Heard about the story of Red Riding Hood? The poor, gullible Red Riding Hood mistook the conniving fox for her Grandma. In the world of affiliate marketing, ad managers and brands often mistake click fraud for conversions. Sounds relatable?
If this has happened to you or has been happening to you, let us tell you that Click Fraud is not as far-fetched as it might sound. In fact, 90% of all PPC ad campaigns on Google and Bing are affected by click fraud! That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?
So, is this a lost battle? Probably not! Click frauds are smart, but you can be smarter by following some precautionary measures while running the ad campaigns and checking the campaign reports on your Mobile Marketing Platform.
Let’s dive into this deeper to understand how you can arm your marketing campaigns against click fraud.
How to Prevent Click Fraud From Shaving Away Your ROAS
1. Instead of focusing on clicks, focus on conversions.
Imagine, you got 500 clicks on your advertising campaign. But none of them converted into a customer? Probably because 90% of them could be click frauds. The chances are high. To prevent this, focus on progress and real results – like sales, free demos, newsletter sign-ups, etc.
If you’re running Google ads, focus your attention on campaign performance to know how many of the clicks are actually fraudulent or irrelevant to your business.
2. Keep an eye out for competitors committing fraud.
Let’s admit it, businesses want growth and they want it fast. It might surprise you that some businesses might also go the extra mile to make sure that they’re winning and their competitors are not. Some businesses sabotage their competitor’s PPC campaigns by clicking on their ads numerous times only to exhaust their ad budget.
What do they get out of this? They will run their own ad on that keyword knowing that the competition has now been diminished.
How to know if this is happening to you? Check your campaign report, if most of the click fraud are coming from the geography where your competitor is, it’s most likely they’re following this fraudulent approach.
3. Invest in social media ads.
Social Media Ads are somewhat immune to click frauds, as there are no third-party publishers involved in the process. Also, Social Media Ads run in a targeted manner, meaning the ads will only be visible to people who share the interest with your target audience.
Social Media Ads are less focused on keywords and more on user behavior, which makes it hard for your competitors to find your Social Media Ads to click on them and exhaust your budget.
4. Spend time on ad targeting.
The more generic your ads are and the wider your audience is, the more likely they are to be attacked by click fraud. Set advanced targeting on your ad campaigns so that your ads are only visible to your target audience.
Pro Tip: Most of the click farms are concentrated in low-income countries. So while setting up your ad campaigns, block visibility from certain geographic areas to protect your ads. Exclude these countries as well as the languages from your targeting rules.
5. Invest in a Fraud Detection Tool
Frauds are getting tech-savvy, so should you. When your enemies are armed with modern weapons of technology, it is only smart to get equipped yourself. Manual efforts can only do so much when it comes down to preventing click fraud. To completely safeguard your ad budget from these fraudsters, it is important that your fraud detection machinery is airtight.
If your ad budget is high and your brand relies heavily on paid advertising for business, it’s wise to invest in a high-quality fraud detection tool with AI-powered features.
These platforms use artificial intelligence to understand user behavior and flag any malicious activity. And the best part is? You will immediately see results as soon as you buy their subscription.
Click fraud is complicated. With manual efforts, be ready to always be one step behind these frauds. However, with a smart strategy and the steps mentioned above, you can reduce your likelihood to get affected by click fraud.
Thanks to the latest AI revolution and the advancement in technology, the choice is vast for brands and advertisers to choose among. There are many advanced fraud detection tools available out there suiting every budget and size.
If your business has been affected by click fraud, it’s your cue to take a smart decision. Get an anti-fraud tool onboard to protect your ROAS from these looters. After all, your money belongs to your business, not to some easy money-makers.