What is External Click Fraud?

Click fraud is part of invalid clicks and refers to clicks with malicious or fraudulent purposes, in other words, clicks intended to artificially increase advertiser spending or publisher revenue.

Click fraud

Right!

Click fraud is

The sources of these clicks include, but are not limited to:

1. Publishers click on the ads they show, or encourage others to click on the ads they show

2. A publisher s family member or a user on the publisher s website clicks on the ad that they show in order to help the publisher earn more

3. Third party programs that include user incentives, such as pay-per-click services and click exchange programs

4.Auto-click tools, robots or other fraudulent click software

Click fraud comparison

The "click-to-pay" advertising model is considered to be an effective way of advertising because its information viewers actively click on the ads. Search engine companies charge by the number of clicks, which was initially considered to be a more reasonable and quantifiable charging method. Today, the concept of "precision marketing" is gaining popularity. For advertisers, this is considered to be a more accurate way to approach potential customers. But in fact, this is just wishful thinking of search engine companies and advertisers.

Click fraud impact

Industry insiders believe that "click fraud" is not caused by the corporate crisis of a single search engine service provider, but the crisis that affects the entire search engine industry. A survey conducted by search engine marketing professional organizations found that 16% of advertisers and search engine marketing companies consider click fraud to be a very serious problem, and this proportion has tripled in the past year. Failure to effectively identify and prevent more "click fraud" will inevitably seriously affect advertisers' confidence in this emerging online marketing tool, and it will be a disaster for the entire search engine industry!

Click fraud prevention measures

In response to this situation, many search engine service providers have proposed many improved methods, including: setting up a special "click fraud" prevention department, setting up filtering mechanisms, developing monitoring software, direct human intervention, and analyzing customer advertising visits Record data, etc. to prevent fraudulent clicks as much as possible. In addition, there are methods for advertisers to track and identify deceptive clicks, including: observing the IP address pointing, whether there are continuous clicks, whether the variation of access data is regular, and judging the effectiveness of clicks through transaction data. Sex, etc., to determine the existence of "click fraud".

At the same time, in order to effectively avoid the losses caused by click fraud and obtain a higher return on marketing investment, advertisers began to seek professional monitoring from third-party agencies. In February 2006, Click Forensics set up a network to prevent click spoofing to enable advertisers to monitor their potential click-to-pay fraud. Another company, ClickTracks, announced the addition of click fraud reports to its web analytics software.

Click fraud Baidu "click fraud" incident

Mastering the stick, but aiming for the yard. On the one hand, search engine service providers are constantly looking for ways to prevent "click fraud", and on the other hand, various Internet cheating technologies are also continuously improved, and they have changed. But what really matters is the advertisers who put online advertising, they want to use the seemingly accurate search engine marketing work to avoid "losing half of the advertising costs" in order to seek maximum marketing ROI (return on investment) .

At 12:00 noon on August 4, more than 10 Baidu bidding customers gathered in the downstairs of Baidu to protest against Baidu bidding to deceive customers, accumulate money through malicious clicks, and be dispersed by security guards about half an hour later. Source of income.

The more than a dozen protesters posted the slogan "Baidu bidding to deceive customers and maliciously click illegally to accumulate wealth", and presented a notarized certificate by the Beijing Second Notary Office, which notarized that the protester was a cancer in Beijing North Central Medical Division. Medical Research Institute and other units.

The unit said in a statement that malicious clicks on Baidu bids amounted to 70%. The unit has been doing a bidding ranking on Baidu since January 4, 2003, and has invested millions of people. However, since the past year, the number of clicks on all keywords has increased several times or even dozens of times, and the amount of consumption has doubled. Growth, the effect is getting worse and worse, monitored by a third-party network monitoring system, a large number of clicks on their keywords through cpro.baidu.com every day, the clicks from this website account for 70% of the total clicks, this cpro.baidu .com is a project called "Baidu Theme Promotion", claiming that this product is purely a "disguised URL" that Baidu has added to deceive customers, causing malicious clicks to increase customer advertising costs and harm their interests, so the unit Baidu is required to give immediate processing to guarantee its legal rights, otherwise it will take measures until the cost of the fraud is recovered.

Click fraud Baidu reacts to this

Baidu said it was paying close attention to the matter.

The following is the full statement:

Baidu bidding fraud insider malicious clicks up to 70%

Requires the immediate cessation of fraud, public apology to my unit, full refund of advertising fees

Beijing Baidu Company:

We are Beijing Zhongbei Health Cancer Research Institute and other units. Our unit started to do bidding ranking in your company on January 4, 2003. So far, it has invested millions of dollars, but in the past year, all keywords The number of clicks has increased several times or even dozens of times. Some keywords that usually do not have any clicks will have more than 1,000 clicks a day, and the amount of consumption doubles, but the effect achieved is getting worse and worse, so We recently monitored through a third-party network monitoring system and found that Baidu has adopted a deceptive method of malicious clicks, causing our unit to cause serious economic losses.

According to the materials provided by the third-party network monitoring system, it is confirmed that a large amount of consumption is made every day by clicking on keywords provided by cpro.baidu.com (counterfeit URL). According to preliminary statistics, the traffic of this unknown URL accounted for about all the traffic. More than 70%, we opened this cpro.baidu.com (counterfeit URL) and found out that it was from the so-called "Baidu theme promotion service" project, but my company has always purchased and consumed with your company the key to www.baidu.com Ci, did not purchase the so-called "Baidu theme promotion" of this fake product. This product is purely a disguised URL added by Baidu to cheat customers. The method is to link our keyword account to cpro.baidu.com (counterfeit URL). ), And then clicked desperately through their computer. The number of these malicious clicks was loaded onto my account, which resulted in a huge increase in the advertising costs of my unit and seriously harmed the interests of my unit. This behavior has constituted serious fraud. In this incident, our company requested that Baidu be able to deal with it immediately to ensure our legitimate rights and interests. Otherwise we will take steps until the cost of the fraud is recovered.

Beijing Zhongbei Medical Cancer Institute

July 20, 2006

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