Internet Marketing Click Fraud
Thursday, October 20th, 2005
Q: When Invoke manages our PPC (pay per click) campaign, I can see our ads on Google. What is to prevent our competitors from clicking on our ads and using up our ad budget.
A: PPC is one of the most exciting advertising mediums available. You can instantly turn it off and on, you can attain any position you like, and you can track the success of your campaign (ROI). However, the question regarding click fraud brings up some interesting things to look out for.
To begin with, PPC providers like Google and Overture(Yahoo) do NOT want click fraud to happen. It undermines the confidence of the consumer and decreases the utility of their network. When a user goes to Google and clicks on a site link, Google’s system monitors the usage and filters it to determine whether of not it is a valid (billable) click. If a user clicks a PPC link on Google, hits the back button, and clicks it again, you would not be billed for the second click.
Overture addresses the issue by distributing the following information to interested parties:
“Our Click Protection System is sophisticated software that evaluates each of our advertisers’ clicks. This software makes decisions as to the validity of any click. Our (Overture’s) Click Protection System uses search and click data to make both rules-based inferences and pattern recognition-based inferences about which clicks are valid clicks. We have two patents pending related to this technology, so we cannot currently disclose too many details about the methods we use. While the details cannot be disclosed, the core mechanics involve many data points. Each click is evaluated along 20 to 50 data points.
Some of the data points evaluated are:
- IP address
- User session information
- User cookie information
- The network to which an IP belongs
- The user’s browser information
- The search term requested by the user
- The time of the click
- The rank of the advertiser’s listing
- The bid of the advertiser’s listing
- The time of the search
- The time of the click
If the data points indicate that the click is not a valid one, our Click Protection System marks the click in our billing system, and the advertiser is not charged for it. However, we are unable to remove the click from the advertiser’s own Web logs.”
“Google closely monitors all clicks on AdWords Select ads to ensure that there is no abuse of the program. This includes analyzing all clicks to determine whether they fit a pattern of fraudulent use intended to artificially drive up an advertiser’s clicks. Google’s proprietary technology automatically distinguishes between clicks generated through normal use by users and clicks generated by click spamers and automated robots. As a result, we’re able to filter out clicks you don’t want and ensure they don’t show up on your reports or bills.”
While this diligence helps, there are still ways for competitors to defraud you and Google. When running a campaign we have indicators that we look for to determine if there may be campaign fraud.
When we are monitoring campaigns we do two things to mitigate click fraud. The first is to set an average daily spend. Once the daily spend hits this cap, it shuts the campaign down and resumes the following day. Often this makes click fraud too time consuming for competitors to work on. The second thing we do is to monitor daily spends and make sure that there are not large anomalies. If the daily average is $50 with one day having a $300 spend we then analyze that day in detail to see if we can determine a fraud.
On accounts where there is a large daily spend discrepancy, server log file analysis may be needed. We look for
- Repetition of IP Addresses
- High clicks volume coming from the same geographic region or country (usually India/SE Asia).
- IP addresses belonging to cloaking software companies or originating from.
- Usually low performing Keywords receive a higher than average click through
- Click-through activity increases without having had any bid changes or rank changes
Although the CPC providers are doing their part, you cannot depend on them 100% to catch all click fraud. It is defiantly worth taking a look from time to time at your campaigns, or get a campaign management company like Invoke to take care of this for you.
