Click Fraud is one of the biggest problems faced by PPC marketers. In this guide, I have listed the introduction of click fraud, history, who gets affected and more importantly the features and identifying the click fraud. Also in this post, we have explained how you can prevent click fraud using ClickCease. So let’s begin.
From the last two decades, there have been many changes that occurred in the marketing revolution by online advertising completely changing the way businesses to reach out to potential customers. Online advertising can easily get enhanced by TV ads and billboards.
Online advertising not only allows businesses to reach customers but it also provides companies to target demographics. No doubt online advertising is becoming more popular daily these methods would not have come closer to the power and customizability which pay per click marketing offers.
Online advertising has a wider range of advertising models throughout its history as earlier the banners were fixed with monthly fees and now ads are run on a cost per impression basis and models are evolving constantly so that advertisers are able to tap the potential of online advertising.
Online advertising is just seemed as it had come only 10 years before but it is not so it has been 23 years till the day we are used to of online marketing Pay per click marketing is becoming an essential marketing strategy for every business because it has an ability to bring billions of people every single day to perform some of the other activity.pay per click is also helpful in attracting increasing number of fraudsters to the industry.
What Is Click Fraud? How To Prevent It Using ClickCease In 2023
HISTORY OF ADVERTISING
When the website hotwired displayed its ad banner on 27th October 1994 it became the first online advertising’s first documented case. It also helped in changing the marketing industry forever and gave birth to a new era of online marketing. It has also helped the marketers to calculate how many of the users had visited their ad which was not possible earlier
The AT&T banner ad has the rate of 44% which was impressive and displays have meager ad rate 0.19% which also were running on the path of success. Many of the industry owners thought of to get their ads published from here and sooner the battle for the attention become sooner.
Later on, an advertiser complained that ad had appeared on an inappropriate page. No doubt his intentions were honest, many of the other companies copied the idea and also launched by 1997. Pop up self saw the boost in click-through rates but actual users have already been got fed up and installed the popup blockers.
It has been for the first time in the history that people can easily analyze and calculate how many of them had visited their ad. The main aim of the pop up was to get an ad associated with a web page without putting the ad directly on the page. Although the intentions of Ethan Zukerman were honest but many of the businessmen had copied the idea and by 1997 ending the internet was also swamped with the ads. He also developed a new method to display the ads.
WHAT IS CLICK FRAUD?
Click fraud is a kind of misdeed or a type of fraud that occurred during the online advertising. It is a kind of internet crime where a person maliciously is used to register clicks on the ads as we all know that click fraud is the most frustrating and demotivating problem in the world.
In simple words click fraud can be referred to as the fraudulent clicking of pay per click adverts to generate fraudulent charges for the advertisers. Click fraud is usually due to the advertisers who are charged for every single click on their ad. If one is having sufficient data and information and good monitoring skills, then he had a good chance of monitoring the performance change.
Online adverts are the leaflets but the cost per click is the cost of leaflet. Although there are major differences in pay per click advertising like as the ability to target specific demographics as well as an international audience. The concept of pay per click advertising can be analyzed by the core concept of leaflet for the beginners.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CLICK FRAUD?
Usually, click fraud can take many forms but in order to get to know who is responsible for the click fraud we need to know about the 4 most offenders and they are as follows:
- COMPETITORS- competitors are the foremost factor responsible for the click fraud as the others businesses are also important and essential to know about what the competitor is thinking and what could be the next step he might take.by clicking on the competitor’s ad businesses can waste their advertising budget and also turns the advert off for the day.
- WEBMASTERS- By displaying the ads one can earn more and more income and it would lead a plus point for the opposite party. But it can only be applicable and displayed to those who use Google’s network. By creating Adsense account they start displaying the ads on the screen. Basically, any webmaster is allowed to show the ads on their websites. And even if no competitor is taking advantage of pay per click campaign then there are more chances of certain webmasters.and to make more money webmasters need to click on more ads.
- DISGRUNTLED CUSTOMER- under this they gain revenge on the company through the financial loss. This type of fraud is very harmful when there are other forms and they also aim to harm the company. more often there are certain chances that you need to click more than one time in order to convert a customer that would help in increasing the average conversion cost.
- FRAUD RINGS – under this type of fraud the only target is to generate more and more revenue. In this, they form a group circle and with its help, they try to generate more money within a short span of time.it is also the most offender of click fraud. With the help of a huge array of automated programs, one can generate millions of fraudulent clicks as well as views per day.
THE MOST AFFECTED INDUSTRIES IN THE CLICK FRAUD
It is important to know those industries that are affected by click fraud. From industries to technology these all have different and unique factors. There are 3 topmost industries that are affected.is mentioned in a report of 2015.
- Finance- 22% of traffic is bot related
- Food- 16% of traffic is bot related
- Family- 18% of traffic is bot related
Talking about the similarity of the above three industries is that these all are common in expense. As all are the highly expensive or relatively high cost per click. Finance is a comparatively highly competitive industry which is full of mortgage advisors.
- Sports- 3% of traffic is bot related
- Science- 3% of traffic is bot related
- Info- 2% of traffic is bot related
In comparison, these do not have high expenses. Out of all three sports is more expensive whereas the info is the least expensive
IS CLICK FRAUD LEGAL?
Basically, click fraud needs a lot of investigation when it comes for the legality of it. The most important thing that may come in the mind of customers about credit card and identity card. When these are found illegal then the card user can be sentenced to jail for a minimum of 25 years.
Sometimes little fraud or minute fraud is taken as unnoticed and the man refuses it. This means that the authority only notices the big businesses and industries to target big fraudsters. The authorities need to gather essential knowledge and data in order to press the charges.
By hijacking these fraudsters or unsuspecting users a large amount of traffic can be directed to web pages that had adverts on it. When a company is responsible for the click fraud then the entire company faces the charges.It means that most of the click fraud cases are settled by lawsuits between advertisers and companies who are behind the fraud.
But also not everyone who commits click fraud will get discovered or charged a penalty for the crime, the repeat offenders who do it on the large scale have more chance to get it ended by law. A decade back Google had sued the TEXES company on suspicion of paying people to ads that appeared on their websites.
Screenshots Credit: Pixabay
HOW TO IDENTIFY CLICK FRAUD BY YOURSELF?
To find out who has visited your website you need to go for the following steps:
- If you are using CPanel platform then you can easily get the IP address. if you are not the user of c panel then you need to Google that how to obtain
- Then head on to the cpanel home page and scroll down to metrics tab and you will get the raw access notion
- After clicking on the raw access button you will go to a direct new page where you can download the data
- For downloading the file you need to extract the file to the desktop
- And if you open the file in excel you will be greeted.
- You will also get the preview of the file that you have selected. The first column will have all the IP addresses
- Press the next button on the bottom and move to the next option
- Then the data can be separated to the screen
- After pressing the finish button you will get all the data loaded by excel
- Then the hardest part comes that is entering of all the IP addresses in the blacklist and later you will receive the result
- After putting the addresses in the blacklist checker we get the interesting results
- If you need to exclude the IP address then click on the advanced settings and drop down the excluded button.
- And then a new pop up box appears where you can enter those IP addresses those you do not want to see
What Is ClickCease And How IT Can Help You?
About ClickCease:
ClickCease is a reliable click fraud detection software. ClickCease is a software that is designed specifically to work with Google’s AdWords network, the software combines a proprietary click fraud detection algorithm that also blacklists fraudulent IP addresses.
ClickCease is defined as an automated click fraud detection and protection software that guards digital advertisers against fraudulent PPC ad clicking.or, in other words, we can say that it protects the Google ads from the fraud clicks ClickCease Protect is an award-winning Google Ads Click Fraud Prevention platform. ClickCease protects more than 35,000 Google Ads account.
Click fraud is not restricted to an industry or a geographic location or region.it is basically worldwide and the availability is 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
As the publishers take benefit from the pay per click model also by using it to take advantage of the constant change in demand of the customers. As compared to other networks adword is the biggest and most popular network in the world.
HOW DOES CLICKCEASE DEFEND YOU FROM CLICK FRAUD?
There are various methods to detect click fraud, some of them are as follows:
- Auto IP Blocking algorithm- in earlier days fraudsters usually thinks new ways to avoid detection. But in the old days clicking on an advert would result to charge to the advertiser and it is been repeated till their IP address gets blocked. And in order to combat this, the ClickCease features an auto IP system which actively analyses every incoming click to determine the fraud in it.
- Wide range of fraud detection factors- to achieve the highest level of click fraud detection ClickCease uses a wide range of 126 factors to determine the fraudulent of clicks. In this, every factor is determined to give score but if in case they fail to do so then the score is too high then they are automatically added in the block list
- 24/7 click fraud protection- it also includes machine learning which allows the software to constantly learn and improve its rate of detection. By analyzing and learning from the data it allows improving the detection rate automatically. It means that there is no waiting approval or for offices to open everything works perfectly.
- Huge database of Blacklisted IP addresses- it is the most important and vast key feature of detection of click fraud. The database of fraudsters allows making sure that you don’t fall victim to some of the most prominent offenders. With the help of data analyzed every day from the network of clients database is continuously updated which means that fraudsters can easily be stopped from seeing the ads before they decide to click on them by giving maximum protection.
- Enterprise infrastructure- in order to deliver the best click fraud protection for the clients the entire system is built from the grounds with keeping enterprises in mind. With the help of enterprise-grade servers to power the software one can sleep easy knowing no matter how many clicks you are getting the servers can easily handle it.
- Protects you from Adsense attacks- it is also a great feature of ClickCease which also gives leading click fraud prevention that it is our ability to protect customers from the Adsense attacks. While other programs that only protects you from the Google search click frauds but this software actively protects you from the fraudulent webmasters. As compared to the Google search network the display network has a higher rate of click fraud experience.
How much can you save with ClickCease?
generally around 1 PPC clicks out of 4 are fraudulent with respect to rates variation from industry to industry. Most of the industries are affected by industries and most competitive too. More likely insurance and finance industries have fraudulent rates of 50%. MGID is a reliable native advertising platform for advertisers and publishers, you can check out complete MGID review here.
With the proprietary technology and ClickCease currently, the detection rate is 90% with this number getting higher with every update saving 90% of the $500 that would otherwise be a fraud and lost and have around $450 that could be spent on getting the genuine leads.
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CONCLUSION: What Is Click Fraud & How To Prevent It Using ClickCease 2023
As the technology is increasing day by day the fear of click fraud is also a growing problem that is causing a great impact to millions of people and businesses worldwide rather than the size of business and the battle of click fraud is running for many years. Fraudsters are always coming up with a new idea and a plan. As the click fraud is continually on the verge of increment it is only a matter of time.
But with ClickCease you can easily build profitable Ads Campaigns as here you don’t have to worry about click frauds anymore. You can get started with ClickCease for free as they offer a free trial.
If you have been a victim of click fraud your pay per click then no need to panic. If you can gather the evidence to prove that the click is fraud then you can get your money back from the network. doing this manually will be hugely time-consuming.
