Click Fraud Wisdom
Jun 18th, 2007 by Jennifer LeClaire
Measuring your digital adveritising success from click rates instead of conversion rates is a potentially deadly sin in the web analytics world. Conversion rate refers to the number of visitors to a website that end up performing a specific action (product purchase, email opt in, etc.,) that leads to a conversion.
According to Nils Winkler, managing director of digital marketing firm ADTECH US, a real problem in getting ROI is the focus on click rate as a metric. The conversion rate needs to become the primary metric rather than clicks in addressing these campaigns, he says.
“Click fraud is such a widespread problem in our sector that advertisers need to shift their focus from looking at the number of clicks to the actual conversation rate of their digital ad buy,” says Winkler. “Even without click fraud, if consumers aren’t going to your site and actually engaging with the site, then there is an inherent problem with your digital ad campaign.”
Nils makes some good points. It’s all about the conversions, whether immediate or latent. Digital ad campaigns that drive traffic for traffic’s sake only cost you money. If you want a return on that investment, then you have to focus on activities, designs and content that will help drive up those all-important conversion rates.
Don’t be deceived. The conversion rate is not mocked. If you sow your digital marketing budget into keywords and venues that aren’t leading to sales, then your harvest will come in the form of Google Adwords bills that you may not be able to continue paying. So get busy. Benchmark your data and measure against the most important KPIs, of which the conversion rate is vital.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:50 am
Agreed, too many advertising campaigns are focused completely on traffic - especially with campaigns in the content (or publisher) networks. Many advertisers tell us their campaigns in the content networks are for branding purposes and that they are not concerned with conversion. But, without diligent analysis and regular site exclusion (using Google’s site exclusion tool), Made for Adsense (MFA) sites quickly swarm the keywords, click on ads, and cumulatively deplete the advertiser’s budget with no ROI - and with no effective branding. Consider the use of a 3rd party click fraud auditing firm to assist with the monitoring and mitigation of sites (for the content network) and for malicious IP addresses (in search and in the search networks). ~ Kevin Embree, SVP, Product Strategy, Click Forensics
June 19th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Kevin,
Does ClickForensics make it easy to get fraudulent click money back from PPC providers, or does it just help in allowing users to exclude sites as mentioned in your comment?
Regards,
Pedro
June 19th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Jennifer,
Valid points, indeed.
Conversions should be the primary metric for whatever means of advertising you employ. And particularly with Pay-Per-Click, as it’s so easy to account for your sales or leads.
However, it’s always amazing to me that so many companies still don’t implement basic tracking tools.
Without doing so, you can’t even estimate which keywords bring in the sales and leads and which simply waste their money.
Furthermore, without using some tracking tool, it limits their ability to split test their ads and landing pages - thus preventing them from improving their campaigns further.
Then again, if this post gets just one more advertiser to implement tracking into their advertising efforts, then our job is done!
Boris Mordkovich
www.AdWatcher.com