Google Ads click fraud. Many companies suffer from their ads being clicked away by competitors or by bots working on behalf of competitors. There are various effective tools available to combat this click fraud.
We have compiled the most important information.
What is click fraud?
Click fraud is a targeted attack on advertising budgets. Click fraud refers to internet fraud that specifically targets ads and banner ads that are paid for per click. Clicks are used to deliberately manipulate the systems behind the billing. Click fraud is an offense classified as white-collar crime.
Common types of click fraud
Clickbots click on ads to deliberately cause damage. They can either click on Google AdSense ads, thereby making it appear as if certain banners on an affiliate site are being clicked, or they can click on Google Ads specifically to quickly deplete the competitor’s budget.
What is a click bot?
A clickbot is a small program that accesses a website and clicks on a desired link. However, more sophisticated versions of such bots are also specifically programmed to perform specific actions. Clicking on an ad might result in a product being added to the shopping cart, but the purchase is then abandoned. The clickbot is detrimental in several ways – first, it reduces the budget, and second, the user experience on the site is diminished by the shopping cart abandonment.
Who is behind click fraud?
According to a study by ClickCease, 72% of ad clicks are actually real clicks. 24% of clicks come from competitors, and 4% are generated by bots.
Competitors
Competitors click on your ads, thus consuming your advertising budget. After that, potential customers can only click on their competitors’ ads.
Bots
Bots are responsible for at least 40% of internet traffic. Some of these bots are specifically programmed for PPC click fraud.
Click farms
Click farms, hired by your competitors, remove your PPC ads from search engine results pages on a massive scale. These campaigns can come from Africa, India, Asia, or Russia, for example.
Accidental clicks
Up to 50% of mobile ad clicks occur because the thumb clicks too quickly or is too thick. These are clicks that actually occur accidentally.
Brand haters
Up to 50% of mobile ad clicks occur because the thumb clicks too quickly or is too thick. These are clicks that actually occur accidentally.
How much does click fraud cost companies?
Click fraud costs advertising networks billions. Forbes estimates the total in 2017 to be at least $19 billion. Fraudsters who use a botnet or even hijack IP addresses of “innocent” users can commit click fraud on a much larger scale.
At the end of 2018, a single criminal organization was uncovered that earned over $29 million through ad fraud.
How can you protect yourself against click fraud?
There are various systems that protect against click fraud. One of the market leaders is Click Cease. This company uses its own algorithm that examines hundreds of fraud signals and distinguishes between innocent clicks and click fraud.
The adjacent graphic shows the evaluation of such an algorithm.
CHEQ Essentials: The ultimate protection for your PerformanceMax campaigns
ClickCease relies on IP blocking, which isn’t sufficient for PerformanceMax (PMax). If you want to fend off attacks on your PMax campaigns, CHEQ Essentials is the perfect solution!
CHEQ Essentials takes protection to a new level by adding thousands of additional security checks to every visit request. This ensures optimal protection against sophisticated attacks. CHEQ Essentials also offers automated blocking for Microsoft Ads and comprehensive protection for your PerformanceMax campaigns.
The system analyzes every visit request in real time using thousands of cybersecurity tests to determine a user’s validity. This allows suspicious users to be excluded from paid channels or even blocked from your website entirely.
Rely on CHEQ Essentials and protect your digital campaigns with state-of-the-art technology!
What systems and options are available to protect against click fraud?
Google Ads click fraud can be prevented by various systems.
The recommendation here goes to Click Cease for a very detailed and automated system that reports the respective fraudulent clicks directly to Google.
For attacks on P-Max campaigns, we recommend Cheq Essentials, the only tool we know of that can detect these attacks quickly and in real time.
There are also other systems, such as
- Click Cease
- Cheq Essentials – For Pmax attacks
- Traffic Guard
- Cloudflare Bot Management
Investing in click fraud prevention software can pay for itself very quickly. It’s estimated that around one-fifth of ad clicks are fraudulent. Depending on your Google Ads or Bing Ads budget, this can be a very significant sum. We can help, too! Click here for our Ads Audit.
Click fraud is a type of cybercrime. We support you in detecting click fraud through our cybercrime consulting services.