Click Defense More Information Overall Rating: Not Rated Pay Per Click Universe Recommends: AdWatcher - 100% Click Fraud Protection. Concerned about click fraud? Protect your online advertising dollars with the world's most trusted & accurate click fraud solution on the market today. AdWatcher will put a stop to competitors and fraudsters who are looking to drain your hard earned advertising budget. Test-Drive AdWatcher For FREE For 30 Days! Click Defense is a web analytics tracking tool. Although we had planned to review Click Defense later this month, the recent (June 24, 2005) filing of a class action suit on the subject of click fraud by Click Defense against Google prompted us to take a look at this company’s offering now rather than later. Click Defense’s focus in the class action lawsuit (which could potentially involve other companies on either side – plaintiff or defendant) is that although Google admits that click fraud exists and that it is a serious risk to their own profitability, as well as stating they are doing what they can to combat the risk; however, they are not doing all that they could do to counteract click fraud and are not sincerely considering refund requests from advertisers. The lawsuit aside, what exactly does Click Defense bring to the table of the variety of tools that have recently arisen on the scene to deal with click fraud, as well as its web analytics’ side? The Colorado-based company bills itself as “the leading ad tracking, optimization and click fraud detection company” and has been in business since early 2002. Click Defense equates click fraud with “ad spamming,” (sometimes calling it “click spamming,”), but click fraud is not spamming in the usual meaning of the term – it involves fraudulent clicking on PPC ads, rather than sending mass emails or ads out to recipients who did not request them – the usual definition of spam. Leaving semantics aside, click fraud detection is only one part of this company’s business – they also provide detailed web analytics and content personalization. Click Defense offers three different reports to its clients: Repeat Clickers Report – provides you with the IP address, number of times your ad was clicked, the dates the clicks were made, the pages viewed and session lengths for those clicks, and any sales/conversions that arose from those repeat clickers. Click Auditing Report – which provides you with information on all the clicks made during a specific date range, such as click source (which search engine), IP address, dates of clicks, number of pages viewed and session length, and if any sales/conversions were made. Extended Click Auditing Report – adds further information such as the ISP, the web browser used, the operating system and platform and search phrases used by within the click timeframe or by repeat clickers over a certain time period. Click Defense’s other services actually look more intriguing, especially their content personalization system, which tracks repeat visitors and feeds specific content to them depending upon conditions you set – an example being offering them a special coupon upon their second visit (which has been identified as such by the program). They also offer a full suite of other web analytic tools, such as click stream reports, tracking of email campaigns, return on investment calculations, etc. Pricing is based on a choice of one of three packages – the Bronze, the Click Fraud, or the Gold Plan. The Bronze plan, which does not include click fraud tracking, starts at $29.95 for up to 50,00 page views per month on one web site with a 2-day support response time. The Click Fraud plan starts at $89.95 per month for one web site and up to 50,000 page views with a 1-day support response, and the Gold plan starts at $149.95 per month for up to 3 websites and up to 150,000 views per month, again with a 1-day support response time. Additional page views and/or websites can be purchased for any of the plans. Click Defense offers a 14-day free trial, which may be worth investigating, especially if it is fully functional. Results could gauge whether the relatively high cost of Click Defense was in line with the level of protection and money saved. The Gold plan might be the most cost-effective of the three in terms of value for your money, if size of your ad campaigns merits the expense. It isn’t entirely clear which reports you receive under which plan. One can’t help but wonder how effective Click Defense is in retrieving click fraud rebates from Google on behalf of their clients, given the recent lawsuit. It will be interesting to follow the course of the lawsuit to see if it expands into a true class-action suit and if other defendants are added, such as other search engines. |
