Also called pay-per-click fraud, this fraud is done to increase an ad hosting website’s revenue or exhaust an advertiser’s ad budget! These sneaky cybercriminals use click fraud to boost malicious websites higher in search rankings in order to make them look legitimate!
According to Imperva’s 2022 ‘Bad Bot’ report they estimate that “27.7% of all online traffic is fraudulent. That’s more than enough to decimate ad budgets and ruin carefully-planned marketing strategies.”
The way that pay-per-click advertising is supposed to run is simple, ladies and gentlemen Exhibit A) Advertisers create an advertising campaign, and consumers in the buying mood come across said advertising campaign while searching for that particular thing they were after, the consumer then gleefully clicks on this paid advertisement, what happens thereafter is that the advertiser then pays a fee for that click on their ad (and all clicks), in the hopes that they have attracted a potential customer and made a sale.
Now, by using automated clicking programs, these scurvy old scallywags create the illusion that a large number of potential consumers are clicking on their ads or links when in reality, none of those clicks will even lead to a sale or profit for the advertiser.
Even on a small scale these results can be devastating, imagine how destructing they can be on a large scale! With the use of automation, bots and programmes designed to create havoc, these large-scale operations can click on ads repeatedly tricking a platform into thinking it is a user looking to purchase.
There are numerous types of click fraud that different entities can commit.
1. Click Spam
2. Click Injection
3. Domain Spoofing
4. Pixel Stuffing & Ad Stacking
5. Affiliate Ad Fraud
6. Redirect Attacks
7. Install Farms
8. Location fraud.
9. Video viewing fraud.
10. Competitor click abuse.
When you decide to advertise online, you don’t give a minute’s thought to what’s lurking behind the scenes, that’s OUR job!
Unfortunately, click fraud can happen to anyone, whether you’re fresh on the advertising scene or an old hat, these cybercriminals and their bots don’t discriminate.
Would you like to hear the bad news or the good news first?
Bad it is – you cannot rely on Google alone to protect your ad spend… Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut
The good news is that there is something we can do to help, cannect digital is one of only five companies in SA using Lumio. Ensure you only pay for clicks that have a high probability to convert, excluding traffic that we know to be fraudulent or invalid. We can filter traffic automatically and in real-time with Lumio’s cybersecurity-driven detention engine. We can target bad traffic, secure your data and STOP invalid clicks!
To learn more about all these different types of click fraud and what we do to prevent it, get in touch with the team.
