Digital agencies can spend so much time and energy creating the perfect, action-inducing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign for their clients in the hopes that they will be one step closer to helping their clients achieve their marketing goals. 

When that hard work turns out to yield no results, it can be so upsetting for both the client and the agency. One of the biggest challenges online advertisers face when it comes to pay-per-click campaigns is PPC fraud or click bots.

As your trusted outsource SEO reseller, we’ve compiled a run-down of what you need to know to save your agency and clients from losing money to fake traffic.

Click Fraud And Fake Traffic: What You Need To Know

PPC ads are a powerful way for online advertisers to communicate their clients’ messages to the right audience. Since advertisers are only expected to pay each time an ad is clicked on, PPC can be a cost-effective solution. 

However, the success of PPC ad campaigns assumes that each clicks an ad receives is coming from a legitimate user interested in the website or product. That’s where click fraud and fake traffic come in. Click fraud and fake traffic see humans, scripts, or bots sitting and clicking on paid ads while posing as interested users, using up the PPC budget with no intention of actually buying a product or engaging with the website. This can be problematic for advertisers. 

How Do Click Bots Cost Advertisers Money?

Click bots are usually used to click repeatedly on paid ads. There are two main reasons for this. 

1. Sometimes, a click bot is employed by the owner of the website hosting an ad, inflating the number of clicks a paid ad receives so that the advertiser needs to pay more money. 
2. Click bots could be used by a competitor with the intention of draining an advertiser’s ad budget by generating multiple clicks without any chance of converting to sales or engagement. 

Are All Click Bots Bad News?

While many click bots are created with malicious intent such as those used in PPC fraud, some click bots are created with helpful purposes in mind. Click bots with good intentions include: 

1. To prevent spam and malware from spreading via email, good click bots click every link in an email before it is delivered to the recipient. 
2. Good click bots can monitor websites by checking whether all published links are working by clicking them to test their functionality. 

What Digital Agencies Can Do To Prevent Your Campaign From Being Destroyed By Click Bots

With five easy steps, you can significantly reduce exposure to click bots in your clients’ PPC campaigns.

1. Analyse clicks you think may be fraudulent and block those IP addresses from your clients’ Google Ads.
2. Focus on retargeting display ads to avoid attracting publishers likely to perform click fraud. 
3. Focus on reaching your client’s target audience with ads to avoid attracting click bots.
4. It is more difficult to target social media ads with click bots because they are less keyword focused. They are certainly worth considering as an alternative.
5. You should consider clicking fraud protection software if you find that click bots are eating up your ad spend budget.

At Globital UK, we offer white-label social media management, white-label PPC, and other white-label digital marketing services as an outsource SEO reseller. Get in touch with the Globital UK team if you’d like to improve the performance and safety of your client’s PPC campaigns by emailing support@globitalmarketing.com.