Click Through Advertising

Pay per click payment is based on click-throughs, while cost per click indicates measurement of cost on a per click basis for contracts not based on click-throughs. Click-through is the process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser’s destination and it is usually the most immediate response to an advertisement. Accurate counting of click-throughs involves excluding “robot clicks” and duplicate clicks and this becomes especially important when click-throughs are used as the measurement on which payment is based.

Click fraud exists in many forms including automated bots, competitors, and even lard click farms are rumored to exist in third world countries. All of these things has a common result of click traffic that advertisers have to pay for. Some motives behind click fraud include competitive fraud, affiliate or contextual fraud, and impression fraud. Competitive fraud is when a competing advertiser seeks to remove a competitor by endlessly clicking on the competitors search terms. Affiliate fraud is when a website owner might arrange for a lot of clicks on site ads in order to increase revenue from the content listings because they are paid per click. And impression fraud is when searches are done repeatedly on a term but no clicks are registered. This in turn drives down the click through rate for the paid search listing and can lead to disabling the search term due to low click through rates.

When making click-through ads choosing the right keywords can be crucial to getting your ad seen while keeping in mind that it is extremely easy to blow a budget on poorly targeted words. When making a click through ad the target market is a key component to keep in mind because international visibility of the web differs dramatically from country to country and therefore click through rates differ dramatically between regions.