What is Click Spamming?

Introduction:

Digital ad frauds are the newest and have cost advertisers billions of dollars every year. Fraudsters have created unlimited ways to steal money from advertisers with mobile ad fraud. It’sessential to stay updated on the recent scams and frauds. Mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular and have also caused different ad fraud types to prevail. Click spamming is also one of the black-hat techniques that falsely inflate the number of clicks on a pay-per-click ad. Fraudsters send a large number of volumes of clicks and increase the probability of misattribution. A spamming publisher executes clicks for users who have not originally made them—the detection and prevention of mobile ad fraud crucial for advertisers.

Why is Click Spam Important?

Click spamming is essential for app marketing and applies to many forms of online marketing. Detection and prevention of mobile ad fraud may not be easy. Many companies ignore this threat and don’t do protection against fraudulent practices. Advertisers can use different ways to protect their selves against click fraud. So, it would be best if you watch your campaigns. Some of the variables you need to track to know if you’re facing click fraud are IP address, Click Timestamp, and Action timestamp.

Click spam can appear in different forms like install spoofing and fake application downloads. Here’s how to click spam works:

  • A user downloads a virus-infected application
  • The application comes with a code that does spam clicking
  • Al ad clicks are assigned to a developer or the fraudster
  • The click spam also makes everything look legitimate

Click spam also distorts click data

Effects of Click Spamming

The first indication of fraud is when you see clicks, but your campaign doesn’t receive any conversions from these clicks. The click adds the act of illegally getting clicks that impacts your ad campaigns such that

  • Your advertising budget drains
  • Fraudsters steal your ads for damaging them
  • It becomes difficult to attract new clients
  • Your ad budget goes wasted
  • Your ad doesn’t reach the potential customers
  • Your marketing decisions are based on false stats
  • You will be vulnerable to your competition
  • It creates an environment that you can maximize your ROI with
  • Badly informed campaign adjustments
  • It becomes a frustrating cycle that keeps repeating

How to prevent click spamming?

Click spam use automated clickbots to increase fraudulent clicks and views. There are different ways of detection and prevention of mobile ad fraud. Let’s take a look at the simple steps you can follow to prevent click spam:

  • IP exclusions: If you know the IP addresses that seem to cause click frauds, you can block your Google ad from serving that particular address again.
  • Prevention through timestamps: You should observe click and action timestamps to prevent click mobile ad fraud.
  • Remarketing: You can minimize a publisher based click ad fraud only by remarketing
  • Monitor regularly to check for fraudulent activities
  • Keep analyzing traffic
  • Block publishers that are using spamming techniques
  • Eliminate Invalid clicks If you think the fraud is from a particular area

This prevention guide for the protection of your advertising campaigns will be helpful. If you want to know more about click spamming and ways to prevent mobile ad fraud, click here.