Keep the bastards honest
- Stephen Murphy
- 19 November 2008
Click fraud occurs in pay-per-click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click, without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.
In my experience, click fraud has not been something to get all hot and bothered about. However, as the price of a click continues to escalate to the stratosphere and the search engines pushing minimum bids that are often extremely high on terms with little to no competition (but that’s another gripe), the numbers really start to add up.
Recently one of my campaign managers caught some unusual activity on a campaign and raised her concerns with me. We devised a fraud-detection strategy and put some detailed tracking on a campaign that had essentially been underperforming.
Our biggest fears were confirmed. We were emphatically able to prove that 98% of the traffic was spending less than one second on the site – that isn’t even enough time for the page to load. In other words, it was obvious the vast majority of visits to the site were from an automated script that was immediately clicking through to the ad.
We presented this information to the search engine – no names mentioned. The company ordered an investigation, and after a number of days, emailed us to say there had been some unusual click activity over 200 clicks (25% of the traffic for one month). This isn’t cheap when each click is worth over $20. The search engine issued a credit to the customer’s account.
I just don’t feel good about that, and frankly neither does my client. You can expect to hear more about this in the media.
How does this happen? How do we know the rest of the clicks were not fraud? Our stats indicated that 98% of the traffic bounced, not 25%.
How can we assure our customers that paid search is value for money when 25% of a campaign is ‘unusual click activity’? Would it ever have been picked up if we hadn’t put a custom tracking on each URL and questioned it?
How many people are currently paying for ‘unusual click activity’? Are you?
The major search engines claim to constantly filter out suspicious clicks. If you look at your bills, you will see ‘adjustments’ for most of the campaigns. But how do they work out these adjustments?
It is seems logical that the search engines could easily pick up click fraud using automated tools. But what about people who build sites, load them with content for the purpose of ad serving and then pay people to click?
For website owners, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish a fraudulent click from a normal one.
Could click fraud be affecting you? How would you know?
Normally, you are the best watchdog for your business. Combining your vigilance with a skilled campaign manager and perhaps our fraud-detection strategy can save you thousands of dollars.
The first step is to take a look at your stats. If a lot of your clicks are coming from unknown, untargeted countries or have very short visit times, start asking questions. Search engines need to be accountable. We need to ensure they don’t brush these fraud issues under the carpet. Keep the bastards honest!
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