Detecting Click Fraud

Click fraud is the elephant in the room, except this elephant is slowly eroding the budgets of marketers around the world. It’s not something most people are comfortable discussing because they often have no solution to solve the problem. The good news is that while click fraud is elusive, it’s possible for you to detect if you know your campaigns well. Here are the signs you ought to look for, and what to do if you suspect you are a victim.

Click Fraud Might Be Occurring if…

If your display advertising campaigns experience sudden spikes, increasing or decreasing clicks you receive, you could be part of click fraud. People have the tendency to believe click fraud happens to individuals, but it’s an attempt at manipulating markets. It can inflate the worth of keywords that don’t have much value, and increase competition unfairly for keywords that do have high response rates. Sudden changes can signal a larger disturbance, especially in campaigns that perform consistently.

You may also be a victim of click fraud if your click thru rates spike suddenly. You will often notice increased traffic coupled with a higher bounce rate, a sign that users are quickly clicking off the ad. This could be an indication that someone is using a botnet to influence the market.

Handling Click Fraud

The best thing you can do is report potential click fraud to the ad exchange you work with. They can review your banner advertising, and check IP addresses of visitors to see if the users are fake.

Bio: Ted Dhanik is the CEO of engage:BDR, responsible for strategic sales and business development. Ted Dhanik helps companies publish engaging ads across a variety of platforms through the ad exchange engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik is available online through his blog, or at engage:BDR.