How Insurance Agencies Can Prevent Click Fraud on PPC Ads

Insurance agencies, like many other businesses, engage in online ad campaigns to promote their brands. However, the problem of click fraud can impact a business in multiple ways, including financial losses and reputational damage. According to a survey, online advertisers lose as much as $5.8 billion a year due to click fraud. According to the same survey, 10-15% of every dollar spent on digital advertisements online goes to cyber companies that keep advertisers safe from ad fraud schemes.

PPC ad campaigns play a crucial role in bringing clients to your insurance company, so it’s crucial to prevent these click frauds on your PPC campaign. Here are crucial points to know to avoid becoming a victim of click fraud while running a successful ad campaign.

What Actually Is Click Fraud?

Click fraud involves the knowing implementation of generating clicks that don't reflect true interest or demand. The main reason behind click fraud is to manipulate statistics that are tied to digital campaigns. Sites that get paid for clicks via affiliate marketing programs sometimes get away with orchestrating bots or friends to run up clicks on a sponsor.

This practice creates false perceptions in the market of demand activity. All the different types of click fraud are driven by greed at the expense of other entities. Click fraud creates losses for businesses that pay for clicks but get nothing in return. It also distorts conversion rates. The cost of clicks can be anything from pennies to dollars.

The average conversion rate is 3.48 percent for companies using Google mobile ads. But when hundreds of clicks are discovered to be fake, it can cause you to rethink your entire marketing strategy. Friends of a vendor might be running up fake clicks to capitalize on affiliate rewards. When you run an ad campaign, you probably don't want to pay for fake clicks.

What Are the Types of Click Fraud?

The two main types of click fraud are committed by either competitors or publishers.

• Click fraud by competitors is a way of reducing your ROI, creating a mess of wasted clicks while you are responsible for paying the bill. It's a dirty trick to drain your advertising budget. False clicks further hurt an advertiser's ad score while cost per click (CPC) increases.
• Click fraud by publishers involves fake clicks by website owners who get paid for clicks via an affiliate program. That's why it helps to know about the vendor that facilitates online advertising. If you want your ad dollars to get the most mileage, you need to analyze reviews from other online businesses that have used the ad platform.

As an insurance company that advertises online, be careful about signing up with unknown publishers to promote your brand. Only work with relevant partners you know can contribute to your revenue streams.

Many businesses use Google's ad display network because it's popular and people assume it's safe. It's the most successful online advertising network and it does help businesses generate ROI. The platform also provides a wealth of data that marketers cannot ignore. You simply need to be cognizant that click fraud exists and look for ways to minimize it.

How to Identify If Click Fraud Is Affecting Your Insurance Agency Website?

To make sure clicks to your online ads are legitimate, you need to check IP addresses to see if they account for multiple clicks. Getting a dozen clicks from the same source might indicate genuine interest, but getting several dozen or hundreds of clicks from the same user should be viewed as possible click fraud. You can find out who owns an IP address here.

You should also monitor time stamps, which include clicking time stamps and action time stamps. When a click time stamp is not accompanied by an action time stamp, it could indicate a novice marketer is trying to run up fake clicks. When you notice suspicious clicks for Google ads, you can report them to Google, which may reimburse you for nefarious clicks.

Why Is It So Important to Eliminate Click Fraud in Google Ads?

No business should throw money away on click fraud, which impacts over one-third of all display ads. According to research, about 11 percent of all paid search ads also get hit with fake clicks, according to PPC Protect. In order to get the maximum value out of digital advertising, you need to avoid networks that have worse-than-average incidents of click fraud.

Advertisers take risks no matter which marketing channel they use. Not only can click fraud harm your profits and accounting, but it can also cause other vendors to be weary of doing business with your company. If click fraud misleads other vendors, it can damage your reputation. You can reduce this risk by analyzing your clicks to gauge what percentage reflects real market activity.

How to Prevent Click Fraud of PPC Ads?

Even though there is no perfect solution to eliminating click fraud, it's still best to take action right away. Here are five key steps you should take to prevent or reduce click fraud in response to placing online ads.

1. Establish IP exclusions in Google ads: You have tools that can block specific IP addresses from affecting your click counts. Simply go to your settings in your Google account and select IP exclusions that you believe are responsible for fake clicks.
2. Consider how your present display ads: The reason display ads tend to account for more fake clicks is that publishers get paid from those clicks. Search ads, on the other hand, do not have this profit incentive.
3. Focus on ad targeting: If you run display ads, use retargeting as a technique to separate warm from cold leads. Retargeting ensures you prioritize leads that have already visited your ads from the past. Since the most responsive viewers are those ready to take action, it's advantageous to use your analytics to determine which geolocations to target.
4. Emphasize social media ads: A good reason to advertise on a social media network is that the platform likely stores vast amounts of information on its users. That means it's capable of providing highly-targeted audiences to advertisers. The more concentrated a platform is with your target audience, the less likely you'll encounter click fraud.
5. Invest in click fraud protection software: There are various software developers that offer click fraud protection software. Some of the solutions to explore include ClickCease, Oracle, and PPC Shield. These sophisticated programs monitor ad traffic with algorithms that detect suspicious clicks.

Conclusion

Google is taking action to prevent click fraud and processing refunds for illegitimate clicks. But this system is not perfect. It's always advisable to take a proactive approach to prevent such click fraud and ensure getting the most out of your PPC campaigns that promote your insurance agency website for lead generation.

Why Should Insurance Agencies Trust Stratosphere for Getting the Best PPC Services?

Stratosphere provides top-tier PPC services to insurance agencies, including Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, Google Video Ads, Google Shopping Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads to drive more traffic and leads. Our team of experts follows all the measures to prevent click fraud and our efficient PPC management strategies for insurance companies can help expand the reach and boost the ROI of your insurance business. Our only objective is to provide you with returns on every dollar you spent with us. Contact us today for more information on conducting safe and profitable online campaigns.