How to Prevent Fraudulent Clicks
Prevent fraudulent clicks is one of the most important aspects of running an online ad campaign. The pay-per-click model has attracted fraudsters looking to exploit advertisers and steal their budget. This article explores the various techniques of click fraud and how to identify it so you can take steps to prevent it from devaluing your campaigns.
There are several warning signs of fraudulent clicks. These include unusually high click volumes or a significant increase in your ad spend. You should also be on the lookout for sudden drops in performance or high bounce rates (over 70 percent).
Fraudulent clicks often originate from Click Farms where people are hired to click on ads as cheap labor. These workers operate multiple devices in an attempt to mimic the behavior of a natural user. They may also spoof their location by using proxy connections and will even go so far as to perform tasks like browsing sites and clicking on ads to simulate a normal human user experience.
Several other types of click fraud exist, such as toolbar injection and install hijacking. Toolbar injection involves the installation of a browser plugin that appears to be a legitimate tool but actually contains a fraud app. This app then overtakes ad tracking codes and attributes a click to the fraudster. Install hijacking is a similar type of fraud, which occurs when a malicious app sneaks in with another application, such as a video player, to cause it to be clicked and lead to a conversion.
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