How Click Fraud Affects The Competition

With online advertising at such a high level, and bound to keep on rising, click fraud is having more of an impact than ever before on the advertising industry and the economy. It is clear that the main victims of click fraud are the advertisers themselves - they lose more from the crime than anyone else. But how does click fraud affect the competition that you face for your advertising space?

Types Of Click Fraud

There are two basic types of click fraud, with two separate motives for the action.
Firstly, publishers will click on the adverts on their website, or get others to click for them, earning themselves money for each click. The second type of click fraud is when a person or persons click on adverts of their competitors with no intention to buy. Although there is no direct profit involved, the intention here is to deplete the advertising budget of the competition, giving the fraudster a "clear run" at advertising themselves. This second type is harder to spot, but there is no doubt that it is effective.

Direct Effect on Competition

The direct effect on competition of click fraud is to reduce the price of the adverts for that particular set of keywords. If less clicks are genuine, then each click is worth less money, and therefore all of the advertising companies involved will start to drop their bids for the advertising spots. This is the view of Google, who believe that this self correcting problem means that everyone is treated fairly. Unfortunately, this thinking is wrong.

The person who perpetrated the click fraud will still be competing for the same keywords, and therefore will be paying less for his adverts along with everyone else. If he is the only fraudster in this area, then he will be getting more genuine clicks than anyone else, and so he will pay less per visitor than those advertisers who are using the system fairly. Of course, the fraudster will run the risk of being caught and suffering financial and legal penalties as a result.

Competitive Advantage Through Ad Tracking

It is perfectly possible to give yourself a competitive advantage without exploiting the system. If you are using good ad tracking software, invalid or suspicious clicks will be flagged up automatically through their click fraud protection and you can get your advertising account credited for these fake clicks. PPC tracking software has been developed over a long time period with the help of experts in this area, and as a result it picks up the majority of click fraud. This means that you, as an advertiser, can go back to paying only for genuine visitors, and you can do it while helping to protect the advertising community as a whole. This is the reason why all of the experts in the field are already using ad tracking software, because it gives them a competitive edge over the rest.

If you're not already using ad tracking software to monitor your PPC campaigns, you will be paying for clicks that you shouldn't have to.

AdWatcher	9.3
HitsLink	6.4
HyperTracker	6.4
WhosClickingWho	6.4
DynaTracker	6.2
ConversionRuler	6.3
AdTrackz	5.9
AdMinder	5.1
ROIWiz	5
ClickAlyzer	1.6
ProAnalyzer	0