Click Fraud
Click fraud is a serious problem. In fact, Google execs recently reported that it is the single greatest threat to internet marketers today. What is click fraud and how to you protect yourself from it? Read on!
Click fraud is when a person or a computer program repeatedly clicks on an advertiser’s paid links with no genuine interest in the advertiser’s site, products or services. Click fraud is generally conducted in an attempt to thwart the effectiveness of an advertiser’s campaign and cause the associated company financial harm.
Click fraud drives up your costs, rapidly depletes your ad budget, and drastically lowers your return on investment. Click fraud in insidious and if you don’t do something to stop it from happening to you, recent reports suggest it could eat away about half of your ad spending. Half!
Who would do this? Your competition attempting to spike your PPC costs and drive you off the playing field. Disgruntled former customers/clients seeking revenge. Bored hackers having fun. Affiliates of yours and ad syndication partners (ad-space providers) of the PPC search engines, etc. with whom you advertise attempting to dishonestly drive up their own revenue-sharing profits at your expense.
Fraudsters are savvy creatures, which is why it takes savvier software engineered by, hopefully, savvier-still developers to subvert their malicious efforts. Many perpetrators of click fraud use programs called robots or bots to carry out their malevolent, manic clicking, freeing up the fraudster to…we don’t know, maybe go out and steal candy from a baby.
Fraudsters will change identities, switch IP addresses, use proxy servers, spread out their attacks over a period of time, attack from various angles (ie using different keywords to access different paid links for the same target advertiser or attacking different campaigns belonging to the same advertiser) – anything to keep themselves under your radar while systematically sabotaging your business.
The products reviewed in this section of our website are all designed to monitor clicks to your website through your ads and detect suspicious and potentially fraudulent activity. Most click fraud protection services worth their salt will also provide regular reports to help you analyze the data collected.
Reports may be generated monthly, daily, or on-demand in real-time. A service offering a combination of these possibilities is best. The ability to run real-time reports outweighs, in our humble opinion, any regularly scheduled reporting function.
We recommend a service that allows you to customize the stats collected and filter your results based on user-specified variables. This way you can investigate specific segments of your overall visitor base using figures that matter most to your company’s unique situation. Examples of stats collected include:
But if a service can’t distinguish for you unique (first time) clicks from repeat clicks, it doesn’t matter what other filters it offers; it simply isn’t worth your time, money, or hard drive space (again – in our humble opinion).
And speaking of hard drives, one consideration you’ll need to make before signing up for one fraud protection service over another is whether to get yourself a web-based application or an downloadable application. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, depending of course on your situation:
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Hosted options – are web-based, meaning you have no software to download, no programs cluttering up your hard drive. Hosted options require the least amount of technical savvy on your part as most of the operations are handled on the service-provider’s end, not yours. Hosted options usually require you pay an ongoing monthly subscription fee.
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Downloadable options – give you the greatest amount of personal control over the software. You simply purchase the software for a one-time fee and install it yourself. This option does require a bit more setup and maintenance (and therefore a slight but not absurd degree of technical knowledge) than the alternative.
According to Clickrisk, one of the click fraud protection services reviewed in this section of our site click fraud accounted for at least $500 million in PPC ad spending in 2004; this figure is expected to rise $1.1 billion in 2005.
You’ve no doubt long ago installed some kind of virus protection software on your computer(s). And you’re probably already running at least one adware/spyware/malware protection program (if not, please visit our site on the subject – www.? – and get your system up to snuff). Well now it’s time for you to take the next step in ensuring your business’s security.
If you are to truly stay competitive in this cutting edge internet age, you need to protect yourself from click fraud. The easiest and most effective way is to employ the products and services of experts in the field – those developers who’ve created click fraud protection solutions like those reviewed in this section of our website.
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