Five Signs of Ad Fraud in your Digital Marketing Campaigns

Do you ever look at the results of your Google Ad campaigns and find yourself scratching your head at what they’re showing you? Well, take comfort in the fact that you definitely aren’t the only one…

Even the most experienced marketers among us can find themselves baffled by trying to understand why impressions that look like they’re pointing in the right direction have no corresponding increase in conversions. Or why spikes in traffic have no obvious rhyme or reason as to why they’ve occurred. Digital ad fraud can lead to misleading impressions and wasted budgets, making it difficult to gauge the true performance of your campaigns.

Marketing data blindness is a serious condition, and it can have grim symptoms including poorly optimised ad spend, wasted budget, and a severe lack of actionable insights.

Very often, ad fraud is the cause - and it can wreak havoc on your campaigns in plain sight.

These five warning signs of ad fraud are a handy reference for when your campaign results don’t feel quite right but you can’t put your finger on why. If any of them look familiar, you may find it’s time to take action.‍‍

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What is Ad Fraud, Types of Ad Fraud, and Why Should You Care?

Ad fraud is the deliberate manipulation of digital advertising metrics to generate fraudulent revenue. Common methods used to deceive advertisers include:

• Ad Stacking: Multiple ads are stacked on top of each other, with only the top ad being visible but impressions counted for all
• Click Farms: Groups of low-paid workers manually clicking on ads
• Cookie Stuffing: Adding multiple cookies to a user’s browser to claim affiliate commissions

The consequences of ad fraud on a company’s bottom line can be significant. A wasted budget results in a poor ROI for your digital campaigns. High ad budgets create vulnerabilities for fraudsters to exploit, leading to significant sums being wasted on fraudulent engagements instead of genuine traffic. Less budget means less reach, fewer leads, and fewer sales.

As well as financial problems, ad fraud also pollutes data and makes optimisation efforts incredibly difficult. That’s why it’s so important to keep an eye out for the warning signs. Implementing a multi-layered ad fraud solution is crucial to combat these issues effectively.‍

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Five warning signs of ad fraud in your campaigns‍‍

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1. Suspicious traffic sources

Large amounts of traffic coming from suspicious sources, such as low-quality websites or IP addresses, is a red flag to be aware of. It is crucial to vet an ad network thoroughly to avoid these suspicious traffic sources. This traffic is likely to be generated by bots or click farms rather than genuine human users.

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2. Unusual click patterns

Ad fraudsters often use bots to generate fake clicks. If you notice unusual click patterns, such as an unusually high number of clicks at specific times or on specific days, this could be a sign of ad fraud.

Mobile ad fraud can also result in unusual click patterns, including types such as click injection.

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3. High click-through rates

While a high click-through rate (CTR) is usually good news to marketers, it can also be a warning sign of ad fraud. Fraudsters often use bots to generate fake ad impressions and inflate CTRs. So if your CTA is high but post-click events low, you’re probably experiencing fraud.

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4. High bounce rates

High bounce rates are often a consequence of the above. Fraudulent ads can lead to high bounce rates due to a lack of genuine engagement. Fraudsters often use bots to generate clicks that do not result in genuine engagement or conversions.

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5. Abnormally high impressions

Another metric which doesn’t necessarily seem negative at first glance, until you see no subsequent engagement from a large number of impressions. Fraudsters can use tactics such as ad stacking to generate multiple impressions for a single ad, inflating the impression count. They manipulate ad placements to create these false impressions, misleading advertisers into believing they are purchasing legitimate ad placements.

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What to Do if You Detect Ad Fraud: Ad Fraud Detection Tools

If you recognise these signs, it’s crucial to implement an ad fraud prevention solution to mitigate ad fraud. Here’s how:

• Use Ad Fraud Detection Tools: Implement tools specifically designed to identify and block fraudulent activity to prevent ad fraud.
• Monitor Traffic Sources: Regularly review the sources of your traffic and block suspicious IP addresses to control where your online ads appear.
• Analyse Click Patterns: Look for anomalies in your click data and investigate unusual patterns, which is essential in online advertising.
• Review Metrics Frequently: Keep an eye on your click-through rates, bounce rates, and impression counts for any irregularities.

By blocking sources of fraudulent and invalid traffic from interacting with your ads, you’ll mitigate the risk of metric mayhem. With cleaner traffic, you’ll receive better marketing outcomes from the same input as spending is never wasted on non-converting clicks and engagement. Preventing ad fraud is crucial to maintaining campaign integrity.

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Success Story

One of our sports betting customers was achieving a high number of redemptions for a bonus campaign they were running but weren’t getting the expected conversions off the back of the campaign. You can probably guess by now what was causing the issue.

Luckily, they spotted the warning signs early from their campaign metrics and brought in TrafficGuard to help.

Read the full case study to find out what we did to get things back on track.

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