Client LoginIn this article we explain how fake leads are the result of click fraud, how they train the ad networks to send you more bot traffic, and why preventing them re-trains the ad networks to send you real traffic. Finally, we explain why you're breaching data privacy laws if you ignore or tolerate fake leads.
What is click fraud?
Before explaining why advertisers need to care about fake leads, let's make sure we understand the most common click fraud scenario.
- A scammer creates a website and contacts an ad network like Microsoft Ads to add his website to their audience network. That means his website will be allowed show advertisements, so he can earn money when people visit his website and click on the ads.
- Instead of waiting for people to visit his website and click on the ads, the scammer programs a click fraud bot to simulate website visitors. The bot is created using a stealth bot framework, such as Puppeteer Extra and its stealth plugin, and its traffic is routed through a residential proxy service so it constantly has new, clean IP addresses. These design decisions are good enough to trick the ad network into thinking the bot represents real website visitors.
- The bot's flow is as follows:
- Go to Bing Search.
- Search for something, for example, "online MBA".
- Click on the results, including the ads. This is why advertisers get bogus search clicks.
- When on the advertisers’ landing pages, randomly submit fake leads. This tricks the ad network into thinking the bot has high quality traffic.
- Navigate to the scammer's website. At this stage, the bot has been cookied by the ad network, and will be retargeted with high value ads. The bot clicks on these ads.
- When on the advertisers' landing pages, randomly submit fake leads.
- Go back to Bing Search and repeat the process.
- As you can see, the bot clicks on both search ads and audience ads. That means even if you have the audience network turned off, you're still going to get search clicks. Both search clicks and audience clicks steal your ad budget. The flow of money is as follows: for every click, you pay money to Microsoft Ads, and the money is then shared with the scammer.
Why do click fraud bots submit fake leads?
There are two reasons why advertisers get spam leads.
The first reason, as stated above, is the leads trick the ad network into thinking the bot's traffic is high quality. That's because the leads usually trigger conversions, which means the ad network receives a signal which flags the visitor as suitable for the advertiser. If the bot didn't generate fake leads, the scammer's traffic would be considered low quality, since it clicks on ads but never converts.
The second reason, and of most concern to advertisers, is the fake leads train the ad network to send more bot traffic. The conversion signals tell the ad network the bots are interested in the advertisers' products, so the ad network starts showing the advertisers' ads to even more bots. It's a vicious cycle - bots generate fake conversions, which trains the ad network to send more bots, which means there's even more fake conversions, which trains the ad network to send more and more garbage traffic.
How do I stop fake leads?
As you have seen, it's vital you stop fake leads. If you don't, the ad network will continue showing your ads to bots, causing your ad budget to be stolen. Additionally, the fake leads train the ad network to keep sending you low quality traffic.
The solution is to re-train the ad network to send you real visitors. This is a two-step process:
- Detect the bots when they arrive on your landing page.
- Prevent the bots from submitting spam leads (and other fake conversions).
You could try building a bot detection and prevention system yourself, but it's way easier and cheaper to use Polygraph to handle this for you. Polygraph uses an objective system which differentiates between humans and bots with zero false positives. We do this by identifying the bot software and click fraud tricks being used. If we're not 100% sure it's a bot, we let it through. The result is real people can always submit leads, and almost all bots are banned from interacting with your website, including creating spam leads and other bogus conversions.
Why should I stop fake leads?
Since fake leads train the ad network to send you bot traffic, it's vital you prevent spam leads so you can stop the bad conversion signals, and re-train the ad network to send you real traffic. The good news is most ad networks can be re-trained quickly, so within a few days you'll see a traffic improvement and better leads. It's quite normal for our customers to triple their lead quality while removing all the bogus, time-wasting leads. A side effect of this is your sales team won't need to contact fake leads anymore, meaning they can focus on selling to real people.
Another benefit is you remove the risk of being fined for breaching data privacy laws. In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to save and contact leads without their permission. Since bots commonly use real people's data when submitting fake leads, you don't actually have permission to save and use their data, meaning you're at risk of hefty fines. It doesn't matter that you were tricked by bots to save the leads - you're responsible for the data in your database. Blocking fake leads solves this problem.
Conclusion
Click fraud bots use fake leads to trick the ad networks into thinking their traffic is high quality. The fake leads' conversion signals train the ad networks to send you more bot traffic, resulting in increased levels of click fraud and even more fake leads. The cycle continues until you detect the click fraud bots and prevent them from submitting fake leads. This re-trains the ad networks to send you real traffic, resulting in drastically better leads and significant financial savings.
Click fraud bots use real people's data when submitting fake leads. Since you don't have permission to save or use this data, you're likely breaking data privacy laws every time you save or contact a fake lead.
Polygraph detects the fake clicks on your ads, prevents bots from submitting fake leads, re-trains the ad networks to send you real traffic, lowers your CAC, and protects your firm from data privacy risks and fines.