Clicksharp Marketing

There’s a possibility that your competitor may be out there clicking on your ads, ringing up charges on your account and killing your ad campaign’s ROI (return on investment). But is this really a threat to your digital marketing agenda?

What’s holding you back from ramping up your digital marketing?

Please don’t say click fraud. Please don’t say click fraud. Please don’t say click fraud. Please don’t say…

Oh, you mean *click* fraud. As in pay-per-CLICK advertising. If you haven’t heard of click fraud… Earmuffs!

“I don’t wanna hear about any
@#$% click fraud, Daddy.”

But if you’re the type to want to know all the risks before making an investment, you’re what we call a “smart marketer,” so let’s deal with this one head-on.

Let’s say I am your biggest competitor. I’m a little less innovative than you, which means I am just now looking into a digital marketing program, and seeing that you started doing this a while ago. You’re immediately my biggest competition in the online space. I don’t know much, but I do know that those ads on the right side of the Google rankings cost money.

So I start clicking away at your ads, landing on your site, closing the browser, and repeating. Presumably, you’re getting charged every time I click, and so in my heart of evil hearts, I’m pretty confident that I am chewing up your ad budget. My clicks are clicks your true customers will never see. I grin, perhaps a “tee hee” to myself, and pat myself on the back for adhering to my company’s core values: dishonesty and mean-spiritedness.

Fortunately for you and most others, there are at least two companies out there who practice a business of a much higher order: one is your company, and the other is Google.

Thanks to your investment in digital marketing, you two have a nice partnership going. And Google has a variety of sophisticated methods to isolate fraudulent clicks:

• Rapid-fire clicks. Did I just click twenty times on your ad, in a period of five minutes? That’s a dead giveaway.
• IP tracking. Are all the clicks coming from the same unique internet address? This is very easy for Google’s servers to track, and even sophisticated patterns emerge with ease.
• Repetition. Maybe I don’t reload new ads, but just keep one of your ads open in a browser, and control-click to open each landing page in a new windows. Google’s onto me… foiled again.

The list of triggers is lengthy and complicated, with dedicated teams working around the clock to stay ahead of the click fraud scourge. Experts agree to disagree on whether the problem is adequately resolved… but in lieu of that, Google also credits invalid clicks back to the advertiser. It’s deducted straight from your bill, in a very transparent process. You can even run your own reports, if you’re not convinced.

Watch out for people like me. We can’t really do too much to derail your marketing campaigns — Google has taken care of that problem. But we’re just not nice guys, and Mom always told you not to play with us.

~~~~~

Paul Burani
Clicksharp Marketing
New York, NY

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