Click Fraud & The Travel Industry

From what I read over 50% of all online users who are booking online start with the search engines. Because of this, and the fact that a combined organic listing and a paid listing could double or triple conversions, makes pay per click advertising a must-have for serious online travel booking sites. That combined with the $1-$12 keyword buy-ins makes the travel industry an ideal target for click fraud.

The same basic rules apply for monitoring for pay per click fraud, or as some call it "Google Fraud":

1. Establish a cost-per-acquisition tracking model.
How can you measure ROI without knowing what it costs you to obtain a sale? How do you know if your PPC advertising is making you money or hemorrhaging money? You should know, on a keyword level, how much every PPC advertising dollar earns in revenue. Are you spending $1 to make $2 or $2 to make $1?

2. Sign up for a click fraud software service.
A click fraud company such as VeriClix (which is free of course) should provide you a click fraud auditing and monitoring solution that automatically archives all PPC activity and monitors in real-time for suspicious activity.

3. Keep in touch with your account reps.
Talk with your PPC rep at Google, Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing), Kanoodle, etc. When you feel you have captured suspicious activity and request a refund.

Click Fraud Bot User Arrested

Jeanson James Ancheta was indicted by a Washington D.C. grand jury because he "...used the software to perpetrate click fraud, garnering tens of thousands of dollars..."

Still not convinced you probably have a click fraud problem? Google, Yahoo! (Overture), Kanoodle and the rest of the PPC networks make statement after statement that click fraud is only a small problem (although they have whole teams dedicated to it) and that you can trust them to monitor your pay per click ad campaigns and get you back every penny you deserve. It just isn't so folks.

The few arrests like these are cheered on by the PPC networks as the problem being dealt with effectively. Truth is, even security researches are doubtful whether click fraud bot arrests like this actually curtails the fraud activity. Why? Because the world of click fraud is tied to viruses and malicious hacking.

As computers are taken over and controlled by viruses / hackers it means that they can be used to host click fraud bots and click your ads all from different IPs from all over the world. This is why you cannot leave click fraud monitoring up to the search engines and PPC networks. Only you or the agency managing your advertising campaigns are familiar enough with your ad campaigns to spot suspicious activity such as click spikes and conversion drop offs related to ad placement and spend.

VeriClix is the web's only free click fraud software service that alerts advertisers in real-time to defined suspicious activity levels. VeriClix allows advertisers to run powerful custom reports and export their reports and click activity information into a variety of formats. Create your free click fraud monitoring account today.

Click Fraud on SEMPOs Mind

It's time again for SEMPOs search engine marketing survey. I was pleased to see that once again, click fraud is on the topics to be covered list.

Make sure to complete a survey! This is how you let the PPC networks know how serious an issue this is for you and SEMPO is the voice to communicate it. Journalists gobble up these surveys and use them extensively, let's do our part.

Click Fraud Warning Signs

Well we all think that we will know click fraud when we see it. Most of us think we'll find that ten click extravaganza from one IP that traces back to a competitors site and we yell aHa!

The truth is click fraud can work it's way into your campaigns and look like normal traffic rather easily. This is why advertisers will have a better chance at finding click fraud then Google, Kanoodle or Overture (Yahoo!) will. Because advertisers can be very familiar with how their campaigns work on their set pricing levels and partner content networks. If your just now starting to look for click fraud in your PPC campaigns you may not readily be able to see it as it may have been there before you started looking for it.

A mixture of these signs could be a strong indication of click fraud:

• Look for a certain ad dollar bid level where your ROI/CPA take a noticeable dip on a consecutive basis.
  


• Look at days of the week or even hours of the day when your ROI drops off. Is there a trend? Every night at 7pm does your CPA drop? Are Thursdays always your worst days for ROI now?
  


• Does your ROI drop every time you elect to use the PPC networks content network?
  


• Is your ROI for one particular country worse than others?
  


• Are one page bounces up after a certain hour of the day or day of the week?
  


• Has traffic from blogs (splogs) increased lately while conversions have decreased?
  


• Has a non-seasonal keyword suddenly produced a surge of clicks when no change has been made to the ad copy or where or how it shows?
  

Google - Sergey Brin Hints That Click Fraud Is a Cost of Doing Business

Ok this is what Serrgey Brin had to say at Web 2.0:

Q: We heard that click fraud is not a problem from a senior Google employee? Is click fraud a problem?

A: Sorry to disappoint but I’ll echo the problem - it’s something we have to work on but there’s already a long list of protections. We have fraud teams, a lot of our advertisers (in fact most) care about the conversions, making the sales, and know the exact ROI they’re getting. To them, if there’s a case of click fraud, it’s the same as disinterested clicks - don’t care as much about that, but about the ROI. Doesn’t completely protect people but on the whole clickfraud is kept to a very low level.

What I get out of that is:

Our advertisers care about ROI most of all (duh - the bottom line) . As long as they are happy with the ROI then click fraud is a low priortity issue.

What a limited point of view by what is supposed to be an industry mover and shaker.

IF WE WORK TO ELIMINATE CLICK FRAUD ROI's GO EVEN HIGHER!

Hello? Is this thing on? #Thump# #Thump#

C'mon Sergey, you might have the advertisers' eyes glazed over at the site of you at Web 2.0, but click fraud professionals know there is everything to gain by pushing forward and holding Google responsible for fraudulent clicks.

Why should Google be allowed to keep hundreds of millions of dollars generated by fraudulent clicks?

Click Fraud = Cost of Doing Business = Run Forest, Run!

Should I factor in click fraud as a normal cost of doing business?

Should I factor in competitors stealing advertising dollars as a cost of doing business?

Should I factor in fear of extortion as a cost of doing business?

It’s ridiculous for those in the search engine marketing industry to publicly promote click fraud as a cost of doing business. What do you tell your PPC clients? "Yes, you lost 20% of your budget to click fraud...but that's just a cost of doing business." Please.

A word to advertisers: Search engines won't penalize your organic listings or PPC ads if you request refunds.

If your PPC network of choice says that click fraud is a cost of doing business, run, run far away. Run, Forest, Run! If they say they wont accept independent 3rd party data to back up your claims of click fraud then run even faster.

If your agency doesn't have a plan to protect your advertising investment, then why are you still there? Before you sign another contract, ask what they are doing to detect click fraud and how they will help you recover those stolen dollars.

No interactive agency will be able to remain competitive in PPC management services if they don’t have a solution to audit all of an advertisers PPC activity, monitor for click fraud and help secure refunds/credits.

A word to agencies: Remain competitive, improve your RFPs, keep your PPC clients -either build your own click fraud analysis tool or buy one from VeriClix.

CIO Magazine & SEMPO: 70% of PPC Advertisers Worry About Click Fraud

Well this goes right along with what Google said when I asked them if click fraud was a big issue for them in the pre/post sales process at a DFWSEM meeting here in Dallas.

Ok, CIO took SEMPO's survey numbers and has regurgitated them in a recent article.

The difference?

Executives will actual care about what a CIO article has to say about the seriousness of click fraud rather than a group of search "voodoo seo" guys at that "simpo" thing.

The CIO article lays it out in terms CIOs and CMOs can understand:

1. Click fraud screws up your conversion tracking and your PPC advertising strategy.
How can you judge what keywords/ads are converting? How do you know what ads in your A/B testing are working? How do you know what keywords to cut due to a high cost per acquisition? How can you effectively manage your margins?

Without conversion traffic your shooting blind. Pay-per-click advertising is all about hitting the numbers and click fraud makes those numbers less reliable.

2. Click fraud costs more money than just what the fraudsters get away with.
Every hour your marketing team spends combating click fraud or talking with their reps and arguing about 'low quality' clicks is an hour they are not focusing on your marketing campaigns. Your marketing campaigns become more sluggish and it’s costing you man-hours. Basically it’s costing you more money from about every angle, the initial fraud is only the tip of the iceberg.

3. Advertisers need a partner who is capable auditing all PPC activity and who is monitoring for click fraud.
Unfortunately this is usually NOT the traditional advertising or PR firm or even "interactive" firm that is already managing PPC advertising for their clients. Out of the PPC campaigns I've inherited in the past many of these agencies don't have the experience to manage the dynamics that a PPC campaign can bring. To add to this, click fraud is the new bad boy on the block and many agencies don’t know what it is, what their risk level is or how to protect themselves.

The Solution - VeriClix
VeriClix is a great solution for advertisers and agencies. With its minimal installation (1 line of JavaScript), total tracking system, simple yet detailed reporting interface and exportable reports in a variety of formats, advertisers can more easily understand what is happening in their PPC campaigns.

In addition, VeriClix (unlike the PPC networks) does not provide you with a filtered version of your PPC activity but provides full disclosure with up-to-the-second activity reports as opposed to the several hour gaps with PPC network reporting. This allows advertisers to monitor for specific activity and be alerted to potential problems in real-time.