Everything You Need To Know About Click Fraud Protection Solutions (FAQs)
What Are Click Fraud Protection Solutions?
Click fraud protection software are tools that monitor digital marketing campaigns and remove fake traffic and clicks. They typically integrate with digital advertising platforms, such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Meta Ads to identify and classify fraudulent clicks that may originate from bots, competitors, or publishers. They can also monitor and report on duplicate clicks, low quality clicks from non-buyers, and clicks from non-target locations.
Click fraud protection solutions include a range of key features, including the ability to automatically flag and block suspicious traffic from appearing in your marketing reports. This enables marketing teams to monitor the overall effectiveness and Return On Investment (ROI) for pay-per-click campaigns across different marketing platforms more accurately. They can also display additional click information, such as user IP addresses, ISPs, and devices.
Large pay-per-click tech platforms such as Google have sophisticated machine learning systems in place to prevent bot-traffic from appearing in Keyword reports or Google Analytics, but some fraudulent traffic can still appear in reports. The list above focuses on third-party tools designed to give marketing teams additional confidence and monitoring for fraudulent click traffic.
What Is Click Fraud?
Click fraud is the process of sending fake “click traffic” to a web page or URL. This is usually designed to inflate the numbers in a digital marketing campaign, most commonly a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. This can make it hugely difficult for marketing teams to accurately assess the performance and ROI of a PPC campaign and can sometimes mean organizations are overpaying for fake traffic.
Click fraud specifically indicates malicious intent. This could be a competitor clicking your links to increase campaign costs, or an unscrupulous publisher trying to artificially inflate their campaign performance numbers. Bot networks also play a huge role, sending out mass amounts of fake traffic. It’s hard to know exactly how prevalent malicious click fraud is, with some research estimating that 90% of Google and Bing pay-per-click campaigns are affected.
Not all fake clicks are malicious, however. There are also issues of the same user clicking on links multiple times, non-malicious bot networks such as webpage crawlers or simply users browsing who never had any intention of making a purchase. For example, a service only available in North America would not need to receive traffic from eastern Europe.
It’s important for digital marketing teams to have a way of factoring click fraud into their reports so they can more accurately track campaign performance and PPC spend. Click fraud protection solutions can be an effective way to monitor fake clicks and improve overall reporting data quality.
How Do Click Fraud Protection Solutions work?
Click fraud protection solutions integrate with advertising platforms to monitor all click and traffic data. Using fraudulent click detection algorithms, they will automatically detect, flag and block instances of malicious clicks. Some leading solutions use machine learning to flag suspicious click data more accurately.
Fraud protection solutions provide detailed breakdowns into click traffic and the best solutions will provide a timeline view of clicks, with additional context such as IP address, device, and location, where available. They should block fake clicks in real-time, provide automated scheduled reporting, and flag suspicious behaviors in a clear reporting console.
What Features Should You Look For In Click Fraud Protection Solutions?
Click fraud protection solutions should be easy-to-use, adaptable across your marketing channels, and make it very easy to access comprehensive marketing reports. The best tools will offer an intuitive, easy-to-use admin console, with shared team access for key stakeholders. Key features to consider when choosing a click fraud protection solution include:
- Real-Time Click Monitoring: Real-time monitoring of all clicks to identify suspicious behaviors
- Suspicious Activity Reports: Reports and breakdowns into suspicious click activity
- Contextual Click Information: Detail into click types (unique, bot, competitor), IP address, device, referral URL, location etc
- Comprehensive Reporting: Clear reporting into all suspected fake clicks, with easy export to share with marketing partners
- Admin Console: A clear, modern admin console with role-based team access
- Integrations: Fast and easy integration with your PPC campaigns and other marketing tools.
- Customizable Reporting and Policies: Custom reports and policies controls
- Click Blocking: Some click fraud solutions enable you to block bots and fake clicks from visiting your landing pages
