What’s Click Fraud? How Are Entrepreneurs Hurt?

As a small business owner, you have plenty of challenges to deal with to ensure your success … and now another threat to your profitability has raised its ugly head – Click Fraud.

In a nutshell, click fraud occurs when an Internet bandit pretends to be a legitimate visitor to your website. Their objective is financial gain at your expense. The most common attack is to target your PPC (pay-per-click) ads with fraudulent clicks that drive traffic to PPC display ads on web pages located on the thief’s website. Net result … you get charged by the network for visits to the bad-guy’s cyber-store.

Bots ... the Multiplier Effect

This con would be bad enough if the perpetrators were individual “click-workers”. But the reality is that “bots” technology is typically employed to turbo-charge the frequency and severity of attacks.

A bot is a software program designed to perform repetitive tasks on the Internet. Bots operate faster than humans performing the same tedious task. To further ensure perception that the bot clicks are initiated by a live person, bots are programmed to mimic human-like actions, e.g. mouse movements, random pauses between clicks and so forth.

Click fraudsters’ campaigns will typically install bots on a number of devices … each with its own IP Address … Internet Protocol numbers assigned to every device accessing the internet. Bot traffic from just one machine would prove easy to detect and block and thus stifle the ruse perpetrated by the scammers.

Click Fraud Skews ROI Measures for Your PPC Budget

Bot activity on your website will be registered in your website analytics data. That means you are presented with inaccuracies in the effectiveness of your display ad campaigns. You want to know the specifics of behavior by legitimate visitors to your website as it relates to how well your content is engaging your target audiences … including click-through rates and conversions. Click fraud denies access by you to this critical analysis of how well your advertising dollars are being spent.

Bottom Line

Click fraud will cost you money … unless you take steps to stop the bandits in their tracks.

How much? Certainly, hundreds of dollars … perhaps thousands or more.

Click fraud will waste 20% of PPC advertisers’ budgets in 2021 … avoid becoming a victim!

Click Fraud Prevention ... Third Marble Marketing - ClickCease™ Protection Partnership

Third Marble has proudly “partnered” with ClickCease Protection … top-rated developer and provider of click fraud protection software. Your payoff … prevention of fraudulently initiated clicks from bots and even your competitors seeking a short-cut to out-perform your company in Google searches.

ClickCease™ Google Ads click fraud protection software will exclude invalid IPs and block fake clicks. This will boost the ROI of your PPC campaigns by:

• Reducing your cost per click;
• Accelerating conversions from website visitor to paying customer;
• Dropping your cost per conversion.

Here are summaries of two ClickCease™ small business case studies. You’ll be impressed with the positive results enjoyed by each entrepreneur.

Client 1: ClickCease™ set up on March 20,2021

30 Days Prior To ClickCease™Set Up: