Business competition is a good thing. While that statement is accurate, some competing behaviours are unquestionably unfair and unhealthy. In high-value and competitive industries, one of these, rival click scam, is becoming more prevalent. Competitor click fraud occurs when a business clicks on a competitor’s paid advertisements to exhaust its PPC advertising budget.
Competitors Click Fraud Techniques to Be Aware Of
Drive-by click fraud specialists: On-demand repairs
Experts in heating and ventilation, pest management, locksmithing, and plumbing are among those most severely impacted by rival click scam.
- Pest management services Locksmiths made up 62%, plumbers 53%, and waste removal experts 46%.
- Ads for repair companies are being clicked on 5 to 10 times a day without a call for services.
According to Zack Shipman, Senior Consultant at ClickCease, “We have discovered that it is typically tradesmen going around in their vans, searching for tradesmen in their region, and repeatedly clicking on advertisements for rival businesses. In these situations, their daily cap for ad spending is $500, but due to the expensive keywords, which average roughly $50 per click.
Losses from click fraud have reached “at least a couple of thousand pounds,” according to Matt Robinson of the 12-person Palace Plumbers in the UK. “We started to observe that our activity would rise at particular times of the day and exhaust our daily budget,” continues Robinson. It appeared to occur around the daily high every time.
Online shopping and gaming
Click fraud rates for online casinos and retailers hover around 14%. Because clicks typically only cost 10 cents, click fraud typically entails bot traffic hitting on top keywords. Such bots are automatic browsers that hackers have programmed to carry out a predetermined set of actions, such as hitting websites to make ad impressions load and then clicking on them. E-commerce click fraud, which includes assaults on companies and SMEs, is predicted to cost firms $3.8 billion in 2020.
Black-collar Click Fraud
Competitors in law firms or competing realtors use their nimble elbows to damage their clients’ advertisements to secure a real estate listing or a high-value client representation.
Speaking about the significant impact of click fraud, StephanFuteral, CEO of JustLaw, a digital marketing business for law firms, mentions that he oversaw a PPC campaign for a DUI defence firm that cost $20,000 per month. He immediately discovered that his PPC campaign had weird analytics.
Click fraud is committed by realtors looking for a hefty fee, with incorrect click rates on PPC advertisements reaching 31%. As a result of COVID-19’s influence, which created severe competition for a small number of listing possibilities, this increased to a staggering 44% in April 2020. According to the US Housing Trends report, there are still not enough homes for sale in the US, with a 20% decrease from a year earlier.
B2B Click Warfare
B2B software companies that face intense competition report invalid click rates of 9%. “This has occurred to us a lot,” says CallumMcKeefery, founder and CEO of REVIEWS.io, a platform that enables customers of a business to review its goods or services online.
