Today we are in a situation where we come across certain frauds knowingly or unknowingly. There are various frauds wherein people ask you for bank details and you lose your wealth. However, in these frauds, the person gets to know the point of time where he was at fault. In case of click fraud, the person does not come to know about the fraud at any point of time and hence these frauds are the most dangerous frauds of all time.
Let us understand the meaning of click frauds and its complete magnitude.
Click Frauds
Advertisers engage with the companies to promote their products based on the clicks that they get on the site. This type of advertising is known as “Pay Per Use” contracts. Here, the advertiser’s revenue depends solely on the number of users, the advertiser could attract.
To increase the revenues, the advertisers play smart by getting more clicks on the client’s site by unethical means. These unethical means include click farms, bot farms, competitor clicks, fraud schemes, etc. This brings more clicks to the site while the intention to advertise is lost as these are artificial tools that bring clicks to the site. According to the reports and surveys done by Association of National Advertisers, the impact of click fraud is estimated to be $5.8 billion this year and is expected to grow every year. Hence, it is a huge backset for the advertising industry.
What Are The Sources Of Click Frauds?
Click frauds can be done via many unethical means which range from click farms, bot farms, competitor clicks, etc. The following provides detailed understanding of the means through which click frauds take place.
1. Click Farms
There are a lot of people who have low wages and want additional sources of income. They get connected to these advertisers who ask them to click client’s site by various accounts so that the clicks seem to be genuine. The more these people click, the more is the income that they could earn. This is how advertisers pay for clicking client’s site and earn more revenue. Even though people do not have interest in client’s site, they still click and increase viewership that is not relevant for the company who is advertising its products and services.
2. Bot Farms
Bots are sophisticated malware that act like human traffic on sites and provide clicks, impressions, site visits, etc. as per the programmer that is set up in the Bot to perform as particular function. These bots have can click continuously multiple times to ensure that there are enough clicks to make the advertiser earn good amount of revenue. There could be no differentiation that can be made which clicks are done by way of bots and which clicks are done genuinely by the visitors who are interested to visit the site.
3. Competitors
One would imagine why a competitor click on the other company’s sites. Well, the answer to this is, every company has a defined ad budget allocated for every new campaign. The budget is allocated in a way that once the allocated budget is utilised, the advertiser needs to stop advertising. Its competitors take an advantage of this and click on their sitemultiple times so that the company’s allocated budget is utilised, and the views of their target audience is restricted.
4. Fraud Schemes
The advertisers may place a scheme that is not in existence, it is just made to grab your attention so that you are attracted to generate a click. Even though these clicks are done by actual human beings, these are manipulated schemes where there target audience are not reached ethically.
Impact Of Fraud Clicks
Fraud clicks may be beneficial for the advertisers, but it betrays the company who genuinely want to reach their specified target audience. This not only wastes money of the companies but also, they do not get the expected outcome from the campaign. It is expected that the ecommerce is expected to lose $3.8 billions globally due to the impact of click frauds. It is a high time that these malicious practices are stopped with immediate effect, else this will negatively impact the advertising community and the companies will be forced to innovate new marketing strategies. This will impact the advertising companies in the long run, who are currently just focusing on the short term profits.
Precautions To Be Taken
Fraud clicks cannot be easily identified, however as a company or as an advertiser, one needs to be vigilant enough to ensure that the value that you are paying to advertise your company is actually achieving you worth. One needs to undertake proper due diligence and have a tracking process wherein one can identify the source and number of clicks that the advertising campaign is achieving genuinely by communicating the right message to their target audience. There are several tools that is available in the market like filter clicks, click fraud prevention tools, trackers, etc. that help you to check data and organic clicks that you have generated. One may also devise a program wherein the data is scrutinised, and a blacklist is maintained to block unethical sites from fraud clicks. Stay safe from click frauds!
The Final Remarks
Fraud clicks is the most dangerous idea that is floating over the internet and depriving the companies of the actual benefits that needs to be derived from the advertising campaigns and other purposes where click per pay contracts are undertaken. Efforts must be taken to ensure proper tracking of the sources of clicks, its nature and to understand how genuinely the campaign could be run. Without tracking the details of the clicks generated by your advertising agency, it becomes too difficult to meet up your expectation and the entire purpose of creating the impact of the campaign is lost.
Cut Down On Click Fraud
Conducting proper due diligence and having the right governance can protect you from fraud clicks and ensures that your campaign goals are met effectively. Crushing click fraud isn't easy but it can be done!
