What Is Meant By The Term “Click Fraud,” Anyway? How To Avoid It And What To Do About It?
It has always been a problem that dishonest individuals with evil intentions found their way into ad tech (and digital marketing in general) when it became successful enough to be regarded as a trustworthy source of money. Large sums of money are lost annually due to ad fraud of different kinds. Although efforts to combat ad fraud are making progress, con artists seem eager to raise the stakes and intensity of their schemes, making it doubtful that ad fraud will ever be eradicated. However, it faces fierce opposition.
Regarding fraudulent advertising practices, click fraud is the most prevalent. Even if there is a variety of anti-click fraud software, it is still prudent to be educated. One of the most popular forms of ad fraud, click fraud prevention, is used by many industries. It’s estimated that click fraud costs companies over $10,000 per month on Google Ads, roughly $15,000. The pay-per-click model is popular in advertising and easy to manipulate, which is why to click fraud occurs so often. Average click fraud rates for sponsored search advertising are about 14%.
The Best Ways To Avoid Click Fraud
Requirement For Advertisement Verification
Ad Verification is a crucial technique for preventing ad fraud (click fraud in particular) before it begins. It’s like having a backup to your backup plan. It aids in finding vulnerabilities in your defences against ad fraud. Advertisement verification providers provide insights into campaign success based on various data, including viewability and bot traffic. Tools like these may be used to conduct a comprehensive audit of a campaign, which in turn can be used to optimise the campaign by eliminating low-quality publishers and questionable websites.
Always Verify Identities And Choose Reputable Services
Cooperating with reliable advertising platforms with a history of operating ethically in the ad tech industry is another strategy to protect yourself from falling victim to click fraud. This strategy restricts the enterprise to large, well-established firms like Google, Facebook, Bing, and DoubleClick. However, it provides considerably greater assurance that the outcomes of your advertising effort are credible and reflect real-world circumstances.
Keep An Anti-Listing Registry Updated
It seems sensible to respond to click fraud by keeping a diverse blocklist of IP addresses. Keeping a Blocklist updated is a reliable technique to help put a stop to click fraud. It may identify and block known bot IPs, device IDs, and signatures. Some websites, IP addresses, and device identifiers may be blacklisted if linked to fraudulent activity. This method is reactive but helps mitigate the fallout from compromised credentials.
Constantly Checking The Metrics
Complexity abounds in the realm of metrics. Maintaining metrics accuracy and cross-referencing findings from several sources is essential for depicting the actual condition of affairs. It’s always a good idea to check your work twice. When problems are seen in their proper context, they may be addressed before they do irreparable harm. Here is an inventory of typical criminal behaviour. These recurring issues should raise red flags immediately:
Exceptionally High CTRs Are Recorded For A Particular Campaign
On average, PPC-enabled pages get much more visitors than the rest of the website. There are bursts of activity and suspiciously high traffic volumes at odd hours compared to the norm for the chosen location. There are a lot of people visiting the site and then leaving quickly. One of the most complex forms of ad fraud is Click Fraud. It takes advantage of naive users and does massive damage to advertising initiatives.
Conclusion
Remember that click fraud prevention is here to stay; it’s one of the most important things to keep in mind. It’s inevitable in some form or another, but that doesn’t mean you have to bow down to it. On the contrary, in fact. Using a combination of the above strategies can considerably reduce and, sometimes, eliminate the adverse effects of click fraud on your business.
