The Internet Marketing Video Cheat Sheet is a special project launched by SEOnews and eLama. As part of the project, we share life hacks and techniques that will help make online promotion more effective.
In the new video, Nikita Kravchenko, a leading paid traffic specialist at eLama, and Zhenya from the Care Service, talk about ad clicks, how to recognize and protect them.
What is click
Clicks are empty ad clicks that were made by mistake or with malicious intent by a program or person. Clicks can be used to exclude a competitor from the struggle in the auction, winding him up with ad clicks and spending his budget.
You need to be able to distinguish between clicks and natural organic increases in impressions and clicks, because a spike in clicks can be due to changes in campaign setup or social issues.
In order to correctly understand what we have in front of us – a click or a regular splash, you need to refer to the Report Wizard in Yandex.Direct. The main indicators for us are the number of clicks, impressions and CTR.
To view the data, you need to build a report on ads or key phrases. You can also build a report on sites, in case you want to check if you are being clicked in YAN.
How to tell a click from a splash
If there is an increase in the number of impressions and clicks on a large number of sites without a sharp jump in CTR, the fact of clicks can be excluded.
When you click, the number of impressions, clicks and CTR increases dramatically.
Most often, clicking occurs through the use of specialized robotic programs. Clicking ads by a person is a very time-consuming method, since the search results are personalized, it is difficult to catch the same ad.
How advertisers can protect themselves from clicks
There is no universal tool that would help eliminate clicks. To protect yourself, you need to carry out complex, systematic work, regularly analyze advertising campaigns.
A few tips on how to avoid clicks
1. Use your daily budget
Daily budget limits set additional limits, help prevent situations where your entire budget clicks in a short period of time and excludes you from the competition for several days.
2. Use a segment from Audiences
You can use segments from Yandex. Audience – these are any audiences you have already collected that are of high quality. By using them in your targeting settings, you avoid showing up to unwanted users.
3. Use a bid manager
You can use bid managers that allow you to keep bids at a certain level and decrease or increase them in case of a change in the competitive situation at the auction.
4. Test automatic bidding strategies
Automated strategies are based on machine learning. They target the audience in such a way that people get there who are more likely to click on the ad and achieve the goal you set. The system will exclude the possibility of showing to users who can click many times and not complete the conversion.
5. Exclude the segment of users under the age of 18
It is necessary to cut off all possible unnecessary types of audiences: insolvent users, irrelevant. The more frames you set, the higher the chances that your ad won’t click.
6. Create a cohort adjustment in Metric
In Metrica, you can create a segment by cohort of users with less than 10 seconds of time on the site and more than one visit. That is, you need to exclude the display of ads to users who have visited the site more than 1 time and spent less than 10 seconds on it, since fraud bots usually enter the site and leave immediately.
7. Track statistics on the web server
It is also necessary to track the statistics of visits for your web server. If we enable monitoring of web server logs, then we can estimate peak values per visit. Because the click, if it happens, happens in the peak format. Bursts can be detected already at the logging stage and promptly make adjustments to advertising campaigns and stop them.
8. Set a daily budget for ad groups and keywords
You can set a daily budget for ad groups and keywords. There are no such settings in the Direct interface, but when using the Direct API, you can write a script that will allow you to set daily budget limits for keys and ad groups.
9. Don’t use auto-targeting
Auto targeting is a useful tool for companies with a narrow topic, for which it is difficult to choose semantics and reach the end user. However, for most businesses, additional phrases that cannot be controlled can lead to budget spending.
If you know your audience and know how to choose semantics for your product offer, you shouldn’t use auto-targeting.
10. Disable advanced geo targeting
This additional restriction will help prevent the ingress of irrelevant traffic from other regions.
11. Do not set rates that have a large margin in front of the required issue position
For example, if your bid of 100 rubles is sufficient to be shown with a traffic volume of 100, and meets your task, it is not recommended to set a bid of 150-170 rubles. It is better to place the bet close to the position occupied in order to avoid additional costs.
12. Do not determine the fact of clicks through Webvisor
Webvisor is a tool that aims to measure and determine the behavioral characteristics of a user on a website. It includes a set of statistics that are inappropriate for determining clicks.
What to do if you are sure to click
If you have checked all the reports and are sure of clicks, you can contact Yandex.Direct support or the agency that runs your advertisement. You will need to provide a link to the ad that you are clicked on and a link to reports that prove the click.
If the fact of clicks is established, Yandex will reimburse all invalid expenses.