Is pay-per-click advertising open to abuse?
Before the internet era, advertising channels were radio, newspaper, or television. It was very expensive to advertise, therefore only big firms and companies were able to afford it. Local stores and small businesses as a hair salon or locksmith shop couldn’t afford to advertise. It also wasn’t effective to advertise on TV or paper for stores that serve only locally. The internet changed the game. everyone became equal and had access to advertisements. Search engines as Google launched a new platform called pay per click – PPC.
How does P.P.C. marketing work?
Each business owner can create PPC campaigns, define settings that fit their needs. The setting can include location which means where the ad will be visible to customers. Keywords mean that the ad will appear only when the customer looks up specific keywords that match the business service. The business owner sets up a budget and the ad goes online. Anyone who looks for the keyword in the area the business owner set will see the ad base on his budget. 99% of the time, customers will look only at the ads that appear in first or second place therefore being third place will not be as effective. Every click on the ad will cost money and the price per click changes during the day based on how many competitors are there that trying to show their ad. Once the budget is over the ad goes offline until the following day. This way the advertisement is much more effective and anyone can use it. Big firms or small businesses.
What is P.P.C. click fraud?
Since competition rise, every day, and everyone wishes their ad will be first, advertisement cost rise as well. There are people who take advantage of this power and use it the wrong way. They click on someone else ads even though they have no interest in using the service. they are committing click frauds. Most likely it can be from your competitors who want to kill your budget and cause your ad to go offline, so their ad will be first and as a result, get more clients. It also can be from people in different areas that just do research despite they don’t wish to use the service. either way, the result is the same, you get clicks from people who not going to use the service, draining your budget until you be offline.
How to protect your P.P.C. budget?
There are several ways to protect your PPC budget. You need to follow the guidelines and pay close attention to your campaigns at all times. First, you need to track the visitors who click on your ad. You can do so by checking your logs and see which IPs click on you. If you see an IP address that clicks on you several times but does not call you, you need to block them from seeing your ad. You put the suspicious IP address in an exclusion list and this way they will not be able to click on you. Thus you need to be quick since it can take only seconds for professionals to drain your budget.
There is a rule of thumb, where there is a demand for a service there will be someone to supply it. Since click fraud rose in recent years and they keep rising each year, there are companies that offer solutions for it.
Clixtell takes care of it and doing it all automatically. they track the traffic on your site and block any suspicious IP address. Clixtell gathers information on the IPs that visit your site, device ID, the geolocation of the device, and much more. With this service, you can focus on managing the business without worrying each minute that someone fraudulently clicks on your ads.
