Fake traffic is a big concern for online businesses and affiliate marketers. As online advertising continues to grow, so does the prevalence of fraudulent activities that can drain marketing budgets and mess up data, leading to failing campaigns and lost revenue.
This article will take a deep dive into the issue of fake traffic, exploring its various forms, the challenges it presents, and effective strategies to identify and combat it.
Understanding fake traffic
Fake traffic refers to visits to websites and marketing campaigns that are not made by real people. Instead, they come from automated programs or deceptive practices. There are a few different sources of fake traffic:
- Bots and automated scripts: These are computer programs that act like humans, clicking on ads, filling out forms, or interacting with content.
- Click farms: These are organizations that pay people very little to manually click on ads or engage with content to make it seem like there's more traffic and interaction than there actually is.
- Ad fraud: This involves using fake websites, hidden ads, or fraudulent clicks to make money from advertisers without providing any real value.
Scammers use these deceptive methods to make it seem like there's more traffic and engagement than there actually is. This can mess up analytics and online metrics.
There are a few reasons why fake traffic has become a bigger problem. Technology has become more advanced, making it easier to create bots. Tools to create these bots are more accessible, and there are financial incentives for engaging in fraudulent activities. Generative AI, like ChatGPT, has made it even easier for people with limited technical knowledge to create convincing bots. These factors have contributed to the increase in fake traffic.
It's important to note that not all non-human traffic is bad. Some automated traffic, like search engine crawlers, serve important functions for indexing websites and improving search engine results. These crawlers help search engines understand and categorize web content, which benefits businesses by making them more visible in search results. Marketers need to find a balance between implementing security measures to combat fake traffic while still providing a good experience for real visitors.
Popular cases of fake traffic operations
There are thousands of click farms out there, especially in Tier-3 countries, however, stories of raids are extremely rare. There are very few stories of click farm raids, the most exceptional one was the one in 2016 when the ad fraud scheme operators under the name “Methbot” were raided and caught. These fraudsters led by Aleksandr Zhukov “King of Fraud” used to make up to $5 million per day by faking 300 million video views daily.
Here is the story that was reported by Forbes:
“A group of Russian criminals are making between $3 million and $5 million every day in a brazen attack on the advertising market, security firm White Ops. It's the biggest digital ad fraud ever uncovered and perpetrated by faking clicks on video ads, the company said.
The crew, which White Ops dubbed Ad Fraud Komanda or "AFK13", planned their machinations in meticulous detail. First, they created more than 6,000 domains and 250,267 distinct URLs within those that appeared to belong to real big-name publishers, from ESPN to Vogue. But all that could be hosted on the page was a video ad.
With faked domain registrations, they were able to trick algorithms that decided where the most profitable ads would go into buying their fraudulent web space. Those algorithms typically make bids for ad space most suitable for the advertisement's intended audience, with the auction complete in milliseconds. But AFK13 were able to game the system so their space was purchased over big-name brands.
AFK13 then invested heavily in a bot farm, taking up space in data centers so they could fire faked traffic from more than 570,000 bots at those ads, thereby driving revenue thanks to the pay per click system they exploited. As part of what White Ops called the Methbot campaign, those bots "watched" as many as 300 million video ads a day, with an average payout of $13.04 per thousand faked views. And the fraudsters had their bot army replicate the actions of real people, with faked clicks, mouse movements and social network login information.”
Another example of fake online activity is the sale of fake likes and followers. In Russia, there was a vending machine at a mall that offered likes and clicks on social media posts for a small fee. For just 50 Rubles (around $0.89), you could get likes, and for $1.77, you could get 100 followers.
Are click farms illegal?
Now, let's talk about the legality of click farms. In general, click farms are not illegal because they provide services that are technically legitimate. Most of the work done in click farms is quite simple, such as clicking likes on social media posts, copying and pasting comments, following social profiles, and sharing posts. Even though these actions may not be well-regarded, they are currently legal.
There was a well-known case in Thailand where a click farm was busted by the police. The authorities discovered thousands of phones connected together. However, the people running the click farm were not charged for operating a click farm. Instead, they were arrested for immigration violations, smuggling phones, and using unregistered SIM cards, which are illegal activities.
The challenges of fake traffic
Fake traffic presents several challenges for businesses and affiliate marketers:
1. Wasted ad spend:
The presence of fake traffic means that advertising budgets are being spent on reaching fake users or bots instead of real potential customers. Even a small percentage of ad spend directed towards fake traffic can result in a significant waste of resources, especially in large-scale advertising campaigns. This wasted ad spend could have been better utilized to reach genuine customers who have a real interest in the products or services being offered.
Additionally, fake traffic reduces the opportunities for conversions, as the budget is consumed by fraudulent clicks or visits instead of engaging with legitimate users. This not only leads to immediate revenue losses but also hampers long-term business growth and profitability.
2. Skewed data and analytics
Fake traffic messes up the data and metrics that businesses use to understand how well their websites and campaigns are doing. This makes it hard to make informed decisions based on that data. For example, in affiliate marketing, which relies on data to optimize strategies, fake traffic can give false information about user behavior and preferences.
Let's say a website gets a lot of visits from mobile devices. The marketing team might think it's important to focus on making the website work well on mobile and spend resources on that. But if a big part of that mobile traffic is actually coming from bots, then the team is wasting their time and money on something that doesn't matter to real customers.
Fake traffic can also make businesses draw wrong conclusions about how well their marketing campaigns are working, which products are popular, or how engaged their target audience is. Making decisions based on wrong data can have serious consequences, leading businesses in the wrong direction and making it hard for them to make good choices.
3. Poor campaign performance
Fake traffic can dilute the results of targeted campaigns, leading to lower engagement rates and reduced return on investment (ROI). When a large portion of traffic is generated by bots or fraudulent sources, it ruins the performance of carefully planned marketing strategies.
For example, if an affiliate runs a campaign where they send targeted emails to a specific group of customers, fake traffic can inflate the open and click-through rates, giving a false sense of success. However, these inflated metrics do not translate into meaningful engagement or conversions. As a result, the campaign's true performance is masked, and the ROI is poor.
Fake traffic also messes up experiments meant to make campaigns better. When a lot of the traffic is fake, it throws off the results of those experiments. It makes it hard to figure out what changes will make a difference and get good results. This can lead to wasting money on things that don't help and missing chances to improve how ads work.
4. Losing trust and credibility
One of the major consequences of fake traffic for affiliates is the loss of trust and credibility from affiliate networks and advertisers. When affiliates intentionally or unintentionally drive fake traffic to the websites of the companies they promote, it undermines the trust in their campaigns and raises concerns about their marketing practices. Affiliate networks and advertisers depend on affiliates to bring in real, valuable traffic that has the potential to turn into customers. If it is discovered that an affiliate's traffic is mostly fake, it can significantly harm their reputation and put their partnerships with affiliate networks and advertisers at risk.
Identifying fake traffic
To tackle fake traffic, it's important to be able to recognize when it's happening. Here are some methods you can use to identify fraudulent traffic:
- Analyze traffic patterns: Keep an eye out for sudden spikes in traffic, unusually high bounce rates (when visitors leave the website quickly without engaging), or abnormal user behavior that doesn't match typical patterns of user engagement.
- Monitor click-through rates (CTR): Pay attention to the CTRs, especially if you notice abnormally high rates coming from specific sources or geographical locations. This could be a sign of click fraud, where fake clicks are generated to inflate traffic numbers.
- Investigate referral sources: Take a closer look at the websites and domains that are referring traffic to your site. Look out for suspicious or low-quality sources that may be responsible for generating fake traffic.
- Use fraud detection tools: Consider implementing specialized software or services designed to detect and filter out fraudulent traffic in real-time. These tools can help identify patterns and indicators of fake traffic, allowing you to take appropriate measures to mitigate its impact.
Strategies and tools for affiliates to combat fake traffic
To effectively combat fake traffic and protect their campaigns, affiliates need to adopt a proactive and multi-faceted approach. Here are four key strategies and tools affiliates can leverage:
- Put in place the right procedures to validate website traffic
Affiliates should carefully examine the sources of their website traffic and use techniques to identify and filter out fraudulent activities. They should regularly monitor their traffic sources and analyze important metrics like bounce rates, time spent on the site, and conversion rates. Unusually high bounce rates, short session durations, or suspiciously low conversion rates might indicate fake traffic. By closely monitoring these metrics, affiliates can quickly identify patterns that deviate from genuine user behavior.
Pay attention to the CTRs, especially if you notice abnormally high rates coming from specific sources or geos. This could be a sign of click fraud, where fake clicks are generated to inflate traffic numbers.
Affiliates can take advantage of tools and technologies specifically designed to detect and prevent fake traffic. These tools often use advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to identify suspicious traffic patterns and block fraudulent activities in real-time.
By implementing traffic validation solutions, affiliates can significantly reduce the impact of fake traffic on their marketing campaigns and ensure that their promotional efforts reach real audiences.
- Be open and honest with affiliate networks and advertisers
Being open and maintaining good communication with affiliate networks and advertisers is very important when dealing with fake traffic. Affiliates should actively talk to these networks and advertisers and let them know about their traffic sources, promotional strategies, and any suspicious activity they come across.
By having clear lines of communication, affiliates can work together with affiliate networks and advertisers to quickly find and fix fake traffic issues. These networks and advertisers often have advanced systems to detect fraud and can give valuable advice on the quality of an affiliate's traffic. Sharing data and insights with them can help affiliates improve their strategies and take action when needed.
Moreover, being transparent about their marketing practices and commitment to genuine traffic can help affiliates build trust and credibility with affiliate networks and advertisers. Showing that they actively fight fake traffic can set them apart from those who engage in fraudulent activities. This strengthens their relationships with networks and advertisers and creates new partnership opportunities.
All reputable affiliate networks often have strict policies and guidelines in place to maintain the integrity of their networks. They may require affiliates to adhere to specific traffic quality standards and may terminate partnerships with affiliates found to be driving fake traffic. By aligning themselves with trustworthy platforms, affiliates can demonstrate their commitment to ethical marketing practices and mitigate the risks associated with fake traffic.
- Continuously monitor and analyze traffic patterns
Keep a close watch on your website's traffic patterns and analyze them regularly to stay ahead of evolving fake traffic tactics. Fraudsters are always finding new ways to avoid detection, so it's essential for affiliates to be proactive in monitoring their traffic.
By regularly examining your traffic data and looking for any unusual activity, you can spot potential sources of fake traffic early on. Look at metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and user behavior across different traffic sources, devices, and locations. If you notice any outliers or suspicious patterns, take immediate action to investigate and address the fake traffic.
Stay updated on the latest trends and techniques used by fraudsters. Engage in affiliate marketing forums, attend conferences, and keep yourself informed about emerging threats. By continuously educating yourself and adapting your strategies, you can protect your campaigns and ensure your revenue streams are not compromised.
- Work with reputable advertising networks
Partnering with reputable ad networks can provide affiliates with an additional layer of protection against fake traffic. The major ad platforms, Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Tiktok Ads usually have clean traffic. Other well established ad networks often have stringent quality control measures in place to detect and prevent fraudulent activities within their ecosystems.
Ad networks like MyBid, for example, go a step further by using advanced fraud detection systems and dedicated teams to monitor traffic quality and investigate any suspicious activities. They have a higher level of control over the websites they use to collect traffic, as they own a majority of these websites rather than relying on a broad list of publishers which may include some fraudulent webmasters that generate fake clicks to increase their ad revenue
By working with reputable networks, affiliates can benefit from their expertise and resources in combating fake traffic. These networks can help affiliates identify fraudulent traffic sources by sharing with them the necessary data, including blacklists and whitelists of high-quality sites to target.
Q&A with Maor Aharoni, Product Marketing Lead at CHEQ
Q: What is fake traffic and why is it a problem for affiliate marketers and business owners?
A: Great question! Fake traffic is essentially all those non-human visits to your website or landing pages from bots, scrapers, fraudsters, and other automated tools. It's a huge issue because it makes up around 40% of global online traffic.
Now, why should affiliate marketers and business owners care? Well, first off, it's burning your ad budget on non-humans who will never convert. Our research at CHEQ found $142 billion in lost revenue and $35 billion down the drain on fake traffic in 2022 alone. That's money you could've spent acquiring real customers!
It also messes with your data, so you end up making decisions based on inflated metrics from bot traffic instead of actual human behavior. Plus, fake traffic can slow your site to a crawl during attacks, ruining the experience for your real users. All in all, it's a major threat most businesses don't take seriously enough.
Q: How can affiliates protect their systems and data from the risks of fake traffic?
A: This is an important question, because affiliates are definitely not immune to the risks of fake traffic. In fact, affiliates can be a prime target for fraudsters looking to exploit commission structures.
The key strategies for affiliates are really similar to what I recommend for businesses in general. First and foremost, you need robust bot mitigation on your affiliate landing pages and forms. This will help prevent bots from submitting fake leads or clicking on your affiliate links.
Secondly, use data validation and email verification on your lead capture forms. This can help filter out a lot of the junk data that bots or fraudsters might try to submit.
Thirdly, keep a very close eye on your traffic sources and patterns. If you see any sudden spikes in traffic or leads from a particular source, or if the quality of leads from a certain channel drops off a cliff, those could be red flags for fraud.
Lastly, work with your advertiser partners to share data and insights. The more transparently you can collaborate on identifying and mitigating fraud, the better off you'll both be.
At the end of the day, fake traffic is a complex and evolving threat. But by staying vigilant, using the right tools, and working collaboratively with partners, affiliates can go a long way in protecting their businesses from its impacts.
Q: What four-part strategy did you recommend for dealing with fake traffic?
A: To get marketing and security on the same page, we advise a four-pronged approach:
- Defend your paid acquisition from click fraud with monitoring tools that fit your scale
- Lock down your sites with frictionless bot mitigation that won't block real users
- Shield your systems from fake leads (more on that in a sec)
- Scrub your analytics data of fake traffic so you can make smarter decisions
The key is picking solutions that give you deep insights into the fake traffic, so you know exactly what you're up against.
Q: How can advertisers protect their systems and data from the risks of fake leads?
A: Fake leads are a huge pain, but you can fight back with a multi-step strategy:
- Start with basic email validation to weed out bogus lead emails
- Add smooth bot mitigation to your forms and high-value pages
- Bring in CAPTCHA when you need a stronger human check, but watch out for friction
- Validate form fields like phone numbers and addresses to spot fakes
The time and money you save from blocking fake lead onslaughts makes these measures totally worthwhile. Just be sure you're not creating too many hoops for your real leads to jump through.
The bottom line is, fake traffic and leads are costing businesses bigtime, and the threats go way beyond marketing. By taking a holistic approach and carefully choosing your weapons, you can defend your business without sacrificing user experience. Trust me, this problem is way too massive to ignore - the data doesn't lie!
Conclusion
Fake traffic is a big problem in digital marketing. It can waste your ad budget and make it hard to tell if your campaigns are really working. To protect your business, you need to learn how to identify it first. Then, you can take steps to fight back and make sure your campaigns are reaching real audiences.
At the end of the day, beating fake traffic takes a hands-on approach that covers all the bases. By using the right mix of strategies and tools, and by staying alert, you can handle the tricky parts of digital marketing with confidence. This will help make sure your campaigns connect with actual customers and deliver results that grow your business for the long haul.
