With 8.5 billion daily search queries, Google has developed as a central tool for marketers so that they can get in touch with a huge audience worldwide. The persistent trend to use paid advertisements for advertising triggers many threats, including ad fraud.
And here the importance of the IP address comes into play. It is often the first strategy for many advertisers against the influx of unwanted traffic. The increase in the AD fraud, on the other hand, has also increased the awareness of advertisers to protect their ads from fraudulent interactions.
But why do you need it and how can you minimize the risks of such interactions in your Google Ads campaigns? Let us immerse yourself in the article and examine this decisive aspect when protecting your advertising campaigns and budget.
The importance of blocking IP addresses from your ads
The prices for fake traffic in paid marketing grow exponentially. An average company loses 5.9% of its advertising budget to fake clicks. This means that you lose an average of 59 US dollars for advertising fraud for each issue of 1000 US dollars. This number varies depending on the industry, location, keywords, etc. and can reach 18.9% in some regions.
There are several reasons why you have to block IP addresses:
Repetition clicks
- Output: Competitors or malignant companies can repeatedly click on their ads and drain their advertising budget without real interest.
- Solution: If you block the IP addresses that are assigned to this repetitive clicks, you can make sure that your ads will not be displayed again.
Bot traffic and click on farms
- Output: Bots and click companies are common sources for non-genuine-ad interactions. Bots are software programs that are designed in such a way that they interact automatically with ads, while Click -Farms are occupied by places with many devices with which fake displays, views or impressions are generated.
- Solution: You can block the IP addresses from the well -known click Farms from your Google ads, and this prevents you from accessing your advertising campaigns in the future.
PTC website (PTC) paid
- Output: PTC websites reward users to click on displays, which leads to a data traffic of low quality, which is not converted into a meaningful commitment.
- Solution: Blocking IP addresses linked to PTC website ensures that your ads are not clicked on by users who are only motivated by financial incentives and receive their advertising budget for real potential customers.
Improved accuracy of analysis
- Output: Inaccurate data due to non-genre clicks can lead to misguided decision-making and inefficient resource use.
- Solution: To ensure that your data and analyzes only reflect real user interactions, it is best to block these suspicious IP addresses.
Read this article to understand the effects of ads on your ads and business.
How do I block IP addresses manually in Google ads?
Swift and Strategic Action are the key to protecting your Google ad campaigns from problematic IP addresses. The manual blocking of these addresses is a contact point for advertisers who are looking for immediate actions and solutions.
As soon as you identify repetitive clicks, suspicious behavior or undesirable commitment, immersion in your Google advertisement account and initiating the manual IP address of IP address will be of great importance. This approach ensures that you block the IP addresses that cause problems with further interactions with your ads.
Step-by-step instructions
- Identify suspicious IP addresses – Monitor your website traffic regularly on unusual patterns. You can do this in your Google Analytics or in another web analysis software and follow patterns such as repeating clicks or spines of clicks at unusual times. Such behaviors usually indicate suspicious activities.
- Use your Google Ads account to at ads.google.com
- Navigate to the “Campaigns” symbol in the left menu -Click the dropdown campaign dropdown in the section menu and select “Campaigns”.
- Select the specific campaign from which you want to block IP/s
- Access to campaign settings – Click on the settings symbol (admin symbol) to access the “Settings” page.
- Expand IP exclusions – Search and click on the “Settings” page and click on “Additional Settings”.
- Click here to expand the “IP exclusions” section on the page
- Enter IP addresses -In the “IP exclusion” section, enter the IP addresses that you do not want to block when you see your ads.
- Save your changes – After entering the corresponding IP addresses, click on “Save” to apply the changes.
Additional tips for blocking IP addresses in Google ads
Improve your IP address blocking strategy with these revealing tips to strengthen your Google ads campaigns:
- Use placeholders for IP address ranges – You can use an asterisk
- As a wild card to block the entire IP address ranges. For example, enter *192.168. Blocks all IP addresses in the area 192.168.0/16. Be careful when using wildcards
- – be careful with wildcards, since you can exclude thousands of real users with a wrong wild card. Use IP exclusion lists from third-party providers
- -Mearing the option of excluding IP addresses via IP exclusion lists from third-party providers. These are lists received and maintained by cybersecurity services that have already referred to repositors with IP addresses that are already referred to as sources for suspicious or malicious traffic. This approach can offer additional protective layers against known harmful IP addresses. Take into account advertising fraud protection services
– If you deal with a significant volume of IP addresses to determine the efficiency of click fraud and advertising fraud protection services. These services are tailored to identify and exclude fraudulent clicks and at the same time ensure that no legitimate users are excluded.
Block the restrictions of the manual process of the IP address
While the manual IP address is a practical process to disturb the interactions of malicious sources with your ads, it is associated with its limits.
The pursuit and identify of fraudulent IP addresses takes time in which your advertising budget is already affected. The process of recognizing patterns can be difficult; What seems suspicious can sometimes be real users who interact with their ads.
In addition, demanding bots and click farms have their own trick bags and navigate smoothly through various IP addresses and locations with proxies and VPNs.
While manual blocking is a step in the right direction, it may not be able to grasp all the nuances of the constantly developing strategies of fraudulent actors in digital space.
Blocking IP addresses with automated click -fraud detection software
In contrast to manual processes, software solutions work with lightning speed and detect and block fraudulent IP addresses quickly and block quickly before they can cause serious damage.
The advantage lies in your efficiency-automated systems eliminate the need for time-consuming persecution and identification of suspicious IP addresses. As a rule, these solutions can catch fraudulent traffic sources before they even interact with their ad.
For example, our team at Clickcease has created a solution that combines over 2,000 behavior tests to identify suspicious activities, even if there are confusing patterns. This also ensures that you do not block real users.
Automated click fraud detection software can also be used to identify and block and click sophisticated bots. It is known that these entities often use proxies and VPNs to hide their true places. While it is difficult to identify fraudulent IP addresses that change frequently, expanded click fraud detection software can continue to identify and block effectively.
You can try to experience the 7-day free trial version of Clickcease to experience first-hand how you can help you save money for your advertising budget and to improve the overall performance of your advertising campaigns. Clickcease is easy to use and can be integrated into existing Google AdS campaigns to efficiently help you with the IP address blocking process.Still register for the free test version of Clickcease today and make sure that your ads reach the right audience and deliver the desired results
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FAQs:
What are the usual suspicious patterns when identifying IP addresses?
- If you regularly follow the analyzes of your advertising campaign, several common patterns can indicate that an IP address or several contained in suspicious behavior can be involved. Search for the following patterns:
- High click rates (CTR)
- A large number of clicks from a single IP address
- A large number of clicks from a small number of IP addresses
- Suspicious click tips that occur at the same time every day
Unusual device or user patterns, such as clicks without mouse movements
If you recognize one of these patterns, this may be a sign that you have to block these IP addresses and minimize the effects of fraudulent activities.
Does the blocking of IP addresses affect the performance of my ad?
Blocking IP addresses can be a helpful tool to improve your ad performance. However, it is important to use them carefully. Blocking invalid data traffic such as clicks of bots or competitors can lead to a better click rate (CTR), conversion rate and cost-per-click (CPC).
However, blocking legitimate traffic is risky if you do not do it carefully. Only block IP addresses that are safe are invalid or undesirable. If you are not sure whether a certain IP address should be blocked or not, you should use a third-party tool to identify and block data traffic.
What happens if I accidentally block a valid IP address?
Blocking a valid IP address in Google ads can have unintentional consequences, including reduced advertising reach and the lack of potential customers. If you suspect that you have blocked the IP address of a legitimate user, you can change it in your Google ad settings and remove the IP address from the exclusion list.