Click Fraud: what’s the deal?

A recent research by E-marketers enphatises once again the increasing relevance of click-fraud issues. This is obviuosly a main concern for the whole travel industry, where the pay-per-click spending (both in absolut terms and as keyword cost) is continuosly growing.

The research reports an average 14% click fraud rate in 2006 across all industries, which should sound quite scaring to anyone seriously investing in paid search marketing. Wasting 14% of your budget means significally increasing your overall cost-per-transaction and distribution costs.

The opinion on the real efforts spent by the advertising networks in effectively takling the problem is ultimately a matter of personal trust. However, I think the original sin here is believing that the responability for a suppliers’providing accurate performance data should exclusively lay in its own will. You give your money to Google, who’s financial goal is having you spending as much as possibile on its network, and expect the same Google to provide control, data and ultimately optimising that budget..I am not critising Google here – whose pay-per-click tool is now a primary and often effective distribution channel for the travel industry – but rather making the point that no company would do anything similar with any other supplier.

Click fraud is just another argument in favour of good analytics tools, which are indeed increasingly including modules for click-fraud monitoring: I must be able to know and check where my traffic is coming from, and have tools and people dealing with channel performance monitoring and optimisation. And it is of course just another argument in favour of organic (natural) positioning as the foundation of an effective search marketing strategy.