How bad is the click fraud problem?

We’ve found that click fraud ranges from 10% to 80%. On average we’ve found 18% of clicks are fraudulent.

Why should I be concerned about click fraud?

The way we look at it, preventing click fraud should be part of your overall marketing and business plan. If you can improve your bottom line by improving your ad copy, you should do it. If you can improve your bottom line with better headlines, do it. And if you can improve your bottom line by eliminating click fraud, then you should absolutely do that as well. It’s all part of the multitude of things you need to do to maximize profits. Click fraud is not just part of doing business online; click fraud is actively eating into the profits you could be using to expand your business, hire new employees, or run additional marketing campaigns. Even if you are only losing $100 dollars a day, that money could be much better spent building your business, rather than needlessly fattening some PPC provider’s or click-fraudster’s pocket book.

Another reason to actively manage click fraud is that fraudulent traffic costs an advertiser both position and volume in the paid listings. Many advertisers have not yet woken up to the fact that click fraud may be costing them several positions in the rankings for their best keywords. These advertisers have already moved up as high in the PPC rankings as their margins will allow, and are actively seeking ways to increase their volume of traffic from the search engines. By identifying fraudulent clicks and stopping them, and then obtaining a refund from the PPC providers, advertisers can cut their PPC costs, grow their margins, and possibly afford to move up in the rankings to find the increased volume of traffic they want.

How much will this click fraud audit cost me?

Nothing, we will perform an audit at no charge. If we detect no fraud, it will cost you ZERO dollars. We only make money if we are to detect fraud and are able to recover marketing dollars for you.

How can your business survive if you just take clients on a contingency basis?

We believe in what we do and are good at what we do. We don’t charge you simply to do an analysis on your log files. We don’t charge you by the hour. Our services are FREE to you unless we are able to detect click fraud and are able to recover money for you. There is no risk on your part.

Who is performing the click fraud?

Click fraud typically occurs for two reasons:
1. Competitors sometimes attempt to deplete one another’s advertising budgets thereby making it more difficult to compete. In such cases, the fraudster is not directly making money from their fraudulent activity but they are affecting a company’s ability to be competitive by reducing their bottom line profits.

In cases where they render a company’s PPC efforts ineffective, they may succeed in eliminating that competition. After all, if they can get a competitor to abandon their PPC efforts for lack of ROI, they can reduce or even remove the bid-competition for keywords and thus lower their own overall cost of advertising once they’ve cleared the playing field.
2. The second type of click fraud is performed by PPC affiliates. These are sites that act as distribution partners for the PPC companies listings. Such fraudsters attempt to inflate their commissions by artificially increasing the number of clicks on the ads displayed by their PPC affiliate site(s).

Both the PPC provider and the affiliate’s revenues are fattened whenever such fraud occurs. The potential lack of incentive to identify and prosecute the offenders is glaringly apparent.

Why don’t I hear more about click fraud?

Think about it. If click fraud got out, the PPC companies would lose a lot of money. They are very tight lipped about answering any questions about click fraud, including what measures they are taking to prevent it.

From our experience, they are usually not very cooperative when we have asked for detailed information about the clicks. In our opinion, it’s similar to you asking you long distance company an itemized summary of your long distance bill and the telephone company refusing