5 Types of PPC Ad Fraud in PPC Campaign

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If recent statistics are to be believed then it is said that in 2024, the digital market is willing to spend more than $190.5 billion on PPC campaigns. Isn’t it an awestruck amount? This amount also represents the significance of pay-per-click ad campaigns for a company.

Even if we see the revenue of the previous year, it has touched $237.87 billion, which is enough to tell about the contribution of PPC ads. Now, take out any example, be it of AI or anything else, whenever anything has chased the pace of the market, it has caught attention due to the danger surrounding it too. The same happens with PPC ad campaigns, as the corrupt process is incorporated to bring more revenue and exhaust the advertiser’s publisher. Hence, you should be aware of these PPC Ad  fraud campaigns to ensure you do not fall prey to these ads.

But how to know which ones are genuine ads and which ones are corrupt? And what effect do these ads bring to the loop? If you are curious to know about it, then you are in the right place.

Read this blog, to learn about PPC Ad fraud and how to be aware of it.

What is PPC Ad Fraud?

Pay-per-click fraud also known as click fraud, is a type of scam in which either people manually or through automated bots, corrupt the number of clicks on ads, to show more traffic or gauge more revenue.

It is a known fact that PPC ads work in a way, where the advertiser has to pay the publisher according to the clicks. However, the core intent is to gain customers who willingly click on the advertisement to gain knowledge about the product/service or consume it. But, click fraud deceives these businesses into paying for fake clicks that won’t lead to any real customers.

Better to know, that these frauds have no industry-specific targets, they are widely spread in each and every industry, strongly covering the whole digital marketspace. An example of this is when a PPC fraud ad reached an Australian waste disposal company and affected their PPC ad campaign. But with their careful analysis and timely application of an anti-click fraud tool as well as opting for transparent communication with their competitors to address this issue, they were finally successful in retrieving their genuine marketing campaign.

5 Types of PPC Ad Fraud in PPC Campaign

Now, that you are aware of how these ads act and affect the whole campaign, it is time to delve even deeper and become aware of some common types of PPC ad fraud:

1. Bad Bots

Image source: Analytics Insight

According to statistics, 40% of the traffic on the internet is covered by bad bots, this is the indicator of how much they have the potential to corrupt the PPC ad campaigns. Let’s learn in-depth, how these bots affect your digital efforts.

Bad bots attempt this kind of fraud by imitating human behaviour across web applications and sites and creating replicas of patterns to get identified as human users. These bots are usually created to perform repetitive tasks like clicking the same ads or increasing views on video platforms, which is why it is dangerous to these PPC ad campaigns and the efforts put into them.

These ads not only load you out of your PPC marketing budget but also make it hard to extract profit from it.

2. Geomasking

Geo-masking, also known as location fraud, is a decisive technique used by frauds to hide or mask the real location and reflect a fake location. They do it by using various tools, such as VPNs, GPS spoofing, or proxies. These tools enable them to represent some other location, ultimately fooling the advertisers and letting them assume that the clicks are valuable, which in reality are not.

Also, this location masking brings in an uncanny advantage for these fraudsters, as their real location can not be tracked using any location patterns. This brings various damages to the advertiser’s reputation loss, false metrics, cost damage and most importantly loss of trust.

 

3. Data Center Traffic

Data centre traffic in PPC marketing is another replacement for genuine user clicks. It is a fraudulent tactic that generates multiple clicks via servers present in data centres. Fraudsters use a bundled amount of IP addresses to imitate genuine user interactions, making it tough for advertisers to identify the genuine responses and the fake ones. And like every PPC ad fraud it also misleads the insights of the campaign, and reduces the efficiency of profit drivers, ultimately minimizing the ROI rate.

You can protect your campaigns by putting some effort into your safety. You can be cautious and shield yourself by activating geographic verification services and by continuously keeping an eye on metrics. By taking minor steps like these, you can save your PPC ad campaigns from major losses.

4. Click Spamming

Keeping the same goal as other PPC fraud types, click spamming is no different. Click spamming is a trick in PPC ad fraud in which a high volume of fake clicks on ads is artificially created to drive up the number of reported interactions. This could be done through automatically processed scripts or bots that are coded to copy user behaviour, making the fraudulent clicks look real.

Sometimes, click spamming is operated from applications or websites on a user’s device that generate hidden clicks that are reported to be valid. Another ad fraud method is ad stacking, where several ads are placed in the same placement on top of each other, so when a user clicks the visible PPC ad, counting the clicks applies to all the ads within the stack.

 

5. Click Farms

 

Image Source- CNN

Imagine a firm, where people are being hired only to handle fraudulent likes or follow, isn’t it sound disgusting and concerning? Well, these firms actually exist and are known as click farms.

Basically, Click Farms is a company that hires employees with low rates with the only motive to encourage fraudulent clicks and follows on social media and PPC campaigns. The employees hired here are given a salary per thousand likes or clicks. Apart from liking or engaging in these campaigns, they also have to subscribe to newsletters or surf websites so that they can sound exactly like a legitimate user. Sometimes even after using PPC protection tools or tracking devices for PPC click fraud, companies are unable to identify them.

Moreover, platforms like Facebook, Google, and Instagram have taken measures to prevent click farming by ejecting fraudulent accounts and enhancing the detection process. Despite these efforts to control fraud, click farming remains a challenge, as it damages the power of influencing consumer behaviour and misleading them to undeserving sites or consumption.

How Can You Spot PPC Ad Fraud?

Good to see, you all are aware of different types of PPC fraud, but have you ever thought about how you will be able to recognize Ad frauds? Or what are the indicators that can tell about the unreliability of the PPC marketing campaign? Let’s get the curtains off from these questions too, and learn about the indicators that can let us know about fraud ads.

1. High Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate- it is a percentage of the visitors that step back from the website, just after viewing only one page of it.

Hence, if you realize a particular PPC campaign has a very high bounce rate or even an abnormal decrease in bounce rate then it is the prime indicator of PPC ad fraud. However, it might be possible that due to any reason legitimate visitors might doing so. But as per Google Ads, a reasonable bounce rate is around 40-50%, and above that might fall into fraudulent suspects.

2. Increased Page Load Time

High page load time also indicates that the ad you might click on has fraudulent intentions. This is because that due over-participation of bad bots or automated servers can disrupt the seamless function of ads as its servers might get overwhelmed due to artificial traffic rather than capacity.

Apart from these automated bots and servers, the use of VPNs and proxies can also bring delays in the ad campaigns, making it tough to stay in.

3. Unusual Mobile Traffic Locations

If you notice your ad campaign getting traffic from unusual or unintended locations, especially from those locations that were way out of your target locations then it is the one strong sign that the clicks are not genuine but just a fraudulent effort to exhaust your advertising budget.

For instance, if your marketing campaign targets customers in North America but out of the way gains a huge amount of traffic from Asia, this mismatch exemplifies PPC click fraud activity. Alternatively, this traffic could be coming from large data centres. Ultimately, traffic from outside of your target audience is a major red flag to watch out for.

4. User Complaints

Last but not least, if you observe that user complaints have been registered in a large amount for a particular PPC campaign, for example- huge complaints are being registered about unreliable or fund-seeking subscriptions, then it is high time to ask your publisher about it and have an in-depth analysis on the whole track.

This amount of complaints not only highlights potential fraud but also serves as a leading indicator of goodwill damage. Hence, monitoring and addressing these complaints timely is important to mitigate fraud and maintain customer loyalty.

Imagine, your pay-per-click advertising becomes a prey to PPC ad fraud and now you have to face these after-affects.

Work With a Reputable Company

Right from designing a captivative PPC advertising campaign, to looking forward to its safety and opting for PPC protection tools and solving the most complex problem of today’s digital market space, i.e. how to reduce click fraud PPC, you have a long list to perform.

Undoubtedly, all these tasks require expert guidance to ensure quality and security. Now, to leverage these experts’s experience you can either go for in-house hiring that might be unfit for your budget, or time-consuming too. Whereas, another option that can let you enjoy the experience of a bunch of experts as well as a quick on-boarding process, is to outsource a reputed PPC agency.

One such agency is W3era, which can be your wingman to shrug all your queries starting from ‘What are the PPC services’ to how to enjoy the best benefits from it.

Conclusion

A perfect way to sum up this blog is to say, “Everything that gains popularity, attracts danger too.”Pay-per-click ad campaigns have always been in the limelight due to their captivating strategies, but nowadays PPC click fraud is what has caught attention. Right from masking the locations to having servers build up to generate unreliable bulky clocks, is now what fraudsters are performing, nowadays.

Hence, keeping in mind the indicators of PPC fraud ads and taking timely measures with the help of experts is what can help you. Remember, despite having a lot of danger, PPC still shines brighter, all you have to do is just bring your creativity and presence of mind together and make a campaign worth remembering.

And if you want a marketing journey exceptionally seamless then you can join hands with W3era, which is a popular PPC company in the USA and other parts of the globe. Let’s meet on the other side!