Posts Tagged ‘Click Fraud’

Click fraud linked to other types for fraud.

Friday, June 5th, 2009

It should be no great surprise – but it is still amazing to hear about the types of associated fraud:

  • Phishing Sites
  • Sending Spam
  • Pornography (of the most base kind)
  • Trojans
  • Bots (unsavoury kind)
  • Malware
  • Other Scams

Sometimes, these are carried out at the internet service provider (ISP) level. The authorities would love to catch some of these but it isn’t easy. Avoidance however is easy for a determined fraudster, using technical or geographical advantages.

Looking at scale, click fraud is worst for those paying high click value ads. In a way, having a large budget too, makes the attack worse. For example, lets us consider a 10% cost due to fraud. Assume then that in case 1, we have a daily budget of £30 per day and that means that the cost due to click fraud will be £3. In case 2, assuming a budget of £300 per day, the click fraud cost will be £30. You can see what the difference will be over time.

Alternatively, apply the small scale of £3 to 1000’s of per-per-click accounts – per day right? Yep, a small fortune.

It is not surprising then, to find out that with the large sums of numbers involved, that click fraud is linked to other types of fraud where it’s the scale that generates income.

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5 Habits To Avoid Click Fraud

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

I would like to show you five good pay per click campaign habits you should adopt to avoid click fraud.

1. Keep an eye on the competition
Do you know who else is competing on your keywords? These are the potential sources of competitor click fraud. Monitor your top ten most expensive keywords and see who is also running ads againt them.

Consider looking up the domain IP range of these companies and adding them to your exclusion lists. If a competitor cannot see your ads, they cannot click on them. NB this only works if they click from their own domain.

2. Monitor the Quality of Content Network Clicks
A large amount of publisher click fraud is generated from the content networks, if you advertise on these networks, monitor the quality of your clicks very closely, choose your partner sites carefully and don’t just accept any site . If you are unhappy with a particular site, add it to your exclusion list.

3. Keep Exclusions Lists and Update them Frequently
Protect your ads by not displaying them to people you suspect may be committing click fraud. To do this create and keep up to date exclusion lists.

There are two types of exclusion lists:

a) Domain Exclusion Lists - These lists stop your ads being displayed on content network sites.

b) IP exclusion List - The list to stop activity from suspicious IP addresses for example if one IP is constantly clicking on your ads.

4. Baseline your campaigns
Do you know what your average click through rate and conversion rate is? If you base line these regularly and have this information to hand, it makes spotting trends caused by click fraud much easier.

5. Submit Refund requests at least once a month
Become a thorn in the side of your ad suppliers, do not accept that their filters are fool-proof. If you suspect click fraud, collect the evidence and submit it at regular intervals (I recommend once a month) and do not take their first stock reply as law. Ask to speak to the manager, present your evidence, get your refund.

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Activism and Click Fraud

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

A number of months ago I wrote a speculative article on how click fraud could be used as a tool of activists.

The article Low Quality Clicks as a Means of Passive Demonstration painted a fictional picture on how the bottom line of an organisation can be effected by attacks on it’s internet advertising spend.

Whilst monitoring articles posted on the net, I came across this piece called operation deplete on how a group are advocating (using negative language) the clicking of their adversaries adsense ads. It was only a matter of time before my predictions came true.

DISCLAIMER: I do not condone the methods used by this group and I support neither the activists or the target of their protest.

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End of My blogging Sabatical

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

I have take about six weeks off from updating this blog to concentrate on a special project from one of my clients. This has taken up the majority of my time so I have not had time to update this blog.

I am happy to say the project is at an end and normal service is now being resumed.

During this break there have been a number of things of note to write about, most of all the partnership between Yahoo and Click Forensics. I will be dicussing what this suggests in posts very soon.

I have been asked to talk at the monthly Click Quality Council meeting for May. I am looking forward to that a great deal. The work of the Click Quality Council is very important in the fight against click fraud, I will begin to write more blogs about their work in the future.

Thanks for bearing with the pause in service - Neil Matthews

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If Click Fraud is a Business Tax Then I Am Your Accountant.

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

There has been an article doing the rounds for some time on the internet which says that click fraud should be treated as a business tax.  The article entitled Click fraud is just another business tax by Info Security Magazine talks about click fraud from an information security perspective and comes up with the premise that click fraud should be treated as an overhead on your PPC campaigns. 

I would like to examine this idea and tell you why I think I am the accountant to get you a tax rebate.

One way people measure the return on investment for a pay per click campaign is to set a cost per acquisition level.  This is a monetary amount which determines how many clicks a company is prepared to pay for, in return for a sale.  An example would be a company selling an item for $49.  They set their cost per acquisition level at $2.50.  Daily budget, max cost per click and other PPC variables are then adjusted to match this desired indicator.  If click fraud is one of these variables, then so what ! It is accepted as long as the desired conversion levels at the set cost per acquisition are made.  This is the business tax levy.

In I step as your accountant.  It is estimate that the current click fraud tax rate is 16.6%, if I were able to get you a tax rebate and lower your cost per acquisition I am sure you would sit up and listen.  Here is an example of the tax cut in action:
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If 16% of your clicks are worthless click fraud which will never convert and your cost per click is 0.05 then you can reduce you cost per acquisition by 40 cents per sale.

$2.50 / $0.05 = 50 * 16% = 8 * $0.05 = $0.40

If you are selling 100,000 units a month at $49 that is a substantial saving of  $40,000 in your cost of acquisition bill.

How do I do this?  I take copies of you web server logs files run them through my detailed analysis procedure and find incidents of click fraud for refund.  I also find other low quality (but legitimate) click sources which can be excluded from you campaigns in the future to cut costs. Anyone interested in a review of their pay per click traffic for low quality clicks which increase the cost of client acquisition, please see my consultancy section.

I firmly belive in the tag line of this site, “only pay for quality clicks”.  Clicks that have some change of conversion.  I say don’t pay the tax, get in professional help to cut your tax liability.

I would like to end with an extract from the original article:

But right now, if you really can’t bear to pay a percentage to online scam artists, the best thing you can do is stay away from PPC advertising. Otherwise, think of it as a tax on your advertising budget. And like any tax, it’s best to get expert advice on how you minimize the bill.

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Is Google’s Request for Your Data Aimed at Click Fraud

Monday, March 10th, 2008

I wrote an article entitled Does Google Have Enough Data to Combat Invalid Clicks on the Click Fraud Network blog. In this post I talk about the fact that Google does not have the all important post click data in it’s fight against click fraud.

In a recent change to my analytics account, Google requested that they share my analytic information within the companies other business areas including Adsense and Adwords. Here is the request:

Google Analytics Data Sharing Settings

In order to improve your experience with Google products, Google Analytics is updating its data sharing policy. You now have the ability to share your Analytics data with other Google services. This will improve integration, enable additional features in Google’s advertising services (including Google Analytics, AdWords and AdSense) and improve your experience with these products.

Press “Accept” to enable data sharing between Google Analytics and other Google services or for additional options, choose “More data sharing options”.

One the the things that I think Google are attempting to do is to collect the all important post click data in order to improve their invalid click filters.

Whilst this may not be 100% effective due to the fact people can disable javascript or a click bots could  be in and out of a site before the script load, this will give Google a sample of data to help develop their filters.

This poses a question; why do they need additional data for their almost perfect filters. Google claims that only 0.02% of click fraud clicks get through.

This confirms my feelings that Google does not have all the data to fight click fraud, and that their lack of visibility on the subject hides a bigger problem.

Are you planning to give Google your data, please leave a comment.

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Gaming EntreCard, Is It Click Fraud?

Monday, January 28th, 2008

I have been using a new blogging service called EntreCard recently and was disturbed to notice a nefarious use of the service in my web logs.

EntreCard for those who have not used the service is the equivalent of a blogging business card service. Users who visit your site and see the entrecard logo can drop their own card to notify you of their presence, people can also advertise on your site. It is a bit difficult to explain, but there is an excellent introductory video is available on the EntreCard home page.

As people drop card they build up credit point to spend on advertising on other sites, here is where the problem occurs, if someone can play the system and rack up a huge number of clicks, which can then be tranfered advertising, the credits can also be transfered to other users for cash. If there is money involved for clicking on links, people are going to invent ways to speed up the system. The service I noticed comes from the URL http://ec.createlf.com/

Using this system, a user can sequentiually browse through enrecards and drop their own. It is a very easy way to speed through a large number of sites. Add a clickbot and someone has a bag load of credits for very little effort.

At the top of the article I ask is this click fraud, the answer is probably no, the users are dropping their cards as the system allows, but in my opinion, they are working very close to the edge of the rules.

I have contacted EntreCard and asked about details of their invalid click filters, I will post details here when they get back to me.

As you can see EntreCard is not on my sidebar, another fine idea kicked into touch by the get rich quick squad.

UPDATE

EntreCard were very quick to answer my queries and said:

Greetings,

The application in question, which eases the use of Entrecard browsing is currently allowed, because it still requires actual people to visit the sites to drop their card. This allows the blogger to catch the attention of the visitor, and turn them into a regular reader. The use of any program or application which drops your card for you, however, is not allowed. Invalid clicks are defined by our network as any card drop that does not not come from visiting a members actual blog and dropping through that member’s widget by personally clicking the “drop yours” text.

We have gear in place to detect scripted dropping and drop bots, though we do not go into detail as to how it works. When a user is caught automating the dropping procedure in some way, they are penalized by being fined more credits than they earned. Repeat offenders are deleted out of the network.

In addition, in order to earn credits from dropping cards, you need to have an active widget on a quality blog. If you don’t have an active widget, you do not earn credits from dropping. If you do have an active widget, but your blog is spammy or of poor quality, it is deleted from the network and thus you cannot earn credits.

In addition, members can only earn 300 credits per day through drops. This limit is in place to prevent any attempt at a large-scale system abuse. It is currently less than the amount to advertise on the most expensive blogs for a single day.

Finally, our own internal accounting system allows us to track down the origin and destination of any credits being sent through the system. If we were to uncover any sort of credit ring or operation geared towards farming credits illegally to sell them, we would shut it down, track down all their credits, and remove them from the system. So, if you are attempting to buy credits from someone, make sure you know who they are, and where the credits came from, because if the credits are “dirty”, they will be deleted.

So using a program such as the one found at ec.createlf.com is allowed. However, if you attempt to automate the system by scripting the dropping process, we will catch you (as we have caught others), penalize you, and track down and delete any credits that you may have sent to any other accounts.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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How to stop click fraud

Monday, January 28th, 2008

This blog is all about the battle against click fraud and other low quality clicks, here are my top posts telling you how to stop click fraud.

They should act as an introduction to the subject of click fraud.

If you would like to keep up to date with developments in the click fraud arena, why not subscribe to this site for free via RSS or Email using the links at the top of this page.

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Ask Click Fraud Settlement

Monday, January 21st, 2008

I mentioned in my post It’s Click Fraud Class Action Time Again that Ask.com were the subject of a class action suit over click fraud, it appears that a settlement has been reached and people are queuing up to get their snout in the settlement trough.

A settlement has been reached “out of court”, Ask are planning to give advertising credits to users of Ask/Ask Jeeves if you have they have paid for any advertising after Aug 1 2005.

I can hear the pop of the cork and the chink of champgange flutes in the law firms executive partenr lounge as yet another click fraud class action suit is settled.

If you wish to see details of the settlement or lodge a claim, then visit the settlement site:

http://www.asksettlement.com/

This time it is ask.com who is coughing up blood and laying their money before the conquering army in tribute.

I have real mixed feelings about class action suits against PPC companies. Firstly I think they should be brought to task about allowing click fraud to happen. If they had the appropriate filters in place and they worksed 100% of the time, there would be no need for such litigation.

On the flip side, I think class action suits are an invitation to a hog feed. Money is slopped into the trough and the greedy gobble up all they can.

In the end the problem is still there and the company is ever more secret and less transparent about the problem. Click fraud is pushed underground in case future suit are filed.

As a final note, it is my opinion, that the transparency problem we see from the search engines will exist as long as the litiganous nature of US and big corporations exist, I don’t think we will see transparency from the pay per click providers.

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Click Fraud Haiku Game

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

UPDATE: Just thought I would bring this one back from the archives for a second outing.

Submit your click fraud Haiku as a comment to this post, the standard haiku format is a triplet of lines containing five, seven, and five syllables per respective line.

Here is my effort

The click was not real
botnet targets my keyword
reparation now


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