PPC advertising is an important tool for marketers to make the most of the company’s marketing dollar, increasing brand awareness and generating sales. They often put in dedicated efforts to master ad-targeting to make their marketing campaigns the most cost-efficient. One of the biggest hindrances in achieving that goal, however, is the instances of PPC fraud where the clicks increase without increasing conversions. Click fraud or PPC fraud depletes your advertising budget quickly without giving you the desired results even when you aren’t doing anything wrong with your marketing. That’s why PPC fraud protection is very important, and marketers should try to learn and master different ways to implement prevention techniques right from the very beginning.

Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you avoid PPC fraud in the first place and make the most of your online marketing efforts.

1. Use Ad Verification Tools

Ad Verification tools can be your primary line of defense against ad fraud, particularly click fraud. It’s a fail-safe method to get performance insights into a number of metrics, including invalid traffic and viewability. These tools can help you shut down any suspicious websites and low-quality publishers. You can also thoroughly audit your campaigns and optimize them to get the desired results.

2. Use Honeypots

Honeypots can be a great option for PPC fraud protection as they can effectively neutralize click bots while also exposing the culprits behind them. When using honeypots, the ad servers serve special ads in addition to the actual ones from the marketers. These special ads are the bluffs that a human user can’t distinguish from the actual ads. Whenever the bots click these ads, they are exposed by the honeypot, and their IP is blocked. It helps avoid any future exploitation.

3. Prepare and Maintain a Blacklist

Preparing a blacklist of IP addresses involved in click fraud is a natural way to avoid it in the future. When you maintain a Blacklist of IPs involved in fraudulent or suspicious activity on your ads, you’re automatically neutering them and contributing to your cause of PPC fraud protection. It allows you to block any suspicious IP addresses, device IDs, and bot signatures that have been spotted. Though this technique comes into play after you have suffered a fraudulent or suspicious click, it can be an effective way of preventing further damage from the same source.

4. Serve Your Ads Only on High-Value Websites

Quite often, low-quality websites tend to be click fraud hotbeds. They employ bots or individuals to click your ads only to boost the PPC revenues of the owner. Fortunately, however, you can set up your campaigns to run on your specified websites and avoid those involved in unethical revenue generation practices.

5. Regularly Track Your Ad Campaigns

Regular monitoring and tracking of your ad campaigns allow you to manage things better. Google Ads gives you the Account Performance and Campaign Performance tools to track your ad campaigns. These tools let you easily monitor the number of invalid clicks and what percentage of the total clicks they make. You can then optimize your campaign settings and implement ways to cut down the number of invalid clicks.

Your marketing strategy can’t be complete without PPC advertising in today’s world where an effective digital presence lays the foundation of your success. So, it is important to develop a better understanding of the market and implement these PPC fraud protection tips and tricks to make the most of your marketing efforts.