Others are made to display fraudulent ads often with spoofed domains and sophisticated processes to maximise the impressions – a practice known as ad fraud. Some of these are just low quality sites designed to generate views and clicks on ads. The problem is that a lot of websites are made specifically for maximising advertising revenue. And you can have a global advertising reach, ensuring all sorts of people see your ads, building your brand rapidly. With a nicely designed banner ad, you’ll quickly be channelling the kind of traffic that could take years to build organically. If you want to advertise your product on a popular website with the potential for huge amounts of traffic, Google Ads is a solid choice. One of the main reasons Google is such a powerful platform is that they offer ad placement on over 11 million websites. Google do their part for sure, but there are holes in their processes, as we’re about to see. This slightly cynical view might have built up traction over the years, but the truth is that snuffing out fraudulent clicks is a Herculean task. The sentiment in the marketing industry though is that Google do just enough, but could do more… The reasoning most often cited is that Google make money from each click, fraudulent or not, so they have little interest in shutting fraud down. So, yes, Google does have an entire department dedicated to filtering and preventing click fraud on Google Ads. So, what do the advertising giants such as Google do to protect your campaigns from click fraud and other fraudulent activity? How does Google track and prevent click fraud?Īdvertising revenue is by far Google’s biggest earner, so it should be in their interest to ensure confidence in the platform. And this includes not just search engine traffic, but other forms of paid links such as social media. Put simply, if you’re paying for web traffic, you are most likely paying out a reasonable chunk to fraud of some kind. Google refers to all non-genuine clicks on paid ads as ‘invalid clicks’, which can cover everything from a genuine slip of the finger, to an organised click farm setup clicking on your ads.Ĭlick fraud is estimated to affect around 20% of all paid links on the internet, from display ads or video, to paid search engine page results. You can read all about the practice of click fraud and ad fraud in our in-depth guide.

Often done for malicious purposes, click fraud can encompass competitors trying to damage your online advertising budget, or organised fraudsters making money from spoofed websites. What constitutes click fraud?įor the uninitiated, click fraud is where you receive clicks on your paid links when the clicker has no interest in buying your product. If you’re spending money on Google Ads, you probably want to know what Google is doing to prevent click fraud and ad fraud for their customers.

With such a huge slice being taken from the advertising pie, what exactly are the giants such as Google doing to prevent click fraud? After all, if the money was being taken from them, they’d certainly have that locked down pretty quickly. According to research by Cheq and the University of Baltimore, $35 billion was wasted on click fraud during 2020, with that figure set to rise in the coming years. In 2019, it’s estimated that more than $330 billion was spent on digital advertising platforms including Google, Facebook and Amazon.

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