Ahh, fantastic news – now everyone can just shut up and get on with things. Google just announced that they will now provide advertisers with data about how many clicks are credited back. In our experience, we see about 5%-10% invalid clicks across all our campaigns from Google – it’s very low, and we factor it into our ROI calcs – and in most cases, this range is possibly server errors, not relating to Google. I honestly believe that people make too much of a fuss about it.
The other thing about this reporting is that is doesn’t do an impact calculation on the higher CTR’s on the ad, and how much discount the merchant received on good clicks. Confused? Here is a scenario:
You get 100 “good clicks” on 1000 impressions – 10% CTR – at $1 CPC the bill is $100.
Click “Fraud” occurs and you get another 50 clicks within the next 1000 impressions – (100+50=150=15% CTR).
Higher CTR=Lower CPC = 75c (example) = $112.50 = Net cost impact of $12.50.
So in the scenario above, Google’s CTR discounter allows you to only pay $12.50 – so a 50% increase in clicks from “fraud” would only lead to a 12.5% increase in costs which is negligible, given the ratios.
For this reason, I’m not convinced that Advertisers are out of pocket as much as they claim. Any other views?
Although these are sample numbers – we have similar data to back it up.
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Comments On This Post
July 27, 2006 at 2:50 pm
vinny, I think clickfraud is most definitely overblown. +/- 10% differential is par for the course, and isn’t neccesarily click fraud. Server error has a lot to do with it. If I checked my stats with awstats, urchin, and webalyzer I would get wildly different numbers. Same with adwords reporting vs. whatever you’re using to track activity.
my opinion on click fraud, it’s a fantastic selling tool for certain unnamed analytics providers. fear is a great motivator.
July 27, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Absolutely! I do agree with the statistical variations being within the acceptable range. Greed & Fear drives pretty much all markets. I can totally understand why Google is not too concerned – they do give refunds when due, and are very professional about it at that. Some people are just very anal about small fluctuations – when sometimes the conversions drop because of their server issues or changes to their site, which is out of Google’s control (another reason why CPA is challenging).
July 27, 2006 at 4:50 pm
vinny, I think clickfraud is most definitely overblown. +/- 10% differential is par for the course, and isn’t neccesarily click fraud. Server error has a lot to do with it. If I checked my stats with awstats, urchin, and webalyzer I would get wildly different numbers. Same with adwords reporting vs. whatever you’re using to track activity.
my opinion on click fraud, it’s a fantastic selling tool for certain unnamed analytics providers. fear is a great motivator.
July 27, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Absolutely! I do agree with the statistical variations being within the acceptable range. Greed & Fear drives pretty much all markets. I can totally understand why Google is not too concerned – they do give refunds when due, and are very professional about it at that. Some people are just very anal about small fluctuations – when sometimes the conversions drop because of their server issues or changes to their site, which is out of Google’s control (another reason why CPA is challenging).
August 6, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Click Fraud is an interesting topic – one which both clicktracks and adwatcher will stop, one which will cost you an estimated 20% of your ad budget.
This is an interesting article with valuable information. I have used both clicktracks and adwatcher to prevent clickfraud. What we and many other webmasters are starting to do is invest our marketing dollars into clicktracks, adwatcher or other ad tracker software.
If you are looking for more information on adwatcher or clicktracks i recommend you take a look at: http://www.trackingsoftwarereviews.com they have full reviews on both clicktracks and adwatcher!
Mike Baker
August 6, 2006 at 10:58 pm
ClickTracks can definitely help with Click fraud detection. I recommend Quirk (www.quirk.biz) as a ClickTracks authorised partner who can help with setup, installation & analysis.
August 6, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Click Fraud is an interesting topic – one which both clicktracks and adwatcher will stop, one which will cost you an estimated 20% of your ad budget.
This is an interesting article with valuable information. I have used both clicktracks and adwatcher to prevent clickfraud. What we and many other webmasters are starting to do is invest our marketing dollars into clicktracks, adwatcher or other ad tracker software.
If you are looking for more information on adwatcher or clicktracks i recommend you take a look at: http://www.trackingsoftwarereviews.com they have full reviews on both clicktracks and adwatcher!
Mike Baker
August 6, 2006 at 8:58 pm
ClickTracks can definitely help with Click fraud detection. I recommend Quirk (http://www.quirk.biz) as a ClickTracks authorised partner who can help with setup, installation & analysis.
August 11, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Hi Vinny,
Could you comment this one : http://www.google.com/adwords/ReportonThird-PartyClickFraudAuditing.pdf
J-M
August 11, 2006 at 10:24 am
Hi Vinny,
Could you comment this one : http://www.google.com/adwords/ReportonThird-Par...
J-M
February 8, 2007 at 8:46 pm
I agree. Got the same data to back that up.
February 8, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I agree. Got the same data to back that up.
February 29, 2008 at 12:14 am
recent internet studies show a percentage of 30 % for Google Europe. That is quite something, that must have been incorporated in the bills !
February 29, 2008 at 12:29 am
well, Europe is the least of the problem. Click fraud is especially expected in 3rd world countries to be above 50%.
Somewhere on the internet there is a color map of the world to see to what extent click fraud is divided over the countries.
regards
Hypotheek
February 28, 2008 at 10:14 pm
recent internet studies show a percentage of 30 % for Google Europe. That is quite something, that must have been incorporated in the bills !
February 28, 2008 at 10:29 pm
well, Europe is the least of the problem. Click fraud is especially expected in 3rd world countries to be above 50%.
Somewhere on the internet there is a color map of the world to see to what extent click fraud is divided over the countries.
regards
Hypotheek
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