Anura PR Team
Click fraud now accounts for nearly 60% of the projected $100 billion total cost of ad fraud in 2023. With the competition in pay per click advertising heating up, some keywords have risen to record heights. This has created huge incentives for fraudsters to take advantage of the technology. As some click prices have risen well into the double-digits, the potential losses can be painful.
In this article, we’ll cover which industries are targeted by fraud most often, along with steps you can take to prevent it from affecting your ad campaigns.
The Most Common Targets for Click Fraud
Few industries are immune to the threat of click fraud, but some are more at risk than others. This is because some industries demand the use of keywords in their advertisements that are expensive. Each click could cost an advertiser upwards $50. The keyword “mortgage” is near the top of the list, for example.
Some sectors have recently seen huge increases. The health and medical sectors experienced a 53% increase in click fraud compared with 2019. The rise in demand for items such as vitamins, face masks, antibody tests, and other COVID-related items drove up click prices. This created a magnet for bad actors to take advantage of advertisers who were distracted just trying to keep up.
Related Blog: What is Click Fraud?
Top 7 Industries at Risk for Click Fraud
Education
The education industry has been one of the hardest hit in recent years, with a 31.14% click fraud rate in 2020.
Financial
With 18.73% click fraud rate in 2020, the financial industry continues to be a top target for bad actors seeking fast money.
Real Estate
The real estate industry is high stakes, and that’s reflected by the 17.19% rate of click fraud it suffered in 2020.
Legal
Some of the highest keyword click prices are in the legal industry, which accounts for its 16.54% rate of click fraud in 2020.
Health & Medical
As demand rises for products online, so do click prices, which is a large reason for the 16.39% rate of click fraud in 2020 in the health and medical industry.
Ecommerce
More people staying at home and ordering online means increased pay per click ad competition. This drove the rate of click fraud in 2020 to 13.72% in the ecommerce industry.
Travel
High-ticket sales mean high-priced clicks for ads online. This is just one factor for the 12.47% click fraud rate the travel industry saw in 2020.
Keep in mind, even when CPC rates are low, ads can still be targeted by click fraud. Botnets make it easy for fraudsters to skim small earnings on a massive scale to produce significant earnings. Because of this, it’s best to always be on the lookout for click fraud. What can you do to protect your ad campaign budget?
Block Invalid Clicks in Your Account
You can prevent manual and automated click fraud on PPC ads with machine learning combined with experienced developers. Anura delivers a solution that blocks ad fraud in real-time by analyzing hundreds of data points. One example is SmartFinancial, which has doubled in size in the past few years after integrating Anura’s ad fraud solution.
SmartFinancial attributes this rise to continually improving the quality of their online marketing campaigns year-over-year with Anura’s ad fraud solution. The company is now on track to service 10 million customers thanks to blocking click fraud.
Prevent Click Fraud Attacks 24/7
Anura is the best real-time solution for the challenges faced by companies dealing with ad fraud. Our solution catches 200-300% more ad fraud than the competition. See for yourself by requesting a free trial today.
