Though Facebook paid $19 billion to acquire social application WhatsApp, the popular social network still has not fully addressed click fraud, a major threat to its advertising business model. The final quarter of 2013 brought Facebook close to $2 billion in as sales on a PPC basis and CPT impressions, but many advertisers who pay close attention to metrics and click measurements have detected noticeable fraud.
 All avid online advertisers who actively invest in Facebook ad placements have stated that ads are garnering attention and traction from both humans and robots. However, the robots are depleting site performance. Clients who utilize Facebook ad placements are witnessing increased rates of fraud. This is believed to be a direct result of businesses mobilizing click-happy enabled robots used to raise cost per leads for all other competitors. Currently, using click-happy bots is not socially accepted in the ad community, but advertisers still continue to get away with using it.
 Whether you implement some form of click forensics software to track where fraudulent bots derive from, many clients still have a difficult time determining the exact point of origin. However, clients’ Facebook campaign reports clearly state the clicks are not human, they are fake. In the event a client can prove to Facebook that clicks are sourced from robots, the social network will offer credits or compensation for fake clicks.
 Industry professionals believe the solution rests in developing a viewable impressions model. If clients wish to refrain from being tricked or burned by the fraudulent robots, then the advertisers should be granted the ability to pay for advertisements based on viewable impressions, and not the current model— pay per click and cost-per-thousand impressions.
 Implementation of a viewable impressions model is the best way to ensure clients receive payment once real users actively engage with an ad. This model allows advertisers to pay for allotted time slots ranging anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. The client would only have to pay for the duration of time the ad plays on the user’s screen.
 A robot is incapable of creating fake viewable impressions. To put it simply, they are basic computer programs who are incapable of performing tasks that can distinguish between a real user and a fake user.
Utilize Viewable Impressions to Diversify Your Ad Strategy
There are two types of impressions: standard and viewable. Standard impressions can be registered once a page has been fully loaded, and all pixels have been fired. Viewable impressions are not registered until the software has recognized and confirmed an ad has been displayed for a certain length of time on a user’s screen.
It is crucial that clients understand this information because lots of advertisers currently pay for ads resting on the bottom-of-the-page. Though these ads load technically, most users do not scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen, therefore the ad is rarely viewed. This information is critical because the website publisher or advertising network typically charges for ads never seen or displayed on the users screen.
If advertisers were to switch to the viewable impressions model, the situation described above would never occur. Additionally, if the technology behind ad-serving correlated to viewable impressions with clicks, advertisers would know for certain that the clicks were coming from humans, not robots. In other words, only real people would be clicking. To help you better understand, it does not matter if your ad is a compelling banner or dynamic video, in order for it to count, it would have to load first.
The primary reason the viewable impressions model has garnered so much interest is because it not only removes click fraud, it also helps website publishers retain a better understanding of how to effectively monetize inventory. Implementation of the viewable impression model means publishers can guarantee advertisers will be paid for impressions viewed and clicks made by humans, which automatically makes ad inventory increasingly more valuable. Currently, there are no bots capable of replicating this model— clicks or impressions. It is available on many other platforms, but does not exist on Facebook.
Facebook does provide many benefits to its advertising partners, that is why it is strongly advised you do not desert the platform altogether, and instead integrate it into a diversified ad campaign. For one, it is a great place to generate leads, regardless of click fraud. We advise advertisers to simply alter budget efforts so that it allows for viewable impressions
Facebook’s growing popularity amongst the advertising community has allowed for a lot more freedom and growth when it comes to high quality ad space across the Internet. This feature allows advertisers to save money without having to sacrifice quality of content when bidding on Facebook’s ad space inventory.
With the new development of real-time bids on platforms, advertisers are now allowed to evaluate top quality inventory and place bids on primetime space. This arrangement essentially means businesses can now purchase space on the web where they can place their own personal creative ads, goods and services on a designated full-service advertising network. Now businesses can buy ads based on the amount of clicks and viewable impressions. And with demand-side platforms, you can target your primary demographic in a manner that does not overlap with your current target market on Facebook. If you wish to diversify your online advertising strategy, this is the best solution.
Publishers who are striving to win back consumers from Facebook are capable of utilizing a supply-side platform to provide advertising inventory that is solely based on the viewable impressions model. There is no quicker way to increase the value of your ad inventory.
In order to eliminate or minimize click fraud on Facebook, the platform needs to start correlating the amount of clicks with viewable impressions. It is an evolution that would be warmly welcomed by all online advertisers, since humans are the life force behind content clicks and viewable impressions. After all, the global market is nothing without live human beings consuming, seeing and clicking on client content.
We still have hope that Facebook will solve its click fraud problem, but until then there are many ways advertisers can bypass the bot issue. It is just a matter of shifting current resources to top of the line ad space, which can be purchased based on the amount of impressions that are viewable. Additionally, web publishers can gain great strides ahead of Facebook and other social media platforms by offering alternative solutions to click fraud.
