PPC Fraud Detection: Online Ads Getting Lots Of Clicks Without Boosting Sale

In this digital age, online advertisement plays a crucial role in the market industry. PPC, a new and widely used online advertising revenue model entails paying a fee each time your ad is clicked. The pay-per-click model is essentially a method of buying visits to your website instead of getting them organically.

While online marketing is generating millions, if not billions in revenue, more and more businesses are losing billions to click fraud. So, if your online ads are getting thousands of clicks without boosting sales, you may be a victim of this fraudulent abuse of PPC advertising.

As such, PPC fraud is a major challenge, especially if unnoticed and can quickly drain your marketing budget, while giving the false impression that your campaigns are successful, leading to an even bigger problem.

Read on and learn what exactly click-fraud is and how PPC fraud detection can help you minimize the risk of PPC fraud and make the most out of your marketing campaigns.

Let get started:

What is Click Fraud?

Simply put, click fraud is a fraudulent act of generating false clicks on a PPC ad without the intention of buying. Click fraud often comes from your competitors who are trying to sabotage your marketing campaigns, driving up your costs, leaving you with huge financial losses. Too bad, right?

Even worse, some Ad publishers also look for ways to benefit from click-fraud by clicking on the ads exhibited on their websites to increase their revenue.

Popular Click Fraud Techniques

Now that you know what click fraud is, let’s find out how these false clicks are generated;

Manual Clicks

The most common and widely employed click fraud technique is through manual clicks. This is where someone constantly clicks your displayed ads each day without the intention to purchase. While this may seem a low-tech approach, it can significantly impact your marketing campaigns.  Some companies even employ the services of low-paid workers or even click firms to manually click on their competitor’s ads. Most advertisers do this with an intention to attain their competitor’s daily budget limit, costing them plenty of money.

Bots and Malware

Unlike paying someone to repeatedly click on a competitor’s adverts, this technique entails employing robots and malware to get the work done. This method is the most preferred as it’s usually cheaper and can click thousands of ads simultaneously.

These days, there are bots specially designed for clicking ads. Since bots click ads on large scale, they not only result in tremendous losses for businesses but may as well drive them out of running their adverts again.

The use of malware is a cunning way to falsely inflate clicks on ads by installing malicious software on other user’s computers without their knowledge. Once installed, the malware silently runs on these computers clicking ads on the competitor’s website.

How To Minimize Your Risk Of Click Fraud

Early Click Fraud Detection

Early PPC fraud detection can help you mitigate the damage to your business before it escalates. One great way you can do this is through identifying duplicate clicks, advert views, click-through and completion rates, and cookie attribution. Using human interaction metrics such as purchases and inquiries measure the results of your ad campaigns.

However, you can use click fraud detection software to seamlessly and accurately identify click fraud in your PPC ads. These tools not only help you detect PPC fraud but also provide real-time tracking of your conversions and marketing analytics.

Design Your Ad Campaign Correctly

Apart from targeting your market in specific geographic zones, you should always be on the lookout for duplicate or new IP addresses that are repeatedly clicking your ads. A third party tracker can help you keep track of every IP that clicks your ads and easily block fraudulent accounts from viewing your ads.

Invest in quality ads that are well-targeted and always work with a reliable and reputable advertising agency with processes that offer help in combating click fraud.

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

Online advertising is vital to ensure you remain on top of your competitors. One best way to do this is through paid search. By examining those competing with your keywords in search engines can potentially help to ensure they are not causing click fraud.

Some PPC fraud detection software provides you with incredible insight tools that keep you updated whenever a competitor bids on your keywords.