

Thanks to scraping, recycled records, and even AI-generated fake identities, it’s easier to build and sell inaccurate or outright fake lists. These datasets may look legitimate at first glance but contain non-existent or irrelevant contacts that waste resources and erode trust with sales.

Protect your funnel with better practices

Here are practical ways B2B marketers can guard against fraudulent leads and data:

For web forms:

• Use ad fraud detection tools like Cheq, Anura, or SpiderAF (which offers a free diagnostic).
• Install FouAnalytics, built by fraud expert Dr. Augustine Fou, to identify fake form fills.
• Add qualifying questions to discourage low-quality submissions.
• Consider verification features like CAPTCHAs, knowing they may reduce volume but improve quality.

For lead lists:

• Avoid bargain-priced data. If it’s cheap, there’s usually a reason.
• Vet vendors thoroughly: ask how data is sourced, validated, and refreshed. Request references and confirm compliance with privacy regulations.
• Always test a sample—but remember, some vendors send higher-quality samples than the lists they deliver at scale.
• Use tighter targeting criteria to improve match quality.

Ad fraud in B2B doesn’t stop with fake leads. From phishing schemes that mimic vendors to the resale of tools like ZoomInfo on the black market, fraud is becoming more sophisticated. However, lead generation is one area marketers can control if they stay vigilant.