bits & bytes - Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine

BUSINESS ISSUES
Winning
The Click Fraud Battle
by Boris Mordkovich
.......................................................................
Is Click Fraud a Problem?
If somebody were to tell you that 20%
of your advertising budget was being
wasted on fraud, would you be worried?
If you advertise on pay-per-click search
engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo!
Search Marketing (formerly Overture),
MIVA, or others, you have a reason
to be concerned.
According to industry metrics, up
to 20% (http://www.adwatcher.com/
?clickfraud) of all pay-per-click activity
delivered to advertisers is fraudulent.
Two of the most common sources include
competitors trying to deplete your
account by repeatedly clicking on your
ads, or a search engine’s partner or affiliate
increasing their own bottom line
by clicking on your ads.
Whatever the source, the situation
is even more complex because search
engines never reveal their click fraud
monitoring tactics. In fact, most simply
state that they use a number of methods
designed to filter out repetitive or invalid
clicking, and then ensure that all
clicks reported to their advertisers are
genuine. For security reasons, however,
they cannot disclose details of their protection
methodology nor give any visual
or system clues to indicate that click
protection is active.
What does this mean to you? As an
advertiser you must rely on the effectiveness
of the search engine’s fraud
monitoring techniques. However, given
that they actually stand to gain financially
from fraudulent clicks (since your ad
account is charged each time any click
is made on the ad), this apparent conflict
of interest with search engines is a
tough pill for advertisers to swallow.
Fortunately, there are a number of
third-party tools available that monitor
your ad campaigns and track potential
fraudulent activity for a nominal monthly
fee, such as AdWatcher.com and
WhosClickingWho.com. These tools
analyze every single click on your ad(s)
and let you know if they detect suspicious
activity.
The question of the day, though, is
what to do once a third-party tool tells
you it has detected click fraud? What’s
the correct process to follow to get your
money back?
The following is a step-by-step guide
to help ensure a refund from the search
engine:
Getting Your Money Back
1. Gather all of the information
you have on the fraud occurrences over a
specific time frame. You will need the ad
campaign name, IP addresses, referring
pages, geographic origin of the clicks in
question, keywords that were searched
for, the number and times of the clicks,
and any other relevant data required by
your search engine to process a claim.
Third-party tracking services are able to
provide you with all of this information,
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