How Sokal Eliminated Ad Fraud, Scraping, & DDoS with DataDome & AWS

The challenge: Advanced bots stealing ad dollars & overloading infrastructure

Sokal specializes in helping brands stand out with cutting-edge strategies in paid search, SEO, programmatic display, and digital video. Managing over 300 client websites, Sokal saw some of them targeted by scraping bots that threatened to siphon off sensitive data, ad fraud bots that, if left unchecked, could have inflated campaign metrics, and denial of service (DoS) attacks that could have strained their AWS-hosted infrastructure and degraded the customer experience.

“Bad bots were making our data harder to interpret,” recalls Jason Jones, CTO of Sokal. But data is the lifeblood of any business, so the company had to react decisively. “Although we did not suffer any outages, at one point, the DDoS attacks mobilized all our teams, resulting in increased hosting costs and consumption of the team’s valuable resources,” he adds.

Despite implementing internal mitigation strategies, including CAPTCHAs and manual traffic blocks, the solutions were not as scalable as they needed to be to provide the best-in-class client service Sokal is trusted for. Sokal therefore sought a comprehensive, AI-driven solution to protect their customers and enhance their services.

The solution: Scalable, AI-driven protection, expertly backed by bot mitigation specialists

Jason’s team evaluated several bot protection providers, and DataDome quickly stood out. “We were looking for three things: an AI-driven solution that could adapt and improve as bot tactics evolved; responsive and proactive customer support; and a solution that would easily fit into our tech stack,” explains Jason. All these criteria led Sokal to DataDome, which works hand-in-hand with AWS, deploying in minutes on Amazon CloudFront and integrating easily with Lambda@Edge.

The implementation process went smoothly. According to Jason, “The onboarding experience was excellent. DataDome’s team was quick to resolve any issues and has continued to be incredibly responsive.”

The results: Real-time protection, tangible savings, & reliable metrics

As soon as DataDome was implemented, the difference was obvious to Jason and his team. Scraping bots, ad fraud bots, and even the more insidious DDoS attempts were no longer a threat. “The impact was immediate,” recalls Jason. “We saw a significant reduction in bot traffic, which was a huge relief. More importantly, it is a massive win for Sokal’s clients, who know that we are doing everything we can to optimize traffic to our infrastructure.”

One of the most critical moments came later, during a series of DDoS attempts targeting the entire automotive sector. “There was a lot going on in the industry, and we saw multiple DDoS attempts,” Jason recalls. “DataDome managed to fend them off. In the end, we suffered no impact.” For Sokal, this level of reliability is game-changing.

Using DataDome has also helped improve Sokal’s operational efficiency. “The manual part of mitigation is basically completely gone,” Jason explains. “The savings in time and resources have been substantial.” Indeed, with bot traffic no longer inflating ad metrics and overloading the AWS infrastructure, Sokal has optimized their resource use considerably.

The partnership also introduced a level of proactive monitoring and collaboration that Jason highlights as invaluable. “We meet monthly with the DataDome team to review what happened over the last 30 days and look at any new security risks. They’re great about digging in if there’s ever a question. And having that direct Slack connection means if anything urgent comes up, we can immediately reach out and get a quick response.”

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