Rampant Ads Click Fraud Should Give You More Reasons to Buy Targeted Web Traffic

Facebook advertising network is in a bad situation amidst fraud rumors that about 80% of the clicks on Facebook ads were made by robots. But the truth is, it is not only Facebook that faces such bad publicity, other advertising networks are facing the same issues as well.

Types of Ads Click Fraud

It is a common misnomer but sometimes true that many bots today are responsible in clicking ads, ripping many advertisers off their hard-earned investments. Take note that the growing numbers of click fraud come in different forms.

One of them is the paid-to-click scheme. While this is normally done by firms selling paid hits, some of the schemes are targeted to ads where the webhosting firm gets a share of the commission when those ads are clicked at pre-selected sources. As a result, some of these inferior hosting firms pay people to click on the ads.

Another form of click fraud is using a robot that will automatically crawl on various pages in Google and Facebook. This is quite rampant in the advertising industry. In fact, an independent company reported that the percentage of click fraud on ads continues to rise year-on-year.

Industry-Average Ads Click Fraud

In 2011, the industry click fraud average was about 20%. But what really came as a shock is the Techcrunch report on Facebook ads fraud that showed that Facebook ads have a staggering 80% click fraud rate, which is a far cry from the industry standard. While this report is isolated to a particular company who reported foul play for paying high advertising costs for ads mostly clicked by bots, who knows other advertisers are also victims of this fraud without their knowledge.

However, this case is still insufficient enough to point a finger to Facebook. There are also other angles to consider. A competitor firm could be behind those bots-initiated clicks. Nonetheless, this incidence only makes it all the more important for advertisers not just in Facebook but also in other networks to conduct a click fraud audit to ensure that they are not ripped off from their investment even from a highly-respected and trusted network like Facebook.

Running a Pay-Per-Click Ads Campaign

If you are beginner and you haven’t launched a PPC campaign yet, the first run can be pretty hard and challenging. There are a couple of factors that you need to consider, and you must also have some insights on the ins and outs of PPC advertising.

Pay-per-click is a method where advertisers are billed for every click on their ads. In most cases, ads placement can be targeted to a more specific audience by age, by geographic location, and by common interests among others, so that those ads will only show on the pages of the target audience.

Ads clicks are usually surrounded by several controversies. There is no clear line on when an ad is considered as being clicked on. A person may click on an ad but immediately changes mind by clicking on the back button. Some advertisers will already count that click even if the person did not see the page completely loads yet.

But there are also some advertising networks with Javascript turned on that charges their clients only when the images in the page have fully loaded. This is a better method that provides better guarantee that real humans clicked on those ads. Without the Javascript turned on, it is hard to tell if an ad was clicked by a human or by a bot.

 

Google Analytics has a more effective PPC ads system. It will only count a click when the browser has already loaded the images, accepts the cookie, and has already executed the Javascript. This system protects you better from PPC ads fraud.

Good Alternative to PPC Advertising

Despite the presence of ads click fraud, PPC advertising remains one of the most popular and effective methods of online promotion. It can quickly get your business right in front of your target prospects in no time, thereby giving you faster returns on your investment under effective management of the campaign.

But you must also bear in mind that ROI is not all the time guaranteed. Sometimes a poorly-managed campaign can lead to huge losses on your part. Victims of the fraud have already incurred huge losses, spending thousands of dollars with only little sales coming from the campaign. So if you are not extra-careful, you can be in a losing end.

Buying Targeted Leads

A better alternative to PPC is to buy targeted web traffic. Just like PPC, this method is also hounded by many frauds, but if you can find a trusted firm, you can set off any marketing campaign any time as you please and reap great rewards.

Then again, you must also be careful in your choices. Choose the right firm that provides genuine service and real human visitors. Some visitors that you will get will be coming from the search engines, while others will be coming from paid advertisements and from banner ads.

In fact, this method be, at times, an indirect form of PPC campaign except that it shall be managed by other people and not by you. Therefore, this is better and easier because you don’t have to run the PPC on your own but let other people manage it for you at much better efficiency.

Some companies have their own networks of blogs that enjoy high monthly or daily hits. When you subscribe to their services, they will place some ads for your business so that when their blog viewers see those ads and click on them, they will be delivered right to your landing page. The best thing about this is that you won’t have to pay for every click on those banner ads, the number of visitors that will come to your web page is guaranteed even if it take so many clicks. You don’t have to worry about click fraud as well.

On top of that, you can also target your audience and filter the people who shall visit your blog so that your conversion rate will increase, thereby giving you potential higher sales and substantial return on your investment.

Nonetheless, advertising can give your business a great leap forward to success. Regardless if it is PPC advertising or you opt to buy targeted web traffic, as long as the campaign is effectively managed you can see triple or more returns from your investment.

Do some split-tests in order to find out the methods work at your end. Better yet, implement both types of marketing to get higher sales. Just keep in mind that PPC advertising from a reliable source provides no assurance from fraud, even from a big company like Facebook.

They may not necessarily be the ones that initiated the fraud, but there could be some loopholes in their systems that let others hack in to implement the ads click fraud within their platform. It is for this reason that you should effectively monitor every campaign that you make and properly track the billed clicks versus the actual number of hits. If the difference is significant, then you must investigate further to ensure that you will really get the type of visitors that you paid for.