How to avoid Ad fraud in 2023

Ad fraud is the silent killer of a company bottom line, not its workforce.

AdAge stated in 2015 that over 30%, or $1 out of every $3 spent, is believed to be lost to ad fraud.

We can infer that this number is now closer to 20% based on more recent data from 2022 about increasing ad spending.

Unmonitored ads does skew the efficacy of your digital marketing or TV/Radio advertising.

There are several more possible effects of ad fraud, but the bottom line is that businesses interested in safeguarding their reputation and money should be vigilant at all times.

When a brand launches an online advertising campaign, it’s crucial to ensure that the advertisement is displayed on the best sites for potential sales, apps, and publications.

This is essential to ensuring that the advertisements are seen by the target audience that the company has targeted.

Even the most cautious brands are susceptible to ad fraud, but there are practical steps that can be taken to safeguard businesses’ reputations and limit their exposure to fraud to the greatest extent possible.

Ad fraud has become more sophisticated as efforts to stop it is improved, but some techniques continue to be widely used by fraudsters because they are still effective.

Placement Ad fraud

Placement fraud occurs when impressions are distributed, but the placement is either obscured by another placement or is far smaller than planned, rendering it unviewable.

Mobile Ad fraud

Today, it’s more probable that individuals would use mobile devices to browse the internet than desktop computers, yet many mobile devices are still not secured.

Malware and adware

Malware and adware are programs that force the end user to download content they didn’t request or want onto their device.

Click Farms and Click Bots

Automated or manual techniques for inflating statistics about clicks on ads and other links.

How can internal reporting be used to detect click fraud?

It’s never been more crucial to fight click fraud and ensure you get the ROI and consumers you deserve.

Your competitors can waste your PPC advertising budget and turn off the ad for the day by clicking on your ads.

Make sure you capture the following information to track click fraud using your internal reports.

Every user has an IP address, which is similar to a home address for online activities, make sure you collect the IP Addresses.

When you visit a website, you leave an IP address trail that webmasters can follow.

The time at which someone arrives on your site after clicking an ad.

The time that person completed an action on your site is represented by the action timestamp.

User-agent refers to the characteristics of the device on which they are browsing, you will need this.

Compare the click and action timestamps together. You’re looking for IP addresses that constantly visit your site after clicking on your Google Ad without taking action from that point.

Is there an IP address with many click timestamps but no action timestamps? This is most likely click fraud.

The user agent details show whether someone on a specific IP address is the same person.

Perform a fast IP check to see who it belongs to. Visit a website such as What is my IP address.

If you notice that a significant portion of your traffic is coming from the same location, check to see if the suspect IP address is associated with a proxy server.

If the search queries triggered by the IP address in question vary, it’s most likely a proxy server. If the searches are similar, the clicks are most likely fake.

If you got no time to do all this and your advertising is managed by a digital marketing agency, you need ensure that you get the feature that automatically identifies and prevents fraud from harming your ads in real time.

At HypeX, we employ a strategy that makes it almost impossible for fraudsters to target you including your competitors.

There are many programs that can assist you in your campaigns acting as a solution that detects and protects against impression and click fraud if you are doing your own campaigns.

These anti-click-fraud services protect Google Pay-Per-Click Ads and Bing Ads by automatically blocking fraudulent IPs using their detection algorithms.

By working with HypeX digital marketing agency, you can sleep easy knowing your PPC campaigns are raking in the conversions and all the right tactics are in place to prevent click fraudsters from wasting your budget.