How To Determine If An Ad Click Is Real Or Not?

When I am scrolling the Facebook feed on mobile, more often than not, I find myself accidently tapping on ads I don’t mean to.

I have no idea how I do it, but I do.

And it’s really common for me and annoying — all I want to do is scroll not see an ad.

Now, these ads are supposedly relevant to me, either from the perspective of Facebook Ads or from the advertiser, they rarely are.

*Although, I actually click on ads I want to see (yes, it’s true, people actually want to click on ads), but they are not these accidental clicks.

The unfortunate thing is, this costs these advertisers money.

I am sorry, like I said, it’s not intentional!

But in many cases, it intentional…

Amongst legitimate ad clicks, there are illegitimate ones that come from:

1. Accidental action (like what happens to me);
2. Competitors trying to waste your ad budget;
3. Aggravated former customers (who don’t want to see your ads);
4. Aggravated prospects (who also don’t want to see your ads due to non-relevance); or
5. Bots and click farms (either intentional or unintentional targeting).

If you don’t monitor more than just ad click numbers, you could be spending much more than desired, let alone higher cost-per-click due to bounce rates.

Platform ad reporting software only shows click numbers — it doesn’t narrow down the type of click or the “legitimacy” of that type of click.

And generic analytics software doesn’t provide the “legitimacy” of the click either.

That’s on you (and to wade through their reports to find the data you need).

I have created an AdTech product that detects potential illegitimate clicks in real-time from any PPC or PPV ad platform including:

1. Facebook (and Instagram and Messenger);
2. Google;
3. LinkedIn;
4. Outbrain;
5. Quora;
6. Pinterest;
7. Reddit;
8. Snapchat;
9. Taboola;
10. TikTok;
11. Twitter;
12. Yahoo!;
13. Tumblr;
14. AdRoll;
15. Amazon Ads;
16. Bing;
17. Etc.

It also helps confirm if the ad platform is delivering the correct amount of clicks they say they are delivering (I am sure you have seen clicks reported vs click counted don’t match in different reporting software!)

All you have to do is install one line of JavaScript code on your landing page (mobile friendly also) and you are good to go:

1. See total site visit count;
2. See total unique visitor count;
3. See total number of ad clicks;
4. See total number of legitimate ad clicks;
5. See list of unique IP addresses;
6. See total number of potentially illegitimate ad clicks;
7. Download total visits and potential illegitimate as clicks as CSV to do further filtering and analysis;
8. See list of potential illegitimate ad clicks and see total visits including: IP Address, Domain Name, Country, City, Device, Browser, Browser Language, Operating System, Ad Referrer, Landing Page, Link Parameters including (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content. utm_term, fbclid, gclid) and Time Stamp.

This is so you can:

1. Blacklist IP Addresses in Google Ads; or
2. Explore Domain Names to see where illegitimate clicks are coming from;
3. Contact Domain Name email to issue cease and desists (for example); or
4. Contact Ad Platform to make a illegitimate click claim; and
5. Explore Countries, Cities and Languages to match with targeting criteria in Facebook (for example).

As it’s in closed Beta, I am happy to give you a free account to use with your ad campaigns, in exchange for feedback.

Let me know if it interests you?