How To Verify the IP Address of the Leads You Buy

Not all leads are equal, so businesses use dozens of parameters to determine the quality and intent of the leads they buy. But sometimes, even a superficial IP scan can help you separate the right leads from the wrong ones. And then you can save resources on in-depth analytics.

Technically, IP verification isn’t complex, but it’s indispensable for expanding into new markets and audiences and verifying the quality of traffic coming from affiliates and affiliate networks. Better safe than sorry: IP lookup ensures you get what you’ve paid for.

The good news is that the IP checker with Phonexa is both advanced and affordable, and you only need to set up the logic once to reject or flag suspicious or mismatched IP addresses.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about IP verification with Phonexa.

Book a demo to learn how Phonexa can help you buy or sell leads safely and unlock full visibility into your marketing campaigns.

What Is IP Verification and Why Do You Need It?

With advertisers losing billions of dollars annually due to invalid affiliate traffic, IP lookup is crucial to protect your business from low-quality, irrelevant, and fraudulent leads. The process involves analyzing the lead’s IP address against the internal and external databases, scoring its safety level (or risk level) on a scale from 0 to 100.

Take this fraud prevention proficiency quiz to learn where you rank.

IP lookup is multi-dimensional, comprising over a dozen checks:

• IP address validation – ensuring the IP address is valid and doesn’t belong to a VPN, proxy, or data center
• Geolocation verification – mapping the IP address to the lead’s country and city
• Device and browser fingerprinting – checking whether the lead’s device and browser type to detect potential inconsistencies, like a single IP generating multiple device signatures
• Carrier and ISP analysis – checking whether the lead’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) or mobile carrier matches the lead’s location and device
• Blacklist checks – cross-referencing the IP address against blacklists of malicious or fraudulent IPs

Likewise, IP lookup can help identify actionable behavioral patterns, such as which IP addresses are associated with more clicks, form submissions, and conversions, and how to improve the ROI of your geo-targeted lead acquisition campaigns.

At the end of the day, whether you’re running affiliate marketing campaigns, paid ads, or you’re an affiliate network bridging the gap between advertisers and affiliates, you want to make sure the traffic you acquire is high-quality and purchase-prone – and that’s exactly what IP lookup allows by letting you know which IP addresses deliver what results.

“I think more companies will tap into the affiliate industry and also explore ways to stop relying on third-party data suppliers and sources by bringing it all under one roof so they can analyze the right things and then make more right decisions. A big change is that more of the industry is becoming real-time, so we’re making sure we bring everything into a real-time space where you can roll with the punches and adapt and optimize things on the fly.” – David Pickard, CEO at Phonexa, from The Affiliate Marketing Podcast

Phonexa’s IP Verification Tech Stack: IP Lookup, IP Scoring, and Geo Info From User IP

iClear: IP Lookup

The IP Lookup service with iClear lays the foundation for IP verification by extracting the lead’s geolocation information – country, region, city, latitude & longitude, ZIP code, and other details – from the retrieved IP address. It’s worth noting, though, that the IP Lookup service doesn’t verify the IP address in the sense of determining its validity, safety, or scoring its risk level. 

However, even though iClear: IP Lookup doesn’t perform IP fraud analysis, the retrieved geolocation data can be used for lead distribution, blocking unwanted traffic, and geo-fencing for compliance purposes. For example, if you only cater to U.S. residents, you may filter out leads coming from Canada, Mexico, or Europe, or at least enforce extra validation for them.

➥ You can select the percentage of leads you’d like to check. If you’ve chosen to check 30% of leads, the system will randomly use the IP Lookup service for 30% of the leads that are going through your system.

Similarly, knowing the lead’s location can help optimize follow-up efforts. For example, if the IP indicates early morning, you might want to send an email instead of making a call.

 

IP Scoring with iClear: Ensure the Highest Lead Quality at Only $0.0007 per Ping

Whether you’re tapping into untapped audiences, expanding into new markets, or want to verify the quality of incoming traffic, you can do it with iClear’s IP scoring feature. The best thing is that the checking will be done automatically after you activate the service, and you can set the system to reject risky IP addresses or supervise them manually.

Like other iClear’s verification services, IP Scoring supports two major workflows for Phonexa’s LMS Sync users:

• Synchronous: It works if you want to run the IP lookup before accepting the lead. In this scenario, all successfully verified leads are processed, whereas leads with dubious IP addresses are rejected outright, sent to a less demanding buyer (if that’s your fallback option), sent for manual supervision, or otherwise, depending on how you’ve configured the system.
• Asynchronous: It works if you want to screen IP addresses without interrupting the lead acquisition process. In this scenario, the system won’t disrupt the purchase process, which might make sense if, for example, you’re buying leads from a verified source.

Additionally, you can choose the On-Demand workflow to set the percentage of incoming leads that you want to undergo the verification process, ranging from 0% to 100% (percentage of leads to lookup).

Important: The entire IP verification process boils down to scoring incoming leads on a 0-100 scale. Then, you can set the rejection fraud score for mobile devices, desktop devices, or all devices. For example, mobile leads starting from score 50 and desktop leads starting from score 70, or any other values you think are optimal for your specific lead acquisition campaigns.

Here are some of the parameters analyzed by the IP Scoring feature:

Risk Score	Risk Score quantifies the likelihood of an IP being fraudulent or malicious. From a practical perspective, the Risk Score may be the only metric that matters because it factors in all other parameters.
VPN Detection	Detecting leads who use a VPN network is crucial for local and geo-restricted campaigns, not only to maximize conversion but also from a compliance perspective.
Proxy Detection	Like VPN networks, proxy servers mask the user’s IP address, which can be a red flag for local and geographically sensitive campaigns.
Tor Network Detection	Detecting a Tor network doesn’t mean that the lead is fraudulent by default, but it’s usually a bad sign. Tor IP addresses are hard to track and, therefore, often used by bots and malicious actors.
Hosting Provider Check	IPs associated with data center or cloud service providers are unlikely to belong to real customers, which is why leads with such IPs are usually rejected.
Geolocation Mismatch	Discrepancies between the lead’s IP address, submitted information (for example, ZIP code), browser language, and time zone may or may not be due to an error. Overall, mismatched leads are significantly less valuable.
ISP Information	ISP information helps identify whether the lead’s IP address is residential, mobile, corporate, or hosting provider. For most campaigns, residential IP addresses are preferable.
Device Type and OS Fingerprinting	Detecting the lead’s device type and operating system can sometimes help identify spoofed or mismatched device claims. Likewise, it helps align the incoming leads’ device types with campaign goals (for example, you might only want to buy mobile leads).

Overall, the IP Scoring feature analyzes 25 data points, scoring user data based on an IP address, as well as device, email address, and phone numbers, if these data points are available.

Take a product tour to explore the synergy of Phonexa’s performance marketing solutions.

Get Geo Info from User IP – Basic IP Check at a Reduced Price

iClear IP Scoring is likely the cheapest service on the market, available at $0.0007 per ping, which means it only costs $7 to verify 10,000 incoming leads. But if you only need a basic check, the Get Geo Info from User IP service might be a better choice, available at $0.0007 per ping.

Get Geo Info from User IP extracts the lead’s country, region, and city, which may be enough if you buy leads from trustworthy sources. Like its more advanced version, Get Geo Info from User IP can also be used before you’ve bought the lead, protecting you from low-quality leads and fraud.

Here Is Why You Need Advanced IP Lookup Software

Not all leads are the same, but neither are all IP lookup software tools. Malicious actors and fraud prevention tech companies are trying to outsmart each other, so it’s paramount to choose a solution that can ensure ironclad protection against evolving fraud tactics. 

IP rotation, residential proxies, and false positives – flagging legitimate leads who use VPNs or shared IPs – can be very challenging to detect and interpret correctly, with many standalone fraud protection solutions lacking comprehensive data to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But you still want legitimate leads to come through instead of being mistakenly blocked, right?

This is why at Phonexa, we’ve created a comprehensive lead management ecosystem that synergizes the data collected by eight software solutions for call and web leads. For example, web lead insights from LMS Sync can be used when operating Call Logic and vice versa, and then you can leverage the same data when launching a follow-up email campaign with E-Delivery.

Unlocking the Best Marketing Outcomes with Predictive Modeling

Predictive modeling is an AI-enabled technology that allows you to simulate marketing outcomes based on the data from your previous campaigns and other variables. In practice, this means you can predict actions and strategies that are more likely to succeed, all without unnecessary risks.

For instance, if you’re running paid ads, you can predict which ad sources and timing have the highest chance to drive purchase-ready traffic, as well as what demographics (age, income, etc.) you should target for more conversions. And all that comes at no cost and with zero risk, a simulation that you can repeat over and over again until the perfect campaign is found.

 

Realize Your Full Lead Acquisition Potential with Phonexa’s All-in-One Software Suite

With hundreds of solutions on the market, the number one struggle for most businesses is the lack of a single product that covers all their needs. And that’s what Phonexa is, an all-in-one performance marketing software suite that unlocks granular insights into the lead journey, from the very first interaction, like an ad display, until conversion and further.

“Our ethos, our job is to build the most capable software possible and then get out of the way. Build all the features, all the functionality, give our clients pure flexibility, pure control, and fail over redundancy – essentially, build a robust system that is never a thing that hinders our clients.The worst thing in the world is when you scale a brand, you start generating traffic, and then your system or your software is what’s holding you back. So our logic is to build as much functionality as you can under one roof and then get out of the way.” – David Pickard, CEO at Phonexa, from Phonexa’s Amplify webinar series

With Phonexa, you can buy or sell leads in bulk while being sure you’re getting the maximum value out of every dollar spent and effort invested. Every bit of data we collect is consolidated into a single dashboard, so you always know what’s happening and what you can potentially improve.

 

Get Phonexa’s all-in-one performance marketing software suite at a single price (online price calculator):

Build a plan now, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an IP address lookup?

IP address lookup is the process of identifying the lead’s country, region, city, latitude & longitude, ZIP code, and other information based on their IP address. The results of IP address lookup can give you an idea of whether the leads you’re buying match your target demographics.

How do I look up the IP address of the leads I’m buying?

Here are the instructions on how to use IP Lookup as a Phonexa user.

What is IP scoring?

IP scoring is the most powerful IP address verification feature available with Phonexa, returning a score that encompasses over 25 risk factors, ranging from 0 to 100. Among the risk factors are whether the lead is using a VPN, proxy server, or TOR network, whether the submitted information matches the geolocation data, as well as information about the lead’s device and OS.

How can I ensure the lead’s IP address is secure?

The best strategy to ensure all incoming leads have safe and real IP addresses is to employ iClear’s IP Scoring feature, which scores IP addresses by 25 factors and issues an overarching IP score. Then, as a user with LMS Sync, you can set the rejection fraud score to reject or flag leads whose IP score is lower than the established minimum, on a scale from 0 to 100.