Trying to prevent click fraud by blocking IP addresses will miss at least 95% of fake clicks

Click fraud protection service Polygraph is reminding advertisers not to rely on IP address blocking to prevent fake clicks, as blocking IP addresses will miss at least 95% of click fraud.

According to Trey Vanes, Polygraph’s head of marketing, click fraud is an online scam which steals billions of dollars from advertisers every year.

“Click fraud is a crime which targets online advertisements,” said Vanes. “Fraudsters program bots to visit their websites and click on the ads. For each of these fake clicks, the advertisers pay fees to the advertising networks, and the money is then shared with the criminals.”

“Click fraud scammers are stealing tens of billions of dollars from advertisers every year, and rarely face any consequences for their crimes,” explained Vanes.

Vanes says it is up to advertisers to protect themselves against click fraud.

“The advertising networks are not doing enough to prevent click fraud,” said Vanes. “As an example, a major advertising network is currently doing no click fraud detection, either in real-time or retrospectively. This is terrible for their customers, as it means it’s a free-for-all for click fraud scammers, however by using a service like Polygraph to detect and prevent click fraud, it’s easy for advertisers to stay protected.”

Vanes says it is important advertisers do not use IP address blocking to stop click fraud.

“IP address blocking will miss at least 95% of click fraud,” said Vanes. “The reason for this is the scammers’ bots use what’s known as ‘residential proxies’ to ensure new IP addresses are used every time they click on ads.

“Polygraph did a study on the IP addresses used for 10,000 fake clicks, and found only 20% of the IP addresses were used more than once.

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“Unfortunately, advertising networks like Google Ads only let you block 500 IP addresses from clicking on your ads, so even if you block the IP addresses which are being used more than once to click on ads, you’re still going to miss most click fraud,” said Vanes.

Polygraph helps advertisers detect click fraud, prevent click fraud, and get click fraud refunds from the advertising networks.

“Polygraph doesn’t use any gimmicks like IP address blocking, and instead deals with the reality of click fraud,” said Vanes. “The first thing we do is use cutting edge technology to detect the fake clicks on your ads. We then tell you which scam websites are doing click fraud, so you can block them from being able to display or click on your ads. We also give you details of every fake click, including why they’re fake, so you can give this data to your advertising networks and request click fraud refunds.”

“Don’t make the mistake of using gimmicks like IP address blocking,” said Vanes. “It sounds good, but it doesn’t work properly. If you want to protect yourself against click fraud, Polygraph can help.”

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