How Do You Select a Click Fraud Detection Company?

[labahlabah]

What are the top 5 criteria you would use in selecting a click fraud detection company?

[andrewgoodman]

Why not go on recommendations from firms like interactive agencies, unbiased SEM's, or web development shops who have been around long enough and care enough about their reputations that they would only recommend a quality vendor?

Click fraud detection is so new that not all dedicated click fraud detection companies provide value over and above what an experienced marketer, analyst, or webmaster might be able to accomplish on their own. In addition, you need to realize that doing business with Overture and Google is about relationships.

A refund gained through the actions of a dedicated click fraud detection firm might be

(a) lower

(b) about the same

or

(c) higher

than if you did this yourself or used one of these other kinds of agencies to help you. On average, I am guessing (b) would be the most common result.

I am steering away from your question about criteria because I don't think any click fraud firm can prove that they have the right approach to the relationships with the traffic vendor no matter how well they document fraudulent activity.

Ideally then a click fraud vendor would probably be one who also runs your campaigns, who builds them in such a way that click fraud is caught early and who is so good at habitually building successful campaigns that fraud complaints will be taken seriously.

I tend to believe, then, that click fraud detection and advocacy should be part of the general mix of SEM campaign work. If not done in-house, then at least done in regular close collaboration with firms who work on the positive aspects (achieving strong ROI and measuring campaign results), so the focus isn't all on scandal and misdeeds on the part of Google & Yahoo.

Some firms come closer to meeting those criteria than others, and since I don't want to show any vendor bias in this post, I'll leave it at that.

[randfish]

Check out:

Auditing Paid Listings & Clickfraud Issues
on the page - http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/toronto05/agenda2.html

The speakers and companies listed there are top-notch (if you're simply seeking a reference). I heard all of the speakers and was very impressed - particularly with Jessie from Alchemist Media and Lori from KeywordMax

[labahlabah]

Thanks for the responses. I attended the SES NY this year and sat in the click fraud session as well, which was helpful.

I've been approached by several different vendors and it seems that they have similar techniques and technologies. Aside from references, how would I know which one is better than the other?

[jpchrysler]

The trouble with any of the auditing or detection systems that are available for advertisers is that they all involve guessing based on one half or less part of the picture.

Stopping click fraud is only possible on the supply side.

Can you work with a company that negotiates on your behalf and can such a relationship make sense financially? Yes, but there's still a lot of value that's lost in that transaction. Still, I think this sort of thing is good, because it forces SE's to come to terms with their enabling click fraud.

Whether or not the SE's use our technology to actually stop click fraud, I'm glad that there's increasing pressure on them to really keep the value in the industry.

[projectphp]

Stopping click fraud is only possible on the supply side.
Meaning the SE side? What about a competitor that clicks on multiple ads accross multiple SEs? How can any one SE stop that?

[jpchrysler]

Competitive click fraud, while an issue, makes up a small percentage of the click fraud that actually occurs. Can a search engine determine fraudulent intent by a competitor? No, no one will be able to detect that if it's really well organized, but competitive click fraud in 99% of all cases, won't change the competitive landscape such that it inflicts anything more than a small flesh wound on a competitor, even if the keyword prices are high.

We're able to monitor and filter click fraud using a combination of client side and server side scripting. It's the bot based CF that scares me most. Thankfully, we can detect it, even thought Google and Findwhat and all the others can't, except for in the most obvious cases.