PPC Fraud: Click to Trick

If you have burnt your fingers with Pay Per Click advertising and have sworn off it forever, this article may have some insights for you. Perhaps you feel that the medium simply doesn’t work. While that is certainly a possibility, have you considered that you might have been the victim of Pay Per Click fraud?

In this piece we’ll talk about the ways in which advertisers can be tricked. Sure, your losses may never be restored, but at least you’ll know what to watch out for, the next time you consider undertaking a similar activity.

First things first. Let’s quickly look at how Pay Per Click advertising works. Simply put, it is an auction of gigantic proportions. Advertisers place their bid for keywords that are relevant to their websites. Those who are willing to pay more will list higher on a search engine. When a visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is liable to pay.

Sounds good? Sure is. The only problem is that there are a number of (non-buyer) interested parties who stand to gain whenever an ad is clicked on. Affiliate sites which earn a commission based on the number of clicks are a grand example. An unscrupulous site can engineer fraudulent clicks in order to boost its revenues. The result – a huge cost to the advertiser and no sales to boot!

Then there is the competition, the kind which will stop at nothing to inflict damage upon a rival. And Pay Per Click advertising gives them an extremely simple way to go about their business. They could hire someone to click away all day, or get some creative software to do the job equally well. The unsuspecting victim will rejoice initially at the number of hits the ad is getting – it doesn’t take long for despair to set in, in the wake of inflated advertising costs and no resulting sales.

If you thought this was bad enough, wait till you hear this. Even search engines are partly to blame for the deception – they gain so much from the clicks that they turn a blind eye to the fraud. No wonder, it is estimated that up to a third of all clicks are dummies!

So, what can an advertiser do?

Not that much, unfortunately.

Sometimes, a complaint to a search engine might result in a token refund, but don’t pin your hopes on it. A better option would be to institute a safeguard by deploying a tool that audits click fraud, like Click Defense or Click Detective.

But most importantly, common sense suggests that Pay Per Click advertisers factor in the yield loss at the planning stage itself. If it still looks worthwhile, they can go for it.