Fraudulent Ad Clicking: Understanding its Impact and Taking Preventive Measures

The field of marketing has evolved over the years. And now, it is the era of digital marketing where businesses are advertising online. Google ads are a standard method for companies to market themselves online.

Digital marketing is gaining significance for businesses with the rise in internet users. You can find small start-ups and multinational companies online now as there is a shift towards e-commerce. Unlike earlier days, businesses can expand their consumer base beyond their cities and countries and trade globally.

As a result, you can comfortably believe that digital marketing is the only way forward for marketing. That makes the concept of click fraud crucial to grasp. In digital marketing, businesses understand consumer behaviour and interest in their ads by analysing the number of clicks on their ads.

The cost of the marketing campaign also depends on the pay-per-click, where the business has to pay for every click on the advertisement. Companies run targeted advertising campaigns based on the pay-per-click strategy to attract new consumers to their products.

Introduction to Ad Fraud

Online marketing has its own set of challenges that make businesses worry as they might cost them a considerable sum. Ad fraud is one of those challenges. Ad fraud is a situation where the clicks on the ads are done manually by some competitor business that depletes the marketing budget without much increase in the consumer base.

This has a major negative effect on the business resulting in losses each fiscal year. According to a survey, ad fraud impacts businesses more than credit card fraud.

There can also be automated bot-assisted ad fraud where bots increase the click rate. Bot farms are another way to commit click fraud. Here, people are specifically hired to click on competitor ads. Sometimes, customers may also click multiple times on the ad, which costs the company.

Impact of Ad Fraud

The following are some of the ways ad fraud affects business:

• Ad fraud costs businesses most of their marketing budget.
• They cause mishaps with website analytics and mislead companies in analytics.
• Companies can’t judge the number of actual consumers visiting their website, and the consumer conversion rate will be low, which is a great disadvantage to the business.
• The businesses also can’t improve their marketing and content strategy as the analytics do not show the actual consumer behaviour.

Strategies to Prevent Ad Fraud

Businesses employ various strategies to prevent ad fraud.

• They use AI to assist in the prevention of bot-assisted ad fraud. Google AdWords also employs machine learning strategies to prevent click fraudsters.
• Establishing an ad fraud prevention program is also helpful.
• A regular follow-up of statistics will help you identify the ad fraud rate. A high number of clicks from a specific IP address is considered fraud. Blocking such IP addresses can prevent any further fraud.
• Also, the number of clicks and rise in sales should be proportional. If not, one doubts ad fraud.

By implementing these strategies, the number of fraudulent clicks on your advertisement can reduce with time.

Final Thoughts

Businesses who run online marketing campaigns to increase their consumer base should be aware of the rate of ad fraud that is troubling the online e-commerce industry. However, not bringing your business online, fearing the challenge of ad fraud, is ridiculous. Instead, one should educate themselves about various methods to mitigate the serious issue of online click fraud. So, brace yourself to face the challenges with technology and research and see a rise in your online business sales.