Click Fraud is a major issue for most. Could anyone recommend a tool or tools to capture possible abuse? I found a piece of software which appears to help called Click Sentinel see http://www.clicksentinel.com/ Has anyone got any experience with this? Many Thanks
Unfortunately click fraud is a part of every day life when it comes to PPC whether we like it or not. What I find best with my PPC campaigns is to MEASURE... all that REALLY matters is your conversion rate and ROI. If you can measure correctly then all that is important is that ROI... regardless of click fraud. That's the way I look at it anyway.
Although I have noticed Google pick up on some fraud and actually deduct the amount from my bill, its really hard to know whats real and whats not. It is a major issue and without infringement of peoples privacy, there is really no way to be 100% accurate on determining what it is legitimate and what is to be considered fraud. I would like to see a feature that would not show the user the same ad that they have already clicked. Even so, this would only be good top deter some of the fraud but would surely save us a lot of money. Eventually, I'm sure new measures will be put in place when Google has realized that by ignoring this fact they are actually losing money in the long run opposed to earning money from the dirty clicks. Let's just hope it happens sooner than later.
I see your point but thats really the opposite of what we should be doing. By just accepting it as a fact of reality, there will be nobody motivated to fight it. Imagine if we just accepted slaughtering your next door neighbor because his dog took a big shit on your ever-so-perfect-lawn. We as a society have done this type of things so many times and some of the most blasphemous things in todays society, are well.. Just accepted as a norm because it was the easy way to go at the time instead of dealing with it directly. IMHO anyway, while at present I do just consider my ROI, but I am still actively working on finding a solution to the issue of click fraud and as long as I am an advertiser, I too stubborn to just "accept" click fraud and roll over take it in the rear.
While I agree that click fraud, true click fraud, is horrible and everyone needs to work reducing it. I have to wonder if some advertisers don't go overboard and scream fraud just because they're not getting a certain # of sales and they expect that since someone "clicked" on their ad that means they must want to buy the product, not just browse because the ad was interesting. I can't think of another advertising medium where advertisers expect refunds and scream fraud if they don't have a certain amount of conversions. Am I guilty of fraud because I subscribe to the local newspaper solely for the purpose of using it as liner in my bird cage ? I don't read the ads placed in it by the merchants/advertisers. Am I guilty of fraud because I walk out of the room and grab a beer during commercials ? I'm not sitting there viewing what the advertiser is paying to have viewed.
You've made a good point which is exactly why it's impossible to 100% detect click fraud. There are gray areas as well... if an ad attracts my eye I might click on it, check out the site and bounce straight off.... its not click fraud though is it? The ad caught my attention, I checked out the site and wasn't interested. I am not saying I condone click fraud, far from it but all advertisers do need to realise it IS part of PPC advertising so just factor that into your calculations and you will be right. Take a positive approach to PPC advertising rather than a negative one.
Merchants who advertise in print don't demand refunds from newspapers and magazines because a small percentage of their subscribers don't even bother to read their ads. Merchants who advertise on TV don't demand refunds from networks because a small percentage of viewers leave the room, change the channel, or talk during commercials and don't view them. Like you I don't condone click fraud, but I really believe the #'s that some suggest are inflated and way off. Much of it isn't "click fraud" but real people just browsing, checking things out, not necessarily buying, but browsing and PPC advertisers have just been influenced by these companies that issue these click fraud studies in hopes of getting advertisers to use their "detection and prevention" services. At a cost of course
When you are spending up-words of $1000/day in adwords/other PPC you sing a different tune when it comes to click fraud. Aside form that my point was that there is a difference between "browsing" and when a competitor decides to "browse" your ad 50 times in a session. You mentioned TV and newspapers. Why? Thats comparing CMP to PPC. Very different from PPC advertising. while apples and oranges are both fruit, they are not the same. Unlike newspaper ads or commercials the users that clicking on ads in a malicious manner are ACTIVELY choosing to fraud you. I'm talking about hard core click fraud, not general browsing. This is why I mentioned an idea for only showing the user the ad they clicked on once per session. By doing this I'm sure you could filter what exactly was fraud and what was browsing.
Hi and thanks for all the feed back. Moreno4 - ROI means return on investment. Good ideas from easterwolf thanks. AdWords - PPC marketing are great tools for promoting Online Business, I think all we need to do is find ways to reduce fraud, which in turn will provide savings to our clients and possibly increase the demand for the service. Personally Ive found a combination of Organic SEO and PPC marketing generate the best conversion rates.
That would be a fantastic idea. I see traffic exchanges that can do this with sites in their rotation, a member only sees the same site once per 24 hours. I can't see why it would be that difficult for PPC Engines to implement the same type of filter. For under $100.00 you can buy an out of the box traffic exchange script that can filter unique visits, so why exactly doesn't Google, YPN, and the like do this for their PPC advertisers ? My guess would be they enjoy the money they make from 50 clicks a day on your $5.00 bid. If you complain and they have to give a little back it's ok, because there was another advertiser out there who didn't pay attention to stats and didn't realize the same IP address clicked his ad 50 times. I agree that a filter of that type would greatly reduce the issue of click fraud from competitors. I also agree that is definitely, without a doubt, something that needs to be stopped. I didn't really mean to imply that newspaper, tv advertising is exactly the same as ppc advertising since we all know it's not, I was only trying to make a point that I do think in the end click fraud statistics are inflated by companies who want to sell advertisers their services for preventing and monitoring click fraud, and many advertisers have been influenced by these inflated numbers, and quite honestly don't realize the difference between true click fraud and a simple case of surfers doing just that...surfing and browsing, or are inexperienced at using PPC advertising and just have plain ole crappy ads that won't convert well. If something doesn't convert as they thought it should, they yell click fraud and want refunds.