While click fraud rates have slightly decreased, advertisers must continue to be aware of this ongoing issue.
Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator
Many of my previous posts have sung the praises of display advertising. Banner advertising is great for branding, driving search, and supporting online conversion goals, but there is one major caveat to these programs: Click Fraud. Many marketers define click fraud as any method of artificially inflating clicks or page impressions. Some define it solely for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, however this is just as common with other campaign models such as Cost-Per-Thousand impressions (CPM). You may ask yourself ‘Why would ad networks want to generate false clicks?’ Well, if the program is on a CPC model, then the advertising network garners revenue based on how many clicks are received. If a campaign is running on a CPM model, click fraud would help make an ad campaign appear more effective. Ad networks are not always the culprit either. Individual publishers within networks can also engage in this internet crime in order to increase their cut of the revenue generated. Direct competitors can also be the fraudsters, “spending” your money quickly in order to decrease your share of voice.
While recent studies have shown that click fraud rates have decreased slightly in 2009, it still continues to be a major concern for online marketers as these bad clicks are increasingly coming from automated scripts. There are companies who provide auditing services to combat click fraud, but they are not always going to be able to detect these malicious clicks 100% of the time as these scripts continue to become more sophisticated.
Online advertisers must be aware of this problem and know the signs of when it is happening. Having a reliable analytics tool is the best step advertisers can take to not fall victim to this crime. Most analytics packages allow you to see geographically where most of these clicks are being generated or if specific keywords are receiving a surge in traffic. Advertisers must monitor and trend these metrics s to detect fraudulent clicks and making sure marketing budgets are being spent wisely.
