Digital Media News | Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Nov 9, 2015 9:00:00 AM

Ask These 3 Questions To Improve Your Click-Through Rate

Running a business is difficult enough, so dealing with a low click-through rate on your banner ads and pay-per-click advertising shouldn't be another factor adding onto your stress. Most companies today are aware that having a high click-through rate is beneficial for numerous reasons - delivering better site traffic, increased quality score (as rated by Google), and reduced cost-per-click for PPC campaigns. A good click-through rate makes up the center of the algorithms used by search engines to decide which ads viewers should be displayed. The formula to calculate your rate is simple: Divide clicks by impressions, and you'll get your click-through rate - however, just because you understand what a CTR is, and how you can calculate it, doesn't mean you know how to improve your results.

If you want to drive more beneficial traffic to your website - asking yourself the following three questions could help.

Sep 3, 2015 8:51:00 AM

How To Protect Your Online Advertising Campaign From Click Fraud

We have spent a lot of time writing and discussing the issue of fraud within the online advertising industry, specifically click fraud. If part of your advertising strategy is made up of PPC (pay-per-click) ads, then the primary concern you'll need to think about is click fraud - and the effect it could be having on your business success. Becoming a victim of click fraud means that your advertising budget quickly disappears, while potential customers are actually prevented from reaching your website.

For many small businesses, pay per click advertising is an attractive and useful marketing option. The reason for this is that it's often a fast and effective way for websites to generate traffic, boost their website ranking, and increase overall conversions. On top of that, pay per click ensures that you only have to pay for the clicks that you actually get. Although PPC can be a smart solution for website promotion, if you want your campaign to be successful, you'll need to be cautious when it comes to monitoring your PPC activity - or you could risk becoming yet another victim of click fraud.

Jul 16, 2015 9:32:00 AM

How to Identify Click Fraud and Minimize Wasting Your Ad Budget

How would you feel if up to 20% of your price-per-click (PPC) budget was being regularly wasted as a result of fraudulent activity? Most marketers today know that Pay-per-click advertising is a useful, and effective marketing tool that can drive traffic towards your website, improving search visibility and enhancing customer conversion. In fact, almost all websites and businesses online today that engaged in serious online marketing schemes will take advantage of PPC programs like Google AdWords at some point.

Unfortunately, although a targeted PPC campaign can be an ideal way of boosting your online traffic, it is not immune to the unscrupulous marketers out there that abuse the PPC model to sabotage competitors. Click-fraud is a serious issue to anyone unlucky enough to encounter it, and unnoticed click fraud can drain money from your marketing budget, while providing the false impression that your schemes are successful - thereby creating an even bigger problem.

Jun 8, 2015 10:24:11 AM

Is Online Advertising Fraud Still A Massive Problem?

Before 2011, it was thought that the problem of online advertising fraud was more or less contained. Pay-per-click advertising was still experiencing huge growth, but much of the fraud activity and many of the practices had been seen and countered.

Google themselves have long since acknowledged the need to clamp down on fraud. Google is a business like any other; people need to trust them. For instance, they knew that if they failed to detect click-through fraud, then advertisers would lose faith in their brand. There’s nothing quite like a potential drop in profits to kick-start a company into taking action.

Bots, click farms and the like were treated as a priority for the company. And for good reason. Google used experts like Professor Alexander Tuzhilin to draw up best practices for preventing click fraud and things seemed to be working.

Nov 4, 2014 8:00:00 AM

How To Avoid Becoming A Victim Of Click Fraud

If somebody were to tell you that up to 20% of what you spend on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising may be wasted due to fraudulent activity such as click fraud, would you be worried?

You may be wise to be weary, as click fraud is endemic in the online advertising business, with some marketers claiming that up to 50% of their billed-for ads are generated by non-human traffic.

What is Click Fraud?

Frequently seen in the pay-per-click world, click fraud is the act of clicking on an advert with malicious intent, rather than from any real interest in the advertiser’s offerings. The practice istypically carried out by a competitor or faux middleman, in order to drive campaign costs up to the point that the advertiser has to curtail advertising spends. This paves the way for the competitor to increase their market presence, clicks and sales.