my Adwords competitors are clicking my ads

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thalas

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Sep 12, 2007
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Hi,

This is just another fucking day that my Adwords daily expenses has drained and I have zero leads :mad:

I'm doing AM (ringtones), my landing page is ok, my 1720 keywords have Great QS and are very specific and long term. Also I did DKI on Adwords and I bought Affedit to control the leads (ref_ID).

I was thinking, and I want your opinion on that, maybe my competitors are clicking my ads through various proxy sites from different IP's. I know this is possible but what I wanna find out is how to control such clicks. Is there a way to check the source of every click comes to my site? How can I prove to Adwords that some of the clicks are fraud?

Also is there an option in Adwords to check the specific time that every click occured?

cheers
 


i doubt your competitors are screwing with you. you only have 1720 words.... how will they even find you? :P
 
How many clicks are you going through daily? You might want to double check that your ringtone offer is actually tracking on the network side too.
 
Scrape a list of public proxies from online sources, check to see if the IPs that come to your site are on that list.

You could also just check for proxy fields in the $_SERVER are set like
HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR etc.

Though even with this information, there isn't much you can do about it.
 
How many clicks are you going through daily? You might want to double check that your ringtone offer is actually tracking on the network side too.
Click to expand...

only 20-25 clicks. The site works ok and I double checked it

You could also just check for proxy fields in the $_SERVER are set like
HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR etc.
Click to expand...

so if a visitor comes from HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED or HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR this means that it's a proxy? If that works then I can block those visitors.

Well if you are able to get it on record you may be able to get a refund (if the amount is pretty significant)
Click to expand...

I will try to record any fraud clicks. My daily budget is $50.
 
Also what I wanna ask you guys is if anyone uses the Ad scheduling Adwords feature.

What I noticed is all my budget is spend on the first hours of the day (00:00-01:00). So tomorrow I will try to run my campaign from 09:00 to 17:00 (working hours). Maybe I will have better results then.
 
thalas said:
Also what I wanna ask you guys is if anyone uses the Ad scheduling Adwords feature.

What I noticed is all my budget is spend on the first hours of the day (00:00-01:00). So tomorrow I will try to run my campaign from 09:00 to 17:00 (working hours). Maybe I will have better results then.
Click to expand...

What's wrong with spreading the budget evenly throughout the day as opposed to accelerated (assuming thats what you do)?:question4:
 
From my data adwords for ringtones always do the best from 6pm to 9pm (central)

Also, 25 clicks is NOT enough data. You could just be getting bad RNG. I would say 100-200 clicks would be better to test.

Also, when I was promoting through google my AM's would contact me and say something about my page if i changed something. So I know AM's like to click ont them like crazy.
 
thalas said:
so if a visitor comes from HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED or HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR this means that it's a proxy? If that works then I can block those visitors.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but they could be legitimate users as well :) It's just for you to figure out if there is a big discrepancy like 50% via proxies would not be normal..

Anyway, why would you want to block them after they already clicked your ads and costed you money? You can't block them at google.com yourself.
 
As far as tracking time and shit on when clicks come in- a simple statcounter code will do you just fine. They're pretty much live stats
 
thalas said:
Is there a way to check the source of every click comes to my site?
Click to expand...

Look into Xtreme Conversions or GoTryTHIS

Very detailed log info, ip's etc. GTT will show you all clicks in real time as well as IP's, keyword entered in search, etc.

If you are experiencing click fraud or click bots it's pretty easy to tell and you can copy/send the info in for a credit.

One way to do it.
 
Thalas,

The fact that you only have 20-25 clicks/day doesn't justify the idea that competitors are trying to screw with you. It's possible that you are getting a few junk clicks here and there, but this is to be expected in the SEM world. Assuming that your conversion rate is 5% (and this is quite generous already given the stricter compliance requirements on ringtone landing pages nowadays), your expected leads/day would be 22.5 * 0.05 = 1 lead. Using a stricter (and more realistic) conversion estimate of 3%, this would equate to 22.5 * 0.03 = 0.675 < 1 lead. So getting 0 leads is definitely a feasible scenario in your case.

Another possibility is that your leads are not tracking properly or there is an infrastructure-related issue with your landing page. Has 0 leads/day been a consistent trend for you, or has this only been recently? I would look into these potential issues as well if this is the case.

In the meantime, it would be wise for you to implement some analytics tool to detect click behavior, but I wouldn't place this as your first priority since the mathematics justifies the lead statistics you are seeing. In addition, you may find that the time you spend trying to recover a few dollars in potentially fraudulent clicks is not worth it and could be better spent on optimizing your conversions via strategies such as ad copy and landing page optimization, in addition to time-based conversion analyses to figure out what time of day your ads/landing page convert the best.
 
fluidc said:
Thalas,

The fact that you only have 20-25 clicks/day doesn't justify the idea that competitors are trying to screw with you. It's possible that you are getting a few junk clicks here and there, but this is to be expected in the SEM world. Assuming that your conversion rate is 5% (and this is quite generous already given the stricter compliance requirements on ringtone landing pages nowadays), your expected leads/day would be 22.5 * 0.05 = 1 lead. Using a stricter (and more realistic) conversion estimate of 3%, this would equate to 22.5 * 0.03 = 0.675 < 1 lead. So getting 0 leads is definitely a feasible scenario in your case.

Another possibility is that your leads are not tracking properly or there is an infrastructure-related issue with your landing page. Has 0 leads/day been a consistent trend for you, or has this only been recently? I would look into these potential issues as well if this is the case.

In the meantime, it would be wise for you to implement some analytics tool to detect click behavior, but I wouldn't place this as your first priority since the mathematics justifies the lead statistics you are seeing. In addition, you may find that the time you spend trying to recover a few dollars in potentially fraudulent clicks is not worth it and could be better spent on optimizing your conversions via strategies such as ad copy and landing page optimization, in addition to time-based conversion analyses to figure out what time of day your ads/landing page convert the best.
Click to expand...

fluidc,

first of all thank you for your advices. Today, after 3 days I had one lead and your maths are exactly what I get, 3%.
You say that 25 clicks are not much but I was thinking even if I put more money to my daily budget then again 3% is only 3 leads every 100 clicks. To have a profitable campaign I must get at least 1 lead every ~7 clicks because I pay ~$2.5 per click and I profit $16.5 per lead. With your logic if my conversion rate is 3% then I must spend $250 to earn only $45.5. Maybe I didn't understand something you said, so please explain a bit more here.

thanks again
 
thalas said:
fluidc,

first of all thank you for your advices. Today, after 3 days I had one lead and your maths are exactly what I get, 3%.
You say that 25 clicks are not much but I was thinking even if I put more money to my daily budget then again 3% is only 3 leads every 100 clicks. To have a profitable campaign I must get at least 1 lead every ~7 clicks because I pay ~$2.5 per click and I profit $16.5 per lead. With your logic if my conversion rate is 3% then I must spend $250 to earn only $45.5. Maybe I didn't understand something you said, so please explain a bit more here.

thanks again
Click to expand...

If you are only getting $16.50 per lead and paying $2.50 per click you will never make a profit in this market.
 
thalas said:
fluidc,

first of all thank you for your advices. Today, after 3 days I had one lead and your maths are exactly what I get, 3%.
You say that 25 clicks are not much but I was thinking even if I put more money to my daily budget then again 3% is only 3 leads every 100 clicks. To have a profitable campaign I must get at least 1 lead every ~7 clicks because I pay ~$2.5 per click and I profit $16.5 per lead. With your logic if my conversion rate is 3% then I must spend $250 to earn only $45.5. Maybe I didn't understand something you said, so please explain a bit more here.

thanks again
Click to expand...

Hi Thalas, you are bidding way too much per click then. Lower your bid to around 25 cents and monitor what happens over a week.

It's always worth working out what you think your going to get paid per click, and from your figures above your going to earn $49.50 per 100 clicks. This is the same as .495 cents per click, or 50 cents really!

If you continue to convert at 3% you can't pay more than 50 cents for each of your clicks. You may be able to increase your conversion % when you are no longer selling all your clicks just after midnight though!!

So lower your bid price to 25-30 and monitor what happens. Worse case scenario is that you don't pick up many clicks, but if you have your 1700+ organised well I would have thought you'd do ok.
 
Sure, no problem at all Thalas. Yes, your calculations are correct. You must get at least 1 lead for every 7 clicks = 14% CR for you to BREAK EVEN (you will actually be at a $1 loss in this case) given that you pay about $2.50/click and each lead generates $16.50.

Just to be straight up with you, your profit generation model is simply not sustainable given the amount you are paying per click combined with your current CPA and landing page conversion rate. If you want any chance at surviving in ringtones, you would need to do the following:

1. Increase your landing page conversion rate. I don't know what your landing page looks like, but you can provide me a link via PM and I can help make some suggestions. If you are tracking at 3% right now, I would imagine that a disciplined approach to optimization could realistically get you into the high 3% to low 4% range. The main challenge with landing page optimization though is that it requires a substantial amount of traffic to be able to acquire enough data to make any reliable conclusions.

2. Assuming you have a carrier selection matrix on your landing page, you can optimize it for higher conversions + CPA. Ringtone partners (i.e. Blinko, Dada, Flycell, Thumbplay) will pay out certain CPAs and convert differently based on their individual levels of carrier support. Figure out what your options are in terms of access to different partners and do some research regarding their CPAs on a carrier basis.

3. Increase your ad CTR. This is going to require you to make a significant investment upfront to get into the higher positions to make this possible, but a higher CTR will allow you to enjoy lower CPCs as your campaign matures.

Honestly speaking though, I would strongly caution you in continuing with your campaign. It's getting harder and harder to make money these days with all the compliance regulations being imposed, not to mention the fierce competition that already exists out there. I was involved in ringtones not too long ago and enjoyed a much higher CPA than $16.50 and it was still difficult to make money. But if you decide to continue, best of luck to you. Just make sure you do your homework and fully understand what you are getting yourself into.

thalas said:
fluidc,

first of all thank you for your advices. Today, after 3 days I had one lead and your maths are exactly what I get, 3%.
You say that 25 clicks are not much but I was thinking even if I put more money to my daily budget then again 3% is only 3 leads every 100 clicks. To have a profitable campaign I must get at least 1 lead every ~7 clicks because I pay ~$2.5 per click and I profit $16.5 per lead. With your logic if my conversion rate is 3% then I must spend $250 to earn only $45.5. Maybe I didn't understand something you said, so please explain a bit more here.

thanks again
Click to expand...
 
Depends on your ad position, if you're too low, you'd get shitty clicks.

Use heatmaps to see your visitors behavior after they land on your page.

Also you can use analytics to check referer and destination and see if there's a fixed pattern over a couple of days.

i think most will be more focused on banking from their campaigns, rather than blowing up yours....
 
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