Top 4 Ad Click Fraud Protection Tools You Should Use in 2023
In this article, I will be sharing with you the Top 4 Ad Click Fraud Protection Tools You Should Use in 2023. Click fraud is now a big threat in the advertising world. It is often carried out by malicious entities and competitors
They carry out their fraudulent acts to deceive advertisers. Making them feel as if a lot of people are engaging in their ads. This is not so; they do this by using automated clicking software. They either want to exhaust the advertisers’ budget or increase the revenue of the publisher.
That is why I want to show you the top 4 Ad Click Fraud Protection Tool You Should Use in 2023
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
What is ad Click fraud?
Click fraud is the practice of artificially inflating traffic statistics for online advertisements. This is done by clicking ads intentionally to drive up the advertiser’s cost. It is a common term among pay-per-click users. Click fraud is a type of ad fraud carried out by bad people to boost a publisher’s revenue.
When an advertiser wants to use the pay-per-click advertising model, he has to pay the publisher an agreed fee for each click on their ad. The advertiser begins to anticipate potential customers that will click his ad.
Click fraud sets in when instead of potential customers, an automated clicking program is been set up to continue to click the ad. This action in turn creates an illusion that a large number of customers have seen and clicked the advertiser’s link.
Unfortunately, none of the clicks leads to conversion thereby resulting in wasted ad and money.
Click fraud is carried out to drain the advertiser’s budget on advertising. Cybercriminals usually harness this opportunity to boost malicious websites higher than the rest. Getting more rankings and making their websites look more legitimate is their goal.
The issue of click fraud has been widely reported. These criminals have helped people to inflate likes and followers on social media. They have even used this same technique to rob people of millions of dollars.
What are the common types of click fraud?
There are several types of click fraud that different people commit.
- Click fraud bots. This is when clicks are generated by using bots to automatically click on ads.
- Pixel stuffing; this occurs when publishers load 1×1 pixel ads on a website. They can easily combine several ads just in one view. End users may not realize this, but they are viewing several ads at a time. And this generates more revenue for the hosting site.
- Ad fraud: publishers engage in this type of click fraud by creating websites that host different banner and text ads and this in turn channels fake clicks to generate more revenue.
- Ad stacking: this method is similar to pixel stuffing. Ads are often not seen by the end users but several ads are packed into each other.
- Click farms: several organizations employ people to click on ads all day. This is possible where the labor is cheap.
- Competitor’s click abuse: Often, a competing organization goes on to continuously click on your ads just to increase your expected advertising cost. Which in turn affects the revenue of your business.
- Location fraud: usually, perpetrators try to avoid detection so they go ahead to use VPN to change their exact location to somewhere else.
There are few other click fraud types, it all depends on those carrying the fraudulent activity. They can combine 2 or more types of click fraud to achieve their goals.
How does ad Click fraud work?
Competitors and fraudsters use click fraud often time to produce fake clicks on advertisers’ ads. Click fraud is carried out with the aid of programmed bots. These bots have been designed to imitate real users and click on certain links.
In a bid to conceal their malicious acts, the bots to be used are distributed across multiple devices in a botnet. This will make it look more legitimate because these bots will have different IP addresses coming from different devices.
For a better understanding of what a botnet is, it is a group of internet-connected devices. These devices have been compromised in a way to the advantage of fraudsters. Each of the devices to be used will have a bot installed on it.
What are the Benefits of Using Click fraud protection?
Here, we will look at why it is necessary for you to use anti-click fraud software.
Protection against Click fraud
These click fraud protection tools have been built to detect and war against click fraud. This click fraud can destroy one’s PPC campaign. They help you to unveil all click fraudsters that are illegally clicking your ads.
These fraudsters may include all the disappointment and frustration in their dealings with the advertisers. It ensures that all the clicks on your campaigns are authentic.
Real-time click fraud detection
Click fraud tools are designed to audit ad clicks. They can identify and report any click fraud or potential threats in real-time. This amazing solution spots out the IP address, specific device, and even the location where the click fraud took place.
Most of the tools have robust and organic traffic tools. These tools can be used to monitor and also create some behavior patterns that can help to increase the efficiency of the ads.
24/7 Support
Most of the tools have an amazing support team that is always ready to help users. From the initial signup down to the integration, they are ready to go all out to help you.
These support teams work with the company. They are not just outsourced staff that read scripts to users. This feature makes it easy to have direct contact with the company.
Advanced Call Monitoring
Some of the tools such as Clixtell have tracking features that give room for users like you to access more information as regards your customers’ journey down your sales funnel.
With this knowledge, you can easily discover what is missing and retrace your steps. You can now find out the exact keywords your customers used and how they found your ad.
Which is the top 4 ad click fraud protection tools?
Now that you know why you should leverage an anti-click fraud tool, let us look at the Top 4 Ad Click Fraud Protection tools
Clickcease
ClickCease is generally known as an impression and click fraud detection and protection service software. It does a good job of protecting Google ads and Bing by using these leading detection algorithms to block fraudulent IPs automatically.
This is a great tool for protecting Facebook Ads campaigns. It doesn’t waste time detecting and excluding fraudulent and malicious audiences.
Clickcease is the best choice when it comes to helping businesses detect and prevent fake clicks, bots, and other harmful visitors. This is to ensure that your PPC campaigns are not in vain but successful.
With the help of machine learning algorithms, clickcease can easily monitor and analyze your PPC clicks. Therefore, it quickly identifies and separates fake clicks from real ones.
Fraudulent IPs are recorded and sent automatically to your Google Ads exclusion list. This will go a long way in ensuring that your PPC budget is spent on real visitors.
Clickcease can supply in-depth information on the differences between harmful clicks and visitor clicks. It can do this with the help of device mapping, fraudulent heatmaps, campaign keyword analysis, ad placement analytics, and a lot more.
Furthermore, clickcease allows you to record or replay screen recordings of visitors on a particular landing page. With this, you can study the behaviors and detect if they are humans or not.
Click here to try Clickcease for free
Also Read: Clickcease Review and Pricing: Does It Really Work?
ClickGUARD
ClickGUARD is a great choice for the prevention of click fraud. It is a proven and tested service that helps several businesses with their campaign optimization.
It also helps businesses with VPN detection, IP address whitelisting, and many more on a centralized platform.
ClickGUARD is software that prevents digital agencies and corporations from paying for worthless clicks. Therefore, it helps to boost business profitability. It has fraud protection services that include more than 50 features.
These features are capable of maximizing PPC budgets and increasing sales conversions.
ClickGUARD empowers Advertisers to successfully create a shield for their ads. Amazingly, ClickGUARD provides transparent as well as forensic-grade analytics. This helps to hold PPC advertising firms or publishers accountable for every invalid click.
Furthermore, ClickGUARD provides several automated reports that have over time helped business owners to monitor their software’s efficiency.
It allows you to activate real-time notifications that send signals whenever ClickGUARD discovers any fraudulent activity.
Finally, it is guaranteed that when you choose ClickGUARD to protect your online PPC advertising campaigns. There are four ClickGUARD service packages that have been made available for you. Their prices vary because of the different features and customizations that are available.
Click here to try Clickguard free
Also Read: ClickGUARD Review: Details, Pricing, & Features
Clixtell
This is a software-as-a-service that provides advanced Google Ads click fraud protection & detection solutions for businesses and digital marketers around the world.
It is also a cloud-based call-tracking solution that assists digital marketing agencies with keyword call tracking, recording, and conversion metrics. Its key features include dynamic phone insertion, whisper messaging, and multiple report generation.
The application lets marketers assign tracking numbers to ads and measure clicks and incoming calls. With its live dashboard feature, managers can monitor customer engagement on the website and analyze marketing campaigns and call quality.
Advertisers can use static and offline tracking functionality to measure conversion across multiple channels such as print ads, TV, and radio.
Clixtell is more than just a call tracking and recording solution. Its most fundamental task is to provide users with a clear and 360° vista of their marketing campaigns. It makes itself useful through tools that include real-time web analytics, calls, conversions tracking, and Google Ads click fraud protection.
With their clients mostly from digital and marketing industries, this has become an indispensable tool for building campaigns and positively affecting overall ROI.
One can even zoom in on the nitty-gritty details such as which search keywords a particular visitor used and then track their journey to conversion. Each visit to your site is monitored by Clixtell to protect you from possible attacks and click fraud activity.
Clixtell is designed to be simple and accessible for businesses and agencies of all sizes. The software will monitor and analyze every PPC click by over 100 data points.
Clixtell will save money and maximize your campaign ROI by eliminating Click Fraud.
Click here to try Clixtell free
Also Read: Clixtell Review: Details, Pricing, & Features
Lunio (Formerly PPC Protect)
Lunio is a click fraud detection and protection software for PPC. It is a software-as-a-service that provides advanced Google Ads click fraud protection for big corporations all over the world.
In the digital marketing industry, PPC Protect is one of the prominent services available. It is a Click fraud detection service that is based in the UK. Having begun operation in 2016, it has carried out research and has put into use the analytics as well as the heuristic detection algorithms.
PPC Protect is an anti-fraud solution that is designed to detect and protect against any fraudulent activity. These frauds can be carried out by bots, malicious click farms as well as unethical competitors. It is a platform that has an automatic way to remove any invalid and illegal traffic from your campaigns.
PPC has been designed to structure around an agency’s approach. It is flexible and helps to monitor either single or multiple domains with the aid of a web-based dashboard. PPC Protect consists of real-time IP address, AI algorithm, device blocking, and detection via proprietary self-learning.
PPC Protect helps you to monitor every traffic coming into your domains. If any activity looks shady, there is a reporting algorithm that has been put into place to send signals to you. Automatically, the suspected IP address will be blocked from accessing or even seeing your Google ads.
Furthermore, PPC Protect also protects the innocent users of your website from illegal leakage or infiltration into their accounts or details. It has been designed to maintain complete GDPR compliance. PPC Protect also meets new EU guidelines on user data security.
Which of the Top 4 Ad Click Fraud Protection Tool is the best?
We are going to analyze this top 4 ad click fraud protection tools based on their pricing, features, and the platforms they operate on
Pricing
ClickCease Pricing
There are three pricing plans
- Standard – $59/month
- Pro – $79/month
- Advanced – $109/month
ClickGUARD Pricing
There are 4 pricing plans, which are
- Alert GUARD $39.00 / month
- Active GUARD $59.00/ month
- Premium GUARD $79.00 / month
- Elite GUARD $99.00 / month
Clixtell Pricing
There are three pricing plans
- Basic | Click Monitoring $15.00 /month
- Standard | Automated Click Fraud Protection $50.00 / month
- Advanced | Automated Click Fraud Protection + Click To-Call Ads Tracking $60.00/ month
PPC Protect Pricing
Under this amazing tool, we have three basic pricing plan
- Basic | $39 USD per month, billed annually or $49 month-to-month
- Standard | $55 USD per month, billed annually or $69 month-to-month
- Professional | $119 USD per month, billed annually or $149 month-to-month
Features
Clickcease
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24\7 Click-Fraud Monitoring
This feature will help you to monitor your advertisement for any malicious activity. Clickcease will help you to monitor your ads around the clock
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Automated Click Fraud Prevention
Clickcease will automatically conceal your advertisements from fraudsters. It helps to forestall future snap misrepresentation.
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Custom Detection Rules
Clickcease helps you to customize the framework for your business. It helps you to guarantee that potential clients see your advertisement.
Click here to try Clickcease for free
ClickGUARD
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Increase in ads conversion
ClickGUARD grants access to an all-encompassing implementation of data on paid traffic as well as organic. It provides comprehensive relational analytics with the aid of forensic insight on all paid clicks.
Click logs can help you to detect suspicious click behavior and patterns that seem related to some devices. Usually, forensic insight helps you to increase the performance of your AdWords and boost the ROI of all ad campaigns you make.
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Compatibility
ClickGUARD is an amazing click fraud detection solution. It integrates with Google APIs. It is compatible with several platforms used by advertisers and marketers. These platforms are Google tags manager, CRM systems, and AdWords. Etc.
There are other eCommerce platforms that ClickGUARD is compatible with they include, including Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce. Most importantly, ClickGUARD is fully compatible with CMS systems like WordPress
Click here to try Clickguard free
Clixtell
- Smart Fraud detection: There are several campaigns that you can manage on either Google or Bing. You can monitor the campaign 24/7 in case of any suspicious activity. There are automated rules that have been configured to block malicious activities.
- Click-to-call tracking: This Clixtell feature can help you to detect more than just fraudulent actions due to unethical rivalry. It can also provide valuable information on whether this strategy is working or not. Online ads that have the feature of click-to-call convenience make it much easy to monitor, track and record it.
- Website Video Recording: You can record the activities on the website to examine the behavior of those that visit the site. The way they navigate the site and also, how they take in the flow of content and web page elements. Some automated patterns can help one to detect bots and click farm operators.
Click here to try Clixtell free
Lunio (Formely PPC Protect)
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AI Detection
One of the most important features of PPC Protect is artificial intelligence detection. PPC Protect also uses machine learning to detect if a click is fraudulent or not. Some click fraud services out there only block IP addresses after three to four clicks. This usually leads to a poor conversion rate.
When users share their IP addresses on various networks and they are blocked after a few clicks, that is not good enough nor does it make sense. PPC Protect monitors every click for any suspicious activity. Immediately after you confirm these suspicions, PPC raises a red flag and blocks the IP.
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API Access
When you compare PPC Protect with its competitors, one feature stands out which is the use of Google API access when connecting to your account.
This simply means that they won’t be able to work on any of your campaigns. The API access will only allow them to add and remove IP addresses from your blacklist.
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White-label reporting
This is another outstanding feature of PPC Protect. Whenever you work with clients it’s cool for you to be able to send them fraud reports with your logo on them. This feature allows you to be able to add your logo, color, and other adjustments. It makes it so easy to produce these reports.
Platforms on which it can work
Clickcease
Currently, this software prevents invalid traffic on Google ads(AdWords), Google Display Network (GDN), YouTube, Gmail, Facebook Ads, Facebook Audience Network, Instagram Ads, and Bing Ads also known as Microsoft Ads. Work is going on to include more platforms on this list.
ClickGUARD
ClickGUARD has been designed to be compatible with several platforms. These platforms are frequently used by Advertisers and digital marketers.
The platforms are
- Google Adwords
- Google Tag Manager,
- WordPress
- Joomla, Drupal
- Leadpages
- Instapage
- LanderApp
- ClickFunnels
- Unbounce
- Weebly, Launchrock
- Squarespace
- Hubspot
- Wix
- Shopify
- Magento
- BigCommerce
- LemonStand
- Volusion
- Slack
Clixtell
It offers its users three important services they are ID fraud protection, fraud detection, and call recording software for you to track suspicious calls. These services can be performed on any of the platforms that are listed below.
Clixtell has some integrated platforms where advertising and other important services can be carried out they are
Google Ads
Bing Ads
Zapier
Google Analytics
WordPress
PPC Protect
PPC Protect has been designed to be compatible with several platforms. These platforms are frequently used by Advertisers and digital marketers.
The platforms are
Google Microsoft Ads
YouTube
Tik Tok
Quora
Snapchat
Outbrain
Baidu
Adroll
Naver
YandexYahoo and many more!
Conclusion
There are several click fraud protection solutions everywhere in the market. However, you must be careful with the one you choose. I have been able to put together the top 4 Ad Click fraud protection tools you can go for.
Leveraging these ad-click fraud detection tools will go a long way in saving your ads from being tampered with by click fraud.
In summary, these top 4 have the necessary tools to work effectively. They work just fine with your existing system. If you are still skeptical about what they have to offer, you can kick start by signing up for their free trial.
