How To Prevent Click Fraud

Click fraud has been a problem for a long time, but right now it's worse than ever. Online advertising is now big business, with eMarketer forecasting that spending on internet adverts will be 29 billion dollars in 2010. Any time there's that amount of money around, you can bet that someone will be trying to grab it. Since pay per click advertising first started, there has been a virtual arms race between fraudsters and advertising networks, with both sides developing new and original ways of beating the other.

If you're just an individual or small company thinking of buying some PPC advertising, there's no way that you can develop the tools that you need to fight click fraud. You need to use the expertise of a larger company to protect yourself.

The Industry

The advertising industry as a whole rarely works together to solve common problems like this. There is not even an industry - accepted definition of what click fraud is, so there is rarely agreement about how to go about solving the problem. It is very hard to know exactly what is a valid click and what isn't, and since the industry won't band together as a whole to police the area, the little guys on the scene are those that lose out most. You will need to rely on another company to provide a service that protects you from click fraud.

The Search Engines

The search engines, in their dual role as advertising publishers and networks, have spent massive amounts of money combating click fraud. The only problem is that these companies make money for each fraudulent click that isn't noticed. This means that they will work very hard to block out any obviously fraudulent clicks, as this will build trust with their advertisers, and improve the image of PPC. They do however, have a heavy incentive to allow click fraud that could never be picked up by the advertisers. As a small business, there is no way that you should rely on the search engines and the search engines alone to protect you.

The Ad Trackers

Under a lot of pressure from the advertisers, advertising networks like Yahoo and Google have finally accepted that they will have to work with ad trackers. Ad trackers, unlike the networks, have nothing to gain from allowing click fraud, and are developed specifically to fight this problem. There are now a wide range of ppc trackers, and the companies involved have brought massive resources to the table in an attempt to create pieces of software that will flag up all invalid clicks. Ad trackers with protection against click fraud work with data from the advertising networks about user behavior to build up as full a picture as possible. This allows them to notice any suspicious clicks, and allows you as a user of the software to present a network with strong evidence of your case.

If you are at all bothered about your bottom line, you need to be protected against internet crime. Do your business a favor, and get an ad tracker with click fraud protection.

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