Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns are an effective way to help your digital agency’s clients achieve their marketing goals. Many digital agencies commit their team’s time, energy and resources to create successful PPC campaigns for their clients, only to fall prey to an online advertiser’s worst nightmare: click bots.
As SEO resellers, we’ve seen how click bots can do major damage to clients’ PPC campaigns and cost your digital agency more money than anyone can afford to lose when left unchecked! Let’s look at what you need to know to protect your clients.
What Is A Click Bot?
A click bot is an automated robot or script created with the intention of maliciously tricking the PPC system. With the understanding that online advertisers have to pay each time their online ads are clicked, click bots maliciously click on paid ads with no intention of actually engaging with a website or making a purchase. These fraudulent clicks can use up online advertisers’ daily ad spend and prevent their message from being received by their target audience.
Why Do Click Bots Exist?
There are different types of click bots, both good and bad. Good click bots are designed with a useful purpose without cheating or hurting anyone. Good click bots can include bots that protect email recipients from spam or malware by clicking every link in an email before it is delivered to them.
In the context of PPC, malicious click bots are more common. These bots are typically employed to sabotage the competition, draining their ad budget by clicking on their ads repeatedly, causing the advertiser to be charged for clicks that never had any chance of converting. This would be a major disadvantage, causing them to lose customers, sales and money.
How Do Click Bots Affect Online Advertisers?
Consider the nature of a PPC campaign ‒ an online advertiser pays each time an ad is clicked on because each click is a potential lead or customer that could convert positively. In this scenario, paying for the click is worth the money because it could result in a sale or engagement. When these clicks are fraudulent, advertisers end up essentially paying money for nothing, paying for clicks with no potential to turn into profit.
When handling PPC campaigns for a client, this results in a terrible ROI that could sour the client’s feelings towards your agency, potentially losing your clients and revenue and damaging your agency’s good reputation.
How To Keep Your Digital Agency Safe From Click Bots
Keep your clients (and by extension, your digital agency) safe from click bots with these steps:
- IP Exclusions In Google Ads
Find out which IP addresses are actually click bots and exclude them from your clients’ Google Ads. - Look At How Display Ads Are Being Run
Retargeting display ads can reduce click fraud by making your paid ads less visible to publishers. - Ad Targeting Should Be A Priority
When you venture too far from your clients’ target audience, you increase the risk of being spotted by click bots. - Social Media Ads Are An Excellent Alternative
Social media ads are less keyword-focused and less vulnerable to click bots. - Software For Click Fraud Protection
Click fraud protection software is worth investigating if you think that you are losing a lot of money to click fraud.
At Globital South Africa, we offer our expert SEO reseller services to digital agencies looking for world-class white label Google Ads for their clients. If you want to help your clients’ PPC campaigns succeed without falling prey to click bots, contact Globital South Africa at support@globitalmarketing.com today!
