Spotting Click Fraud on Adbrite

Many website owners are constantly looking for ways to increase their website traffic with real time visitors who might eventually become buyers or subscribers. While there are many free traffic exchange programs available most of these programs require the website owner to spend a few hours of their day in front of their computer pushing buttons on a website to earn traffic credits. This might be okay for us website owners with a bit of free time on our hands but site owners who have active lives and careers outside of the web can not afford to spend valuable time sifting through sites. These site owners often turn to paid traffic campaigns that offer high returns and conversion rates.

A popular advertising tool is Adbrite.com which gives website owners the chance to purchase pay per click ad campaigns on the sites of their choosing. This way a site owner will know exactly what sort of audience their site is being exposed to. Adbrite.com also lets site owner's see the statistics of all sites in their marketplace prior to placing an ad so that they will have an idea of how much traffic the site generates and how many clicks they can expect to receive.

For many advertisers the hard part is picking which sites to purchase ad space on. Once they have picked their sites it is simply a matter of setting a maximum daily budget and letting Adbrite.com do the rest of the work. The problem is that by walking away and trusting to automation many advertisers leave themselves open to click fraud.

Click fraud is the term used to refer to clicks that are not made by unique, individual, visitors who are clicking a given banner or link to see the site being advertised. In many cases these clicks are being made by owner of the site the ad is placed on, friends/acquaintances of the site owner and automated click generators. While sites that specialize in selling ad space and running pay per click programs have ways to catch these schemes there is always the chance that a site or two will slip through the cracks and then you, the advertiser, will be the one who suffers.

When click fraud is committed the site generating the fraudulent clicks is earning a commission for each click while you, the advertiser, are being charged for it. Yes your site might be receiving some traffic but this isn't "real" traffic meaning you have little or no chance of converting these hits into sales or subscriptions. This can be devastating to the smaller site that is operating their campaign based solely on an expected conversion ratio.

One of the best ways to catch these tricksters is to pay close attention to all of your campaigns. In the Adbrite.com dashboard look to see how many impressions your ad is getting on each site your advertising on and then see how many clicks your ad is getting on each site. Then start comparing notes. If you notice that on four of the sites you are advertising on you are getting about 20 clicks for every thousand impressions but on the fifth site you are getting 300 clicks for every thousand impressions chances are something is wrong.

Some sites are going to convert better than others but if you notice any great disparity don't be afraid to contact support. In most cases yours will not be an isolated incident and even if it turns out that the clicks are legitimate don't feel bad. You are getting charged per click and it is your right to insure that you are getting the service that you are paying for.