High levels of click fraud means advertisers will benefit from shifting part of their marketing spend away from advertising and towards search engine optimization

Click fraud prevention service Polygraph is advising advertisers to invest in search engine optimization due to the high levels of click fraud on internet advertisements.

Click fraud is an online scam where website publishers generate income by programming bots to repeatedly click on advertisements. Since the advertisements are displayed on the scammers’ websites, for every fake click, the advertisers pay fees to the advertising networks, and the advertising networks share the money with the criminals.

According to Trey Vanes, Polygraph’s head of marketing, most advertising networks are not doing enough to prevent click fraud, with a major advertising network doing no click fraud detection at all in real-time or retrospectively.

“Click fraud is a massive problem,” said Vanes. “We have customers who were wasting more than half of their advertising budgets due to fake clicks on their ads. Their advertising networks were ignoring the issue, or pretending the fake clicks are valid. Polygraph was able to provide details of every fake click, including why they’re fake, and which scam websites are responsible for the fraud.

“Most advertising networks are missing even the most obvious fake clicks, with one major advertising network unable to detect any click fraud.”

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Vanes says advertisers should consider reducing their advertising spend, and start investing in search engine optimization.

“It doesn’t make sense that a small cybersecurity company like Polygraph is better at detecting click fraud than the advertising networks,” said Vanes. “The same scam websites continue being allowed to rip-off advertisers, and for whatever reason most advertising networks aren’t doing anything about it.

“It has reached a point where advertisers need to consider reducing their advertising budgets, and instead invest in search engine optimization. This will reduce advertisers’ exposure to click fraud, as organic clicks are ‘free’, and will send a message to the advertising networks that they need to improve their click fraud detection if they want advertisers to continue using their services.”

Vanes encourages advertisers to use a click fraud protection service to ensure their advertising budgets are not being wasted.

“Polygraph helps advertisers detect click fraud, prevent click fraud, and get refunds from the advertising networks. We use cutting-edge technology to detect even the most advanced click fraud techniques, we tell our customers which scam websites are clicking on their ads, so the websites can be blocked from displaying or clicking on future ads, and we provide details of every fake click, so advertisers can request click fraud refunds from the advertising networks,” said Vanes.

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