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How to Stop Click Fraud - A Growing Threat to PPC Advertisers
As if it wasn’t already difficult enough to turn a decent profit with a PPC ad campaign. With the threat of click fraud now at an all-time high, marketers are being forced to monitor and analyse their PPC activities with greater scrutiny than ever before.
What Is Click Fraud?
If you’re you to the concept, the term ‘click fraud’ refers to any instance where fake clicks are used to fraudulently increase ad revenues or to sabotage competitors. Technically speaking, and PPC campaign (where the outcome is based predominantly on clicks) is wide open to attack.
Be it from a human being or a click bot programmed to get the job done automatically, click fraud can have potentially catastrophic consequences.
Increasingly, primary PPC providers like Google are becoming more adept at spotting these kinds of activities and attacks. Though it’s ultimately down to the individual or business behind the PPC campaign to keep an eye on what’s happening.
Who Carries Out Click Fraud?
Motivations for carrying out click fraud vary significantly from one attack to the next, as does the culprit responsible for the illicit activity.
However, some of the most common and prevalent click fraud culprits are as follows:
1. Rival Businesses
If one of your competitors wants to stunt your performance and waste your money, click fraud can achieve both. They can click on your ad until its daily click limit has been reached, after which it will be taken down. They could also simply click on your ads excessively to drive up your costs, with no intentions of taking further action.
2. Webmasters
Where webmasters receive revenues for placing ads in prominent locations on their sites, they may resort to click fraud to increase their earnings. The clicks are fraudulent in nature as they do not come from genuine visitors, not anyone with any intention of making a purchase.
3. Fraud Rings
This is basically where click fraudsters operate collectively on a much larger scale. The potential threat posed by click fraud isn’t to be underestimated – the largest ad fraud ring of its kind to date was at one time generating daily earnings in excess of more than $3 million.
How to Avoid Falling Victim to Click Fraud
On the plus side, safeguarding yourself from the potential consequences of click fraud isn’t particularly difficult. Or at least, picking up on the warning signs of click fraud at an early stage, in order to do something about it before it harms your business.
Here are the three things you need to do to keep yourself safe from click fraud attacks:
- Keep a close eye on your metrics
Any sudden changes in activity or spikes in PPC advertising costs should be investigated immediately. If there’s a sudden spike in bounce rates for no apparent reason, it could be indicative of click fraud.
- Check where the clicks are coming from
Don’t forget that you can check the IP addresses of those clicking your ads, in order to ensure they are legit. If there’s anything suspicious about where the clicks are coming from – such as random locations outside your usual target locality – conduct further checks.
- Report suspicious activity
Last up, it’s essential to report anything even remotely suspicious or out of the ordinary to your service provider (i.e. Google) right away. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until things get really bad before deciding to take action.