tROAS Limitations: Retailer’s Campaigns Held Back by Invalid Traffic

In the competitive world of eCommerce, retailers are constantly vying for space in the top pages of search engines. Marketers are in constant competition for this precious space, so it is essential that nothing holds ad campaigns back from achieving great results.

Target return on ad spend (tROAS) allows businesses to set a specific goal for their Google campaigns, ensuring they generate the desired revenue for their investment. However, advertisers are facing a new threat – Invalid Traffic (IVT).

In 2024 alone, businesses globally lost over $100 billion to fraudulent activity, with losses expected to climb to $172 billion by 2028.

Retailers must now learn the importance of protecting their tROAS campaigns from IVT to ensure accurate campaign data and maximum ROI. Otherwise, they risk being left behind in this increasingly competitive ecommerce landscape.

What is Targeted ROAS?

In Google Ads, tROAS is a bidding strategy that uses AI to maximise the value of conversions by adjusting bids based on predicted conversion value, aiming for a specific ROAS target.

As part of tROAS strategies, Google will automatically try to boost profits by getting as many conversions as possible, tactically adjusting cost-per-click (CPC) bids to reach your desired result.

As well as this, if it appears to the Google algorithm that certain keywords are under-performing, they will be dropped, as it can’t recognise the fraudulent traffic. Advertising spend will then be rapidly depleted with no reward in return.

By itself this doesn’t seem harmful, but IVT is exploiting the system. The success of a tROAS campaign relies on accurate data, however IVT artificially inflates the data and skews accuracy without providing new conversions.

Lead metrics in a marketing campaign usually come from measuring clicks and click-through-rate (CTR%). These clicks allow marketers to funnel the right adverts to the right consumers. However, due to the demand for this click data, they have become a highly targeted scam for fraudsters, who can use malware, bots, and click farms to generate fake interactions. This technology has become so advanced that it often goes undetected by most, mimicking human behaviour and sneaking past legacy fraud detection.

The problem comes when these fake clicks throw off the campaign metrics, providing skewed information for marketing teams. This leads to future campaign optimisation decisions being made with false data, wasting precious resources. This means businesses are left without new customers’ profits and still have to pay out for empty traffic.

Tackling the Roots of IVT:

Understanding how click fraud happens is the first step to boosting campaign results and stopping IVT. By noticing early signs and irregular behaviours, businesses can protect ad campaigns going forward.

The types of ad fraud vary and can be implemented across all types of businesses. Fraudsters will often implement a variety of options to cover all opportunities. Click fraud, IP address manipulation, and cookie stuffing are just some of the examples. Click fraud is the most common form of ad fraud and occurs when humans or bots click on PPC ads with no interest in the product.

By monitoring key data closely, businesses can recognise essential warning signs of click fraud:

Suspicious Traffic – This might be noticing company ads on low-quality websites or suspicious domains, or even if your ad metrics show they are being clicked on by users who don’t fit your target audience. This is common with click farms.

Unusual Click Patterns – A spike in CTR without a corresponding conversion increase can be a sign that bots are infiltrating your ads. As well as this, lots of clicks coming from the same IP address or inconsistencies in IP address data are both red flags.

Abnormal Metrics – Looking at how long your users are spending on a site is a good indication of ad fraud. A high bounce rate or very little time spent on the site might indicate bot traffic.

Squashing IVT in Seconds

To get started, businesses should consider using a reliable click fraud prevention solution. With the advancements in AI and ML, these tools now use advanced algorithms to quickly identify and remove bad traffic.

Businesses can also review the advertising account settings, with features like IP address exclusions now available to block specific traffic linked to fraud.

Companies must tackle IVT when looking to maximise their tROAS. Without getting to the root of the problem, they are leaving themselves exposed to fraud, resulting in skewed campaign data, reduced new user activity, and wasted ad spend.

‍

Read the full article at The Modern Marketing Today.