One of the many concerns customers have expressed to our team at Broadplace is that of click fraud. Click fraud can be a major issue for some PPC advertising campaigns and it is a growing Internet crime. Because of click fraud, many companies will not use a pay per click advertising campaign. Why? Unfortunately, many have been stung by this dishonest practice (generally carried out by competitors).
Click fraud happens when someone posing as a potential customer – be it a real person or computer programme – clicks on your advertisement. When this happens an illegitimate charge is initiated to your account. You, the advertiser, is forced to pay for clicks that have not been targeted to your website and you lose money this way.
These false clicks can be created by someone who is working for one of your competitors or by using a programme called a ‘robot’. The robot will crawl over websites to find your advertisement and then generate false clicks when they find it. Your PPC budget will be charged for these illegal clicks and you find that you are running through the money you allotted faster than you expected. The ultimate goals of click fraud are to stop your ads appearing by spending all of your daily budget, spending and wasting your budget and stopping you achieving your goals.
When you use Broadplace’s services you will find that we have put into place numerous tools to help combat click fraud. The tools we use are not only time tested but also very sophisticated. If we suspect that your campaign has been targeted for click fraud, we will initiate an investigation into the activity to ensure that you have not been hijacked and that your campaign meets its objectives.
Some of the methods we use to make sure you are not a victim of click fraud include but are not limited to:
