Amazon Click Fraud: A Detailed Guide to Prevent Wasted Ad Budget

Amazon click fraud is an emerging risk to PPC advertisements. To thrive in a highly competitive Amazon marketplace, some unfair players induce false clicks on their competitors’ Amazon ads, leading them to lose out on their ad budget without generating any leads or sales.

As Amazon becomes overcrowded and sellers’ dependence on Amazon PPC ads grows, taking measures against click fraud becomes increasingly difficult. Thus understanding Amazon click fraud thoroughly is your preliminary step to protect your ad campaign against malicious attacks.

And that’s exactly what we are about to do here as we take you through the mechanics of click fraud and the actionable strategies to detect and protect your ad budget against it.

Quick Guide:

What is an Amazon click fraud?

How does Amazon click fraud affect the overall performance of the business?

How Amazon click fraud works

How to take action against Amazon click fraud?

Final thoughts

What is an Amazon click fraud?

Amazon click fraud is the term given to the act of generating false clicks on certain Amazon PPC ads.

It is intended to be carried out via manual effort, bots, and other means without a genuine interest in purchase (we will elaborate on this in later segments). The objective is to solely exhaust the budget of the business by increasing traffic with no possible chances of return from it.

How does Amazon click fraud affect the overall performance of the business?

Amazon click fraud can affect your business in several ways. It can manifest as:

Wasted ad spend

The most prominent impact of click fraud is the draining of a campaign’s ad budget. That is quite obvious. Each Amazon ppc click fraud results in a budget that is increasingly drained without the possibility of engagement or sales.

For mid to large-scale businesses it is possible to dedicate a part of their budget to this possible ad waste.

However, small-scale businesses trying to thrive on Amazon relying on PPC ads are hands down the most affected due to click fraud. They usually come with a limited marketing budget and Amazon click fraud reduces the running time of their ad, cuts down on their audience reach, and thus the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

Inaccurate/ distorted metrics

PPC campaigns gather data which is essential to design future campaigns, optimize pre-existing campaigns, and even inform the success of these marketing strategies.

Unfortunately, when there are fraudulent clicks, the data on the search term reports and other advertising reports becomes extremely inaccurate, decreasing its relevance.

For instance, your conversion rates are based on the number of reported clicks. When Amazon ppc click frauds inflate this number, the resulting conversion rate becomes misleading. Relying on such skewed data for optimization can backfire—for example, you might pause a campaign with stellar targets that could have performed well if not for the manipulated data.

Disrupted ROAS

It’s quite obvious that click fraud Amazon flares up the ad spend, with no scope for return. As a result of this, the ROAS falls quickly. So in cases where you find the ROAS being suspiciously down, and the ACOS spikes, you can conclude that the campaign is possibly facing malicious clicks.

Imagine an Amazon seller expecting $16,000 in revenue from PPC advertising, only to discover a dramatic shortfall of $3,500 garnering only $12,500. If marketers are finding an unexpected dip without a proper explanation, it may be a clear indication of Amazon click fraud.

Stunted growth

All of this miscalculated data and increase in ACOS can result in a completely incorrect perception of campaign performance eventually leading to missed opportunities.

With the lack of accuracy in data, businesses find it extremely challenging to anticipate correct performance results.

Moreover, it majorly affects the data and ad performance metrics that can be valuable insights regarding a campaign’s success. This is how Amazon click fraud diverts from being a strategic advantage and becomes a liability to sellers choosing PPC campaigns over other advertising strategies.

How Amazon click fraud works

Amazon click fraud can work in two major ways— it is either bot-induced or manual.

Click bot-induced fraud is widely used by cybercriminals. These bots are programmed with such sophistication that it makes it difficult to detect in case of any fraudulent activity. These bots click on your ads repeatedly flaring up the advertisement cost. They are advanced enough to implement rotating IP addresses through VPNs or proxies.

Another type of bot-induced Amazon ppc click fraud is carried out via Botnets. Botnets are networks of infected devices that are manipulated by cybercriminals to prompt repeated clicks. They are capable of generating fraudulent clicks simultaneously across multiple ads.

Click fraud can also be executed manually to affect a competitor’s budget by exhausting it through repeated (intentional) clicks. Manual manipulation often stems from the intense competition among sellers who are constantly trying to one-up each other.

Click farm is another method of manual click fraud. This involves groups of individuals employed by cybercriminals to click on ads in bulk. This tactic is particularly challenging to detect as it closely mimics genuine interest leading to further difficulty in tackling it effectively.

Identifying Fraudulent Clicks

Identifying and differentiating between fraudulent and genuine clicks is the first step toward preventing Amazon click fraud. Let’s take a deep dive to understand it better.

If you come across an unusually high click count from a particular IP address or geolocation, there is a high probability that the activity is induced by an Amazon click fraud. The only way of clarifying the origin and explaining this suspicious surge of clicks is by going into the depths of it and cross-referencing this data with other metrics (such as CTR, turnover rate, ROI.)

For example, if you’re a US-based seller and you notice a spike in clicks from Indonesia, this may indicate that the click is not coming from a genuine source.

High click count without significant conversion (a sudden drop in conversion rate) can point towards a similar Amazon click fraud activity. When the difference between click-through rate and conversion rate just doesn’t match up, we suggest you check the likelihood of fraud.

However, Amazon comes with certain advanced solutions that hinder click fraud attacks with ease using its SLIDR (SLIce-Level Detection of Robots) system. Amazon has been practicing this usage of deep neural networks to detect Amazon ppc click fraud in real-time since 2021. So sellers are protected against invalid clicks to a great extent.

The system considers several labeling systems such as the Invalid Click Rate (IVR), False Positive Rate (FPR), and robotic coverage to evaluate the legitimacy of these clicks. While IVR takes into account the number of ad clicks that are nullified, FPR makes sure that the number of genuine clicks that lead to conversion are not nullified, or flagged in the process.

SLIDR is capable of rapidly adapting to changing bot behavior and traffic patterns which makes it a trailblazing discovery in protecting Amazon’s platform integrity.

Smart strategies to prevent Amazon click fraud

Now that you understand how Amazon click fraud targets PPC campaigns, it’s time to explore strategies to prevent it from occurring in the future.

Monitoring Amazon click fraud possibilities

Before we get into the core strategies to prevent Amazon click fraud, we’d like to shed some light on the importance of monitoring your campaigns regularly for their utmost effectiveness.

We suggest you:

Constantly view your PPC reports to stay on top of campaign data. This can help you quickly identify suspicious patterns. This way, you can take action as fast as possible and save your campaign budget.

Find a pattern if you notice any unusual activity. For example, a spike in CTR when noticed with a low conversion rate, can easily indicate an Amazon click fraud.

We can go on and on about the importance of monitoring for fraud detection. Keeping a keen eye on the typing speed, cursor movement, click speed, and intervals will give you a clearer picture of the legitimacy of these clicks. Deviation from these may pinpoint suspicious behavior, which may call for further authentication.

All of these efforts may fall short without an ideal reporting solution.

Try our SellerApp reporting solution for an in-depth account performance analysis with simple and visualized reports.

Schedule a demo for free from here to learn more about our customized services. You simply need to connect your Amazon Seller Central account with the SellerApp dashboard and you’re one step closer to fighting Amazon seller ppc click fraud.

Now, coming to the strategies,

Leverage IP exclusion

Dealing with fraud clicks can be frustrating but setting up IP exclusions can mitigate the chances of Amazon click-fraud to some extent.

IP exclusions are extremely effective as they block all malicious IP addresses as soon as it detects these empty clicks. This requires some effort from the campaign manager’s end to monitor the campaign data and to keep updating the exclusion list.

We’ve already mentioned how to identify them; all you have to do is to keep a constant vigil to block them out.

We also suggest you check out a few tools that can help in handling click fraud detection and IP exclusions like ClickCease, TrafficGuard, PPC Protect, ClickGUARD, AdWATCHER, etc

Use Amazon click fraud detection tools

These real-time click-monitoring tools help in fraud detection by working perpetually at the back end. They use advanced algorithms to detect suspicious clicks and suppress them immediately.

Make sure the tools you select for fraud detection allow real-time monitoring, deliver elaborate reports to foster transparency, and include customization to detect Amazon click fraud with specific criteria.

Add geotargeting for advanced targeting

If you can limit your ad display to the regions with the majority of your target audience, you can avoid generating clicks from irrelevant sources. It can be beneficial in 2 ways:

It channels targeted ad campaigns cutting down wasted ad spending

It helps campaigns escape the chances of garnering clicks from sketchy sources.

This excellent strategy called Geotargeting is an effective measure to eliminate chances of click fraud. If you dive deep into your campaign reports, you’ll be able to chalk out a pattern between regions and clicks with no conversion.

But be careful while determining strategies for geotargeting as miscalculations may decrease your reach towards potential customers.

For best results combine all the above strategies— IP exclusion and geotargeting can be a staunch response to Amazon seller PPC click fraud, while automated IP exclusion tools can be appropriate for you if you have the budget to afford it. This is how you can strategically decrease the threat of click fraud attacks and minimize ad spending.

Turning the table: How to take action against Amazon click fraud?

Amazon click fraud is a major challenge plaguing Amazon PPC campaigns almost taking away from its value in the marketplace. Think of all the drained ad budget and wasted time, you would not want to let it go without taking action against it, right?

Here are some of the steps you can take to take immediate action against Amazon click fraud:

Immediate reporting to Amazon

Immediate action can be rewarding in this case. Amazon Ads support team is usually pretty agile; when it is reported early it is the most effective. Head over to the Ads help page to begin the process. As you promptly take action against Amazon seller ppc click fraud, you take one step forward in creating a safer place for the Amazon seller community.

Take a legal step against fraudsters

Oftentimes, sellers overlook the possibility of taking a legal step to avoid possible legal turmoil and avoid added expenses. However, if you feel committed to creating an exception and walking the extra mile further for a greater cause, professional assistance is the way to initiate the journey.

Lawyers specializing in cybercrime or advertising law can help you with it. Once the lawsuit is filed, it does more than safeguard your business— it sends across a strong message of intolerance creating a safer cyberspace for Amazon sellers.

Final thoughts

The heightened competition in the Amazon PPC advertisement landscape has made the situation pretty cut-throat. In defense of that, sellers have resorted to pulling each other down by disrupting the opponent’s campaign performance.

A constant vigil, correct usage of tools and support mentioned, and considering geotargeting strategies can be effective in curbing Amazon PPC click fraud and ensuring a steady growth with maximum returns.

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