Click Fraud and Your Online Marketing Investments

Many wedding vendors are focusing more and more of their marketing dollars on online advertising; however, thanks in large part to click fraud, that advertising is likely much costlier than it appears.

Click fraud refers to clicks that are purposefully generated by people who aren't valid prospects -- most likely competitors. Competitors click on your links for reasons that can be very sinister (to run up your click bill, or use up your click budget) or somewhat less so (wanting to check out your site and not considering that you're paying for click that got them there).

Some experts estimate that as many as 50% of paid clicks could be fraudulent -- meaning that half the clicks you pay for are useless to you. Add to this repeat visits from the same user, accidental clicks by people unsure what they're looking for, and curious browsers, and it's likely that only 25-35% of the clicks you've paid for are actual shoppers for your service. And that means that the actual cost per valid click you're paying could be 3-4 times the CPC you've contracted.

This article from today's New York Times provides an interesting look at how some of the biggest advertisers in the world are coping with this problem (as well as how it is impacting Google, Yahoo! and others who sell cost-per-click advertising as their main revenue source).

I also discussed this issue in my recent white paper on the risks of "online only" marketing programs for wedding professionals.