Featured Article: It’s Pay Back Time For Click Fraud

by Boris Mordkovich

If somebody were to tell you that 20% of your advertising budget was being wasted on fraud, would you be worried? If you advertise on pay-per-click search engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MIVA, or others, you have a reason to be concerned.

According to industry metrics, up to 20% of all pay-per-click activity delivered to advertisers is fraudulent. Two of the most common sources include competitors trying to deplete your account by repeatedly clicking on your ads or a search engine’s partner or affiliate increasing his own bottom line by clicking on your ads.

Whatever the source, the situation is even more complex because search engines never reveal their click fraud monitoring tactics. In fact, most simply state that they use a number of methods designed to filter out repetitive or invalid clicking and ensure that all clicks reported to their advertisers are genuine. However, for security reasons, they cannot disclose details of their protection methodology, nor give any visual or system clues to indicate that click protection is active.

What does this mean to the advertiser? Basically, as an advertiser, you have to rely on the effectiveness of the search engine’s fraud monitoring techniques. However, given that they actually stand to gain financially from fraudulent clicks (since your ad account is charged each time any click is made on the ad), this apparent conflict of interest by search engines is a tough pill for advertisers to swallow.

Fortunately, there are a number of third-party tools available to monitor your ad campaigns and track potential fraudulent activity, for a nominal monthly fee. They include AdWatcher.com, WhosClickingWho.com, and ClickLab.com. These tools analyze every single click on your ad(s) and let you know if they detect suspicious activity.

The question of the day, however, is what to do once a third-party tool tells you it has detected click fraud? What’s the correct process to follow to get your money back?
The following is a step-by-step guide to help ensure a refund from the search engine:

1. Gather up all of the information you have on the fraud occurrences over a specific timeframe. You will need the ad campaign name, IP addresses, referring pages, geographic origin of the clicks in question, keywords that were searched for, the number and times of the clicks, and any other relevant data required by your search engine to process a claim. Server logs are usually very helpful, and your web-hosting provider should allow you the option to access them.
   
   
2. According to guidelines from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, you should also include a paragraph describing the trends in logs and/or reports that have led you to believe the click activity is invalid.
   
   
3. Once all the information is ready, contact the search engine. Here’s a sample click fraud investigation request letter. If you have an account representative, forward the data to him or her. If not, we highly recommended that you ask for an account representative, as it is easier to deal with the same person on an on-going basis.
   
   Alternatively, you can also send in the claim request to an email address specific to the search engine, such as:
   
   Google AdWords: adwords-support@google.com (or use their Contact form)
   Yahoo! Search Marketing: feedback@overture.com (or use their Support Center)
   Other search engines have relevant contact procedures on their websites.
   
   
4. After you submit the information, you will likely receive a response similar to one of these from a low-level representative:
   
   

   a)	They have conducted the investigation, found the clicks fraudulent, and will issue the credit to your account.
   b)	They are requesting additional supporting information, such as your traffic trends, server logs, etc.
   c)	They may refuse to acknowledge that the clicks were fraudulent. Unfortunately, this happens quite often, as search engines are reluctant to admit click fraud has made it through their monitoring system (for example, Google never refers to clicks as “fraudulent”, just “invalid” – https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6432).

   
   
5. If scenario a) or b) occurs, follow whatever instructions are provided.
   
   If c) occurs, ask to speak to your contact’s supervisor. It may require numerous emails and/or phone calls to accomplish this, but remember – don’t take the first “no” as a final answer. You are, in effect, asking the search engine to hand over part of their profits,
   which is not something they likely will easily agree to.

Click fraud is a growing problem for many advertisers – no matter how much your monthly spending on pay-per-click advertising is. To make sure that you are not a victim, it’s necessary to take matters into your own hands, detect click fraud, and claim the refunds you are entitled to.

Boris Mordkovich is the Director of Operations at AdWatcher.com – an ad tracking and click fraud auditing service.

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