Are you using your click fraud prevention software the right way?

Click fraud can be a frustrating and costly issue. There are many solutions on the market, including ClickCease. Are you using on of the fraudulent click reduction programs but are you still seeing traffic from locations outside your targeted areas ? This has to do with a common misconception on how click fraud software actually works. 

The real reasons why ‘wrong’ traffic still shows up. 

Google Ads, Bing Ads and Facebook ads have two standard options for geotargeting. The first is “presence or interest”, which is not very useful for most advertisers outside the tourism industry and the second is “presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations”. Note that there is no option to show ads just to people connected to an IP address that is located in a certain geo.

For example, if someone lives in Phoenix, works at a big semiconductor plant and travels to Taiwan for training, Google Ads / Facebook Ads will target this person even when they are traveling outside your targeted area of Phoenix. Once this person clicks, the IP address will show as Taiwan. 

But, hey, wait, don’t I have ClickCease for that to prevent that ? Yes and no. As the click is in line with your targeting setting, it is technically not a fraudulent click. If you have country blocking / whitelisting on, ClickCease will add the IP to an exclusion list and block it from subsequent visits / ad shows. See the simple diagram below.