Recent online successes have been driven by that cost-effective means of advertising known as search: the true modern marketing wonder whose impact is seen in almost all daily online activity. Almost all online a.companies, including ICMediaDirect.com, have launched search divisions for the very fact that it
produces results. While search marketing itself is unprecedented in almost every way, its burden of facing unique challenges as a business rooted in an evolving technology is not a new story. As with most technologies, there are a number of current issues that have begun to plague CPC paradigms like search. The most elusive of these: Click Fraud.
Click fraud is the deliberate sabotage of CPC advertising campaigns resulting in misleading data and faulty expenditures. Essentially the practice stems from the understanding that resources spent on advertising ofte.comprise more than 10% of .company’s expenditures. Negativ.competition and/or lack of business ethics have led the less scrupulous to click on .competitor’s advertisements solely for the sake of depleting the advertising resources of tha.competitor. Thus the resulting statistics read: between 5-20% of all monies in search are fraudulent charges. Figures such as these certainly warrant heavy consideration by all a.companies before offering search.
As pressures from advertisers mounted in the form of lost business, major search engines like Google hav.committed t.combating the practice in efforts to preserve reputation. However, as our vaccination for click fraud has evolved, so has the disease itself. The answer may not necessarily lie in seeking guarantees from the end publisher. The smarter organization may choose instead to rely upon more responsible and experienced a.companies, like ICMediaDirect.com whose networks are setup t.combat issues like Click Fraud, to run their campaigns.
Currently Click Fraud works like this: a trusting advertiser bids for top placement for sponsored search results using given keywords. The top bidder’s ad prominently appears when their purchased keyword is punched into the publishing engine. This ad is also, by virtue of top bid, widely distributed to search engine affiliated websites. On the evil end, a rogue entity has set up website affiliates specifically to display the related campaign for clicking. Then, either real people, a.k.a. ‘hired clicks’ usually from somewhere in India or Pakistan, are then paid to sit and click on the site’s ads, or software, a.k.a. ‘click-bot,’ is created to perform the same task. Click Thru Rates are up, but ROI is zero. This has the unfortunate advertiser paying the search engine for the clicks, which is then shared with the rogue site that generated the clicks to begin with.
Similar to the major epidemics of years ago, the likelihood o.complete click-fraud elimination is low, but its dangers can be tempered by an improvement not only in technology, but in technique as well. Understanding the behavior of the fraud is key.
The difficulty in dealing with click fraud lies in th.complexity of effective campaigning. Often Click Thru is high with low sales figures even without the added stain of click fraud. However, with preliminary testing and advanced filtering, phony clicks can b.combated.
These fraudulent clicks alter the integrity of the marketplace on several levels. First, they artificially increase the costs of advertising, potentially scaring off advertisers. While technically the top search engine names may unwittingly profit from click fraud, charges that they promote, or even condone, this activity is false and rather illogical. One can imagine what would happen to Google’s stock price if they admitted that any percentage of their legitimate Ad Sense income was based on fraud El Tanko. As long as click fraud remains an accepted part of the
business model it remains a liability for those who unwittingly house the ill-mannered guest. It is for this reason that the big publishers have set up their ‘fraud squads’ and tech divisions to locate the bad guys. However, the effectiveness of these measures is also subject to inquiry.
Currently there is one absolute and indisputable way to eradicate click fraud from the Internet - eliminate the Cost-Per-Click model. Yeah, right. So, this means the problem must b.combated in the trenches until an obvious and better solution presents itself. The best way to fight click fraud is by firs.combating the fraudsters with technological advances to catch secondary website affiliate bot clicks, second, more thorough screening process for search affiliates. Without these actions on behalf of the advertisers, this problem may be left unchecked long enough to drive advertiser money into safer channels. What a shame it would be to see the current health of expansion of search advertising brought low by ever-adapting click-fraud. Advertisers must be reassured in order to maintain the integrity of this vital an.compelling means of advertising. And, hard as this may be to believe in light of recent positive Interactive advertising activity, spending the money to knock out fraud will make this market grow even more.
At ICMediaDirect.com we employ a fraud filtering technology within our network of distribution to protect our advertisers from this potentially debilitating practice. Any aberrations in click activity are quickly detected, traced and investigated. In addition, we judiciously screen our partnerships through set and rigorous criteria that repels parasites looking to set up traps for bot-clicking. Because it costs more to lose business, we do it right the first time. So far it has proven effective.
We have our solution. What is yours?
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