Extremely dangerous: How to oppose VPN click fraud?

The PPC system today is the most effective in attracting new customers and increasing interest in your company. However, such a tool can act not only for the benefit, but also to the detriment. The main thing is that instead of making a profit from clicks, scammers can, on the contrary, ruin your business. 

The essence of the phenomenon

VPN and other anonymizers help customers visit websites that are banned in their region and purchase various products at more favorable prices. However, these tools allow frauds to ruin your advertising campaign. The number of cases with billion losses on PPC-fraud is growing every year. You may think that potential client’s bases are being replenished. Huge bills and tempting metrics are a reflection of the dark plans of your competitors.

What you can do to combat VPN fraud?

If you use PPC solutions, then get ready for a heated fight. VPN-fraud has already been put on stream, and it remains only to fight back. Suspicious requests are not always easy to detect, as they can be identified as real visitors. This happens in case of clicks by mistake. To win the fight, use the tips outlined below.

Regular IP checks

Most VPN and proxy servers hide real web addresses. If you notice malicious activity, you can stop it. To do this, use services that can identify the real location of the server. If this is not possible, it’s better to contact the advertiser with a claim to find and block the user.

Attention! This approach is more applicable to single malicious requests. In case of massive web PPC attacks, it is better to use other tools.

Regional features

In the regular conversion check of your site, include region analysis. This way you will be able to control clicks and clarify the situation in the best way. If you know that the region in which there is a surge in web activity is not among your popular locations, the probability of fraud is extremely high. That’s why it’s essential to conduct regular surveys and keep statistics on visitors. 

This approach helps determine your target audience. By the way, the data may change over time. Therefore, it is possible that customers from a new geographical location are really interested in your product for certain reasons.

Tip. It’s also advisable to embed an online chatbot in the interface of a web page. Analyzing the data from the form or mini-conversation allows companies to correctly assess the risks.

Managing lists

You can blacklist some addresses. To do this, analyze the recent marks on visits to your resource. If there are suspicious IP addresses from distant regions among them, or clicks are made too often, they should be blocked. These addresses may be permanent and perform PPC actions too often. Therefore, this solution will save on advertising. After blocking, users with these IPs will stop seeing ads, and the flow of uncontrolled clicks will end quickly.

Tip. Many advertising platforms offer integrated tools to solve such problems.

The disadvantage of this case is that there are quite a lot of such web addresses. After the destruction of some, others come to replace them. However, blocking can help in the fight against click fraud.

Strange metrics

Use specialized programs to monitor the flow of malicious web traffic. When your resource is attacked by a huge number of PPCs, the program will display a critical level of indicators on the dashboard. After that, you will be able to block the VPN or proxy manually or automatically.

Effective retargeting

Imagine a situation that you have created a competent advertising company. Everything is going great, as long as the sneaky webmasters don’t come into play. To solve the issue with click fraud, which already operates on the basis of targeted advertising, there is a simple way out: retargeting. 

Thanks to this mechanism, only active clients see advertising. It’s simply not available to new users. This strategy is not very profitable, but it helps to strengthen the client’s base and eliminate unnecessary costs for side advertising.

Set up ads

Know the interests of your customer. Identifying the target audience makes advertising more accurate and safer. Today, there are farms around the world that are engaged in click fraud. In most cases, they are hired by unscrupulous companies who dream of destroying the business of their competitors. The main weapon in this case is a knowledge about potential customers and their location. 

To exclude the possibility of click fraud attacks in advance, you should narrow down the area of services provided. It is advisable to immediately determine the position of your company and the regions with which you are going to work.

Attention! You can customize targeted advertising according to the selected locations. Just pick the countries and languages you want to collaborate with. After that, your ad will be seen by people only from the selected geographical points.

Improve the quality of protection

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish real clicks from fraudulent ones. The thing is that you can receive signals from your target locations. The best solution in this situation is to acquire automated systems. With their help, various tests can be carried out. For example, a ping check allows experts to evaluate the quality of the connection, identify web requests coming from VPN and proxy servers.

Some services can check DNS server protocols. Such tools regularly provide reports, so you can better predict future events and see risks.

Review

The main difficulty in the fight against click-fraud scammers is the constant dynamics. Tech giants and advertisers are trying to combat this phenomenon, but it’s not always possible to do it in advance. This is due to the rapid updating of IP addresses and regular replenishment of the real users’ pool.

Therefore, it’s critical to distinguish click frauds from real visitors. This can be done by establishing an effective user feedback. To deal with current issues, apply the tips outlined above.