Mashable is reporting that Facebook will start removing fake likes from pages. I see this is the first step, but not the last step in combating fraud on Facebook. Click fraud is rampant, and that must be addressed as soon as possible.
Tag: click fraud
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As a Facebook advertiser, I have long seen a substantial discrepancy between what Facebook charges me (the number of clicks) and what my analytics software records as visits to my site.
The obvious issue is whether all clicks of ads result in a “ping” of the analytics code snippet on your site. With the new asynchronous code snippet from Google Analytics and your ability to place the code in the header, fewer visits should result in not being recorded.
The other option is that JavaScript or cookie blocking is in place in the visitor’s browser. However, this is a very limited subset of people who click on advertisements.
However, the gap is substantial – as much as 35% (or even more in some cases) between Facebook’s bill and the analytics program. This begs many customers to ask the question, why is Facebook charging me for clicks that don’t result in a visit to my site?
These clicks provide no value the advertiser. And actually, they don’t provide long term value to Facebook, because it reduces the success of advertising campaigns, turning the advertiser away.
However, Facebook has decided to continue ignoring this issue and raking in huge profits along the way.
Some companies have tried to sue Facebook, with limited success.
At the end of the day, you basically have to bake in this cost (click fraud and invalid clicks) into your campaign as a cost of doing business with Facebook. If, after all is said and billed for, you can still achieve your desired ROI, you’re good to go. Otherwise, I suggest taking your hard earned dollars elsewhere.
I suggest that Facebook up its game in this area and stop billing customers for click-bounces… Clicks that don’t register a hit on the customer’s server. I think a 3-second rule is a good idea – if the visitor isn’t on the advertiser’s site for more than 3 seconds, then they don’t get charged for the ad.
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Avoiding Advertising Fraud is Easy – Just Stay on the Big Exchanges Pace Lattin produced a great article about advertising fraud over at ClickZ last week. It details how ad exchanges will go to any length to grow their inventory and undercut competitors.
To this I reply, why even bother advertise on any network outside of Google or Yahoo/Bing? Is your business so big that it has exhausted all its inventory possibilities on these networks? Hardly!
Okay, so you can still branch out a little bit… Hulu for instance, is fine… and I’m sure there are some media companies such as AOL and NBC that you can be okay with… but beyond these players, just stay away. The more us advertisers come together and stop buying on these crappy networks, the shorter the life span these networks will experience. So, in the end, just say NO!
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I rarely like to report on things that advertisers cannot control, but this story is kind of crazy. A recently reported malware strain infects computers without them having to download or accept any requests – the infection results just from visiting another infected site. This is not necessarily new, but what it does is sort of novel. When the infected user runs a search, and clicks and ad, they are sent to other pages, and potentially shown other ads. It’s a bit complicated, but the traffic and clicks look like legit clicks in the eyes of the search engines, so they are harder to detect. I would hypothesize that the better (bigger) search engines (such as Google), have pretty good engines for trapping this type of fraud but that the smaller ad networks do not. This is another reason why I tend to recommend advertisers avoid smaller networks outside of Yahoo, MSN and Google.
Here’s the full story:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=151750&nid=127508#
Dan Soschin 