Since the beginning of the industry, click fraud has been a significant issue, as every PPC marketer is aware. Each year, marketers and publishers lose upwards of billions of dollars in revenue due to phony clicks or Facebook Ad Fraud. The majority of these fraudulent operations take place on PPC platforms offered by search engines, but since social media usage has increased over the past ten years, click fraudsters have also been concentrating their efforts on Facebook, Instagram, and other well-known platforms. Numerous small businesses have been able to reach targeted audiences with Facebook advertising for thousands (and maybe millions) of times less than through Google and other websites. It’s no secret that more and more firms are directing the majority of their PPC campaigns towards social channels, despite the fact that Facebook has undoubtedly been a great alternative choice to major players (like Google).
Why does this matter? This indicates that scammers are also joining the game. The problem with click fraud is that it follows the money. After all, money is what they primarily want. Although there are some additional motives for click fraud, such as destroying a rival’s PPC budget, the main one is to make money.
Whether you’re looking for strategies to prevent fraud from occurring in the future or ways to halt fraud that has already occurred, we have you covered. This blog was specifically created to explain click fraud’s operation and provide prevention tips. What you can do right away to reduce click fraud activity on your social ad campaigns is covered in detail below.
CLICK FRAUD ON FACEBOOK 101 Since the platform started providing PPC services to marketers, Facebook ad fraud has existed. Each quarter, more than one billion dollars (US) pass through Facebook’s ad platform, which presents a sizable target for scammers. But let’s be clear: Facebook doesn’t experience the same level of fraud that other platforms do (e.g. Google).
Facebook has significantly greater security standards and actively checks campaigns for dishonest behavior. Having said that, Facebook is still a victim of fraud. Fraudsters are a cunning group who always come up with new schemes to cheat advertisers out of their money. The fact that Facebook ads are highly targeted is the major barrier for scammers.
HOW REALLY FACEBOOK AD FRAUD HAPPENS This deters many fraudsters from ever trying to deal with Facebook in the first place, even though for many of them it isn’t a major problem (especially when other platforms are ripe for the taking). Let’s take the case of a protein powder firm wanting to advertise on Facebook for a new product.
The target market will undoubtedly be Americans who exercise regularly and are interested in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. With this knowledge, fraudsters can create a large number of false accounts or utilize accounts that they have purchased from dubious websites, such as the dark web, to defraud Facebook or the advertiser of money.
Therefore, the key lesson from this section is that, despite Facebook having some better security measures in place than other platforms, fraud still occurs (and happens every single second). What steps can you take to safeguard your campaigns? We discuss that next.
FACEBOOK AD FRAUD PREVENTION: TIPS AND STRATEGIES You should start by carefully reading the guidelines Facebook has established for advertising. Even if it might be a little tedious, it’s important to understand exactly what Facebook is doing to combat fraud.
After carefully reading Facebook’s policies, the next step would be to get in touch with a PPC fraud protection business for assistance. One of the main issues with Facebook is that they don’t open up their API to outside developers, hence there aren’t many or very few anti-fraud applications for the social media network (compared to apps for Google and other platforms).
A REVIEW OF THE FACTS: FRAUD ON FACEBOOK IN 2020 Some marketers claim that fraud doesn’t exist on Facebook, yet they couldn’t be more mistaken. Fraud will always exist on well-known platforms; it’s just the way things are in the present digital age.
The greatest thing you can do is become knowledgeable about fraud detection techniques and keep a close eye on your campaigns for possible false clicks. You can also contact a PPC anti-fraud company, which may be able to help you improve mitigation techniques even more (to protect your campaigns from fraud).
