FAQs

PPC Assurance Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Why is this a PPC Assurance service, and not just another a "Click Fraud" product?
  2. Aren't all campaigns fine most or all of the time?
  3. Color coding of Click Information in the reports
  4. How can campaign violations be "acceptable" clicks?
  5. Why red clicks are called "Undesired" clicks?
  6. What to do about "Undesired" clicks?
  7. When to be concerned about the "Missing" clicks?
  8. How can you be sure that PPC Assurance's system is not just missing the clicks?
  9. How do you access my PPC Account info?
  10. How do you get permission to access my PPC account info?
  11. Does PPC Assurance access our regular interface to manage our accounts?
  1. Why is this a PPC Assurance service, and not just another a "Click Fraud" product?
    • We're not attempting to provide you with a Click Fraud detection service.
    • We're providing you with a service which monitors your campaigns, and verifies that they are executing faithfully to your campaign settings. Where variances occur, we report them. Where aberrations exist, we point them out. If aberrations occur, but you were likely not billed for them, we let you know. If you were likely billed for them, we let you know that as well, and we provide you a means to recoup your costs.
    • While we are not reporting any activity as being fraudulent; we will alert you to suspect behavior. We only report that you were fairly or unfairly billed for visits in accordance with your campaign settings.
    • We will release a true "Click Fraud" service using patent pending processes in the future.
  2. Aren't all campaigns fine most or all of the time?
    • We believe that your ad network provider acts in good faith and attempts to honor the terms and conditions of the contract with you. But we know that there are many instances where your campaign does not perform in accordance with the campaign parameters you configured. Often it is out of your provider's control. Therefore, the parameters you have specified and the traffic you have received may not match with the terms and conditions you and your ad network provider both agreed to.
    • We believe you need to know when this occurs. We do not believe these errors constitute "click fraud." We believe they represent mistakes or inadvertent inaccuracies. It should be possible for you to know when these occur and you should have a simple means to identify and resolve any dispute which may arrive.
    • It's possible that most days your campaigns are mostly or completely faithful to your campaign settings. But when variances do occur:
      • Do you know which days?
      • Do you know at a glance which clicks they are?
      • Do you know immediately when an issue arises, or only much later?
      • Do you know what to do when everything goes off track?
      • Do you know how to deal with resolving the issue with your ad network provider?
    • We do, and we're here to help you.
    • We know that things go awry. It happens, and you need to be able to deal with it. As a subscriber for our Fidelity Panel, or our Resolution reports, you'll have the means to resolve the issues, with one click of a button. It's that simple.
  3. Color coding of Click Information in the reports
    • PPC Assurance uses four colors to display the PPC data we collect from your site, these are: Green, Yellow, Red and Grey. Each of these colors has a different meaning; the ones of most concern are the Red and Grey clicks.
    • Green Clicks - Valid Clicks.
      The green clicks are those that PPC Assurance has determined to be valid clicks; that is, these clicks conform to your campaign parameters. PPC Assurance validity tests have determined that these clicks are not related with suspicious activity.
    • Yellow Clicks - Acceptable Clicks.
      The yellow clicks are ad click-throughs which do not conform to your campaign parameters, or whose click patterns suggest they should not have been billed due to suspicious activity. However, based on proprietary analysis combined with your ad network provider's billing statements, we have determined that it is likely you were not billed for these clicks. They are yellow to assist you in reconciling the various data you can obtain, but were previously lacking perspective.
    • Red Clicks - Undesired Clicks.
      The red clicks are those ad click-throughs that either do not conform to your campaign parameters, or whose click patterns suggest they should not have been billed due to suspicious activity. Most importantly, we have determined that it is likely you were billed for these clicks; you ought not to have been.
      • As you can see, red clicks and yellow clicks have similar definitions; the difference is it's likely you were billed for the red clicks but not for the yellow ones.
    • Grey Clicks - Unaccounted Clicks
      The grey clicks are unaccounted or "missing" clicks.
    • These missing clicks represent a discrepancy between the number of visitors we're able to report on and the number the ad network provider reports as having referred to your site; this difference is represented in your reports as the grey clicks.
    • There are several reasons for this discrepancy. These include: JavaScript being disabled; outages in your server; and click fraud. PPC Assurance strongly suggests you to read the white paper "Differences in Click Counts" where we go more in depth to explain this topic.
    • Regardless of the multiple reasons why some clicks are unaccounted for, PPC Assurance will inform you of its magnitude, so that you can be aware of the magnitude of the potential problem.
  4. How can campaign violations be "acceptable" clicks?
    • Your ad network provider, (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.), does not bill you for every single ad click they refer to your business. Some you get "for free." They recognize that some click fraud exists, and they monitor their click streams to attempt to prevent the fraudulent clicks from reaching your site.
    • Some of these fraudulent clicks do reach your site through their ads, but they attempt to filter them out from the billing process prior to finalizing your accounting for the campaign billing period. Your ad network provider may recognize these as "invalid clicks"
    • Therefore, while some of the clicks which arrive at your site clearly do not match your campaign parameters, if you have not been billed for them, they should be recognized as acceptable. If, however, too many clicks do not match your campaign parameters, then the PPC Assurance threshold for "acceptable" gets exceeded, and mathematically, some become "red" or "undesired"
  5. Why red clicks are called "Undesired" clicks?
    • We acknowledge that your ad network provider does not bill you for every click that they send through to your site. Some are termed Invalid clicks [http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/19457.html]. However, there are some click throughs from your ad network provider which do not match your campaign parameters and for which you have been billed. These are what we term "undesired" clicks.
    • When you configure your campaign, you are entering into a legal contract with your ad network provider to pay a defined amount of money in exchange for valid customer traffic along the terms and conditions you define; i.e. for certain keywords, from certain territories, during certain times or day, and the like. You are responsible to pay for any traffic which meets those terms and conditions. However, it is unacceptable for you to pay for traffic which does not match with the campaign parameters you set out.
    • If the number of clicks which violate your campaign parameters exceeds the number of "invalid" clicks for any given day, you definitely should not have been billed for the excess clicks. These are "undesired" clicks.
    • You did not desire them, and you should not pay for them.
  6. What to do about "Undesired" clicks?
    • We offer Resolution Report subscribers a means to automatically present very detailed information to help resolve disputes with your advertising network provider. These reports prepare all the information your ad network provider requires to quickly and transparently resolve billing issues in your campaigns.
    • Simply go to the "Resolution" tab on your screen, and select the campaign and period you wish to file a claim for. You'll see on Panel 4 (lower right) of your screen a selection to automatically populate all the click stream data we've collected into a form that your provider will require for settling your claim. You can select from the drop down menu a variety of options which allow you to file your claim.
  7. When to be concerned about the "Missing" clicks?
    • Missing clicks represent a discrepancy between the number of visitors we're able to report on and the number the ad network provider reports. We've captured data on 100% of the visitors who have arrived at your web site, with the exception of users who have JavaScript turned off.
    • It's normal that 4% - 5% of all clicks are "missing" due to the overall percentage of users across the Internet who have JavaScript turned off in their browser configuration (refer to our white paper on the subject. Your web site may not have exactly 4% or 5% as its norm. It might be slightly higher, or slightly lower. You should be concerned about anything in excess of the norm.
    • It is possible to discover the JavaScript disabled clicks by analyzing your web server logs. If you do have access to your logs, and would like us to examine them, please contact us, and we'll discuss this opportunity with you.
    • "Missing" clicks also occur when your ad network provider sends you a referral, and they do not arrive at your web site.
    • In measuring "missing clicks" one factor which we are able to monitor is whether or not the missing clicks occur as a result of an Internet wide issue. If the missing clicks were attributable to a general "outage" across the Internet, then all sites monitored would be affected. If an Internet "outage" were regional, it too would show up across our general network of web sites.
    • These are clicks you ought to be very concerned about. We do not mark them "red" because we can't report what they definitely are. We do not know where the fault lies, but we do know that these aberrations are a cause for concern, and are something which you should definitely monitor. Here's why:
      1. If your server is down
        • If your web server is down, you'll see a spike in missing clicks during the outage.
        • Your ad network provider is not responsible for your server outages, or connectivity issues you might face.
        • If you see repeated issues, you might be facing an unacceptable level of service from your hosting provider. If this is the case, you should seek to resolve this issue with your hosting provider.
      2. If your server was not down
        • If you are hosting your website with a strong and reputable hosting company, or are hosting it yourself, and are certain that your backbone network integrity is meeting the required service levels (e.g. 99.9%), then missing clicks should be a concern to you.
        • As mentioned earlier, it's acceptable to have 4% to 5% of clicks be "missing" due to Javascript being turned off. More than this may indicate an issue.
        • Over time, PPC Assurance establishes "normal" levels for your website and whenever variations occur. These variations may relate to potential click-fraud or billing issues.
        • These should be discussed with your ad network provider, as they do point to potentially serious issues.
      3. Botnets
        • A botnet could account for your missing clicks. Bots used by networks perpetrating fraudulent activity online trigger clicks on your ads, but once the hyperlink in the ad is clicked, the bot redirects itself to its next victim. It never arrived at your site, and thus could not be tracked by you or PPC Assurance.
        • To the advertising network, this activity may be completely invisible. The click in isolation may have appeared to be valid, and thus you may have been billed for it inadvertently.
        • However, this not only represents traffic which is unscrupulous machine traffic (it would never buy anything, nor consume any of the information you are sharing), but it never actually arrived at your web site.
        • Your ad network service provider is technically (and contractually) only responsible for directing customers who are interested in your services to your web site, in accordance with the terms and constraints you have configured. They are not responsible to see that it arrived at your site, only that the redirect was issued from their systems. However, a bot is not a potential customer.
        • If you notice spikes, or aberrations in your traffic patterns, (we monitor this for you also), and your server is not down, you need to pay attention to this issue. This likely signals a serious problem. You should discuss it with your ad network provider.
        • You might be helping them identify a new bot network, and resolving a potential problem for many other advertisers. Your ad network should welcome this information.
  8. How can you be sure that PPC Assurance's system is not just missing the clicks?
    • Many analytics and click fraud reporting firms' data integrity suffer from network outages, usually beyond their control. If the data never reaches the server compiling the data in order for it to process into the analytics reports, then the data is inaccurate, and so are the reports. If even one percent of data is missing, this can represent an important metric to your business.
    • If PPC Assurance is going to report on the faithfulness of your campaign's performance to the contract you entered into, then we needed to ensure we found a way to overcome this issue.
    • To deal with this issue we deployed our logging script across a massively distributed network. We hosting our logging script on hundreds and hundreds of server nodes spread around the world; if one node goes down, there's hundreds more which will still work properly. It's highly unlikely that your data got missed. It also means that the logging response times are in the 10-30ms range, extremely fast, an unheard of speed for on-line business data collection.
    • This is as good as it gets. With the exception of your web server logs, assuming that all referrer strings are tracked, and all extensions enabled, there is no better logging system out there. That's how we can be certain we're not just missing the clicks.
  9. How do you access my PPC Account info?
    • We access your account information through a programming interface (API) that allows us to query your data. The API does not give us the ability to change your campaigns.
  10. How do you get permission to access my PPC account info?
    • This permission is granted to PPC Assurance by your PPC Account administrator. By giving us permission they give us access the account through a programming interface. For Google, once you are signed up for PPC Assurance our system will request permission to access your Adwords data through a request sent to your Adwords Account. Once you grant us permission, PPC Assurance is able to begin the job of assuring your campaigns are correct.
  11. Does PPC Assurance access our regular interface to manage our accounts?
    • No. PPC Assurance does not modify your accounts in any way. This is left up to you to act on our instruction. This ensures that no inadvertent changes are made and that only you are able to control your account. For example, PPC Assurance pulls data from your Google Adwords account and correlates it with PPC Assurances own records. Your records are based on the information we collect through your implementation of the tracking codes on you web-site and the unique identification of your campaigns. Finally, PPC Assurance does not have a user ID nor a password to your Adwords account.