PPC IndustryBrains.com

[Mort]

Has anyone dealt with ww*.IndustryBrains.com? They outsource their PPC listings to web sites that target a technology-savvy audience (PC Magazine, Mac World, etc.).

I recently launched a campaign with them and it appears there may be some fraudulent clicking going on...

[ihelpyou]

Since all PPC search engines have some fraud, it's not surprising a PPC who is small and little known has fraud. Fraud is the cost of doing business with Any PPC search engine. This includes Overture and AdWords as well.

I can do a search on any PPC I wish and click on any listing I wish, and do so on purpose with no intention of buying anything on the site. That's fraud. You simply have to consider these types of clicks into your budget.

You are always better off to do business with PPC's you know a little about. Or research them real well first before coughing up your money to them.

[sri_gan]

Any PPC will suffer with that problem.

I'm considering yourself in the position of a client.

1. Do a research before you go into a campaign.

2. Look for how they capture frauds, lot of engines have their own views.

3. In your case it talks abouts network promotion in this website, Give a try to their website and see if they could really match for your campaign.

4. Not but least check your conversion ratio.

[Mort]

An update: IndustryBrains acknowledged one of their clients had been generating an 'unusual' amount of clicks. The spike in clicks only lasted for about 48 hours and have since returned to normalcy.

The result: They credited the account $25.

I'm giving the campaign a couple of months. If not proving to be effective, I'm moving on.

[MJR]

First: IMO Industry Brains is very reputable and try VERY hard to provide a "clean" service. :)

It is important to note that you ONLY find fraud on PPC's that use affiliates. There are still a few that do NOT use affiliates and thus run their results *pure*. Keep in mind the name of the game is ROI and getting caught up with a few of these less than *honorable* PPC's can put a huge dent in your ROI :)

[Mort]

The sad thing I have encountered with PPCs (IB.com included): if fraud is occuring, they will not bring it to your attention. You're on your own to police your own campaign. I know people will argue that PPC's have hundreds or thousands of clients and they can't possibly monitor each one. I disagree.

You'd think they'd have some sort of code programmed into their software that would create some kind of "Fraud Alert" flag when something fishy occurs.

And it's not limited to 2nd and 3rd Tier. In recent memory, I've had issues with IndustryBrains, ah-ha and Google. But on their behalf, each one of them addressed my complaint and provided a credit -- some cases taking much longer than others.