Click Fraud Prevention

Adwords Click Fraud Prevention:
The Basics

Click fraud is usually caused by bots, competitors, or even employees. Click fraud prevention services will monitor your website traffic and alert you when a suspicious amount of traffic occurs. There is more to click fraud prevention, but this gives you a basic idea.

What is Click Fraud?

Click Fraud is when someone clicks on your ad link with no actual intention of buying your product. This behavior can be very frustrating and costly for advertisers paying for ads without getting any benefits. Click Fraud is a growing problem on the internet. It can be hard to detect and lead to monetary and reputation damage; however, there are some ways to protect your business.

Google Adwords Click Fraud Protection

Who is Responsible for Fraudulent Clicks?

One of the most common examples of click fraud is the use of bots to click on advertisements. Bad actors and black hat SEO's will scrape ad copy and landing page content to harvest data. Often, your competition makes fraudulent clicks or people who may have had a bad experience with your business. The intent is to remove your ads from search results. And sometimes, people accidentally click on an ad, which is not out of the ordinary. 

Types of Click Fraud

The world of internet advertising is rife with fraud.

There are many types of click fraud, including the following: 

  • Cookie stuffing is where a person will click on a website and then click on the same website repeatedly, making the website look like it has more traffic than it does.
  • Bot click fraud is when a person uses a bot to click on an advertisement. 
  • Click flooding is when a site displays multiple ads per page, and a person creates a bot to click on all the ads, flooding the targeted website.
  • Ad stacking is when a site places a high number of ads on its site. Ad stacking is different from click flooding in that the person is creating an increased number of bots instead of just making a single bot to click on all the ads.
  • Syndication is when a site uses another site's content as its own and potentially uses other sites' links.

How does Click Fraud affect me?

Click fraud is terrible for consumers for two reasons. First, the cost of advertising is passed on to the consumer making goods and services more expensive. Second, when a business is targeted by fraudulent clicks, the ad spend budget is blown quickly, resulting in your ads not showing up when actual customers are looking to buy; This is a lost opportunity for a customer to find the best product or service.

How click fraud hurts the digital advertising industry?

Most people are unaware of how click fraud can hurt the digital advertising industry. However, studies from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) reveal that one in five digital ad clicks are fraudulent. Furthermore, the study found that click fraud is a $7.2 billion problem for the industry.

The digital advertising industry is hurt by click fraud because it leads to false impressions and misleading ad revenue. Some other consequences are harder to measure; for instance, ad copy and high-quality design are measured or tested inaccurately, leaving a gap in marketing intelligence. 

Also, when left unidentified and unaddressed, click fraud will leave a bad taste with an agency client looking for results.

Adwords click fraud prevention

A study by Google found that click fraud is a significant issue for advertisers. The internet makes it easy to set up an AdWords account and target keywords. But, unfortunately, it has also made it easier for people and bad actors to click on ads and make money from advertisers without actually providing any value.

How can advertisers protect themselves from click fraud?

Are you an advertiser that is worried about click fraud?

Business owners should always look for new ways to make sure that actual people see their ads. Don't lose revenue by paying for clicks that are not legitimate. There are many ways that advertisers can protect themselves from click fraud. One way is to use a third-party company that monitors the clicks and flags any suspicious activity. Another way is by using a tracking pixel. A pixel is a tiny piece of code embedded into the ad. The pixel tracks the number of times the ad is viewed and conversions on your website.

How do we protect our PPC clients from click fraud?

When managing our client's Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, or Microsoft advertising campaigns, we employ proprietary software that monitors your ads and analyzes the traffic to look out for bad IP addresses and suspicious behavior. When we notice bad behavior, we automatically block it. And you save money.