I don't think there's anything that gets me more upset then knowing you are the target of a clickbot on a campaign and not being able to do anything about it. Steal my landing pages, ad texts, and banners if you want, but using a clickbot on the competition is the lowest you can get. Of course nobody will admit to using one but it's pretty easy to tell when you are being the victim of it and there's only so many other similar ads with top bidding that would have an interest in discouraging you from advertising there.
If something is not done by the major networks about it, it will become more rampant and it has the potential to ruin the networks because there is no network out there that can prevent some of the good clickbots, especially people who have thousands of bots under their command and acquiring more and more daily whether it be from purchasing them or infecting computers themselves through viruses and creating more bots. Maybe the clickbots load the entire page and they have a % of their clickbots actually click on your offer on the landing page to further confuse you after a random interval delay to further switch it up of course. It really is horrible because there is little to no defense against people who know what they are doing from doing this and not getting caught or have it traced back to them in any way.
One solution might be to move to a pay per view system and have us bid that way rather then by the click or at least give us the option, even if we have to pay slightly more for the views then we would have otherwise with clicks because paying per view defeats clickbots entirely since it doesn't matter if they click your ad or not.
Media buys based around views are not affected and that is why a good media buy is always preferable so you don't have to deal with this bullshit, but you need the right amount to get in and even then you have to know what you are doing.
I do have a feeling it will get a lot worse spread across the other networks as well before it gets better or solved but I hope I am wrong.
If something is not done by the major networks about it, it will become more rampant and it has the potential to ruin the networks because there is no network out there that can prevent some of the good clickbots, especially people who have thousands of bots under their command and acquiring more and more daily whether it be from purchasing them or infecting computers themselves through viruses and creating more bots. Maybe the clickbots load the entire page and they have a % of their clickbots actually click on your offer on the landing page to further confuse you after a random interval delay to further switch it up of course. It really is horrible because there is little to no defense against people who know what they are doing from doing this and not getting caught or have it traced back to them in any way.
One solution might be to move to a pay per view system and have us bid that way rather then by the click or at least give us the option, even if we have to pay slightly more for the views then we would have otherwise with clicks because paying per view defeats clickbots entirely since it doesn't matter if they click your ad or not.
Media buys based around views are not affected and that is why a good media buy is always preferable so you don't have to deal with this bullshit, but you need the right amount to get in and even then you have to know what you are doing.
I do have a feeling it will get a lot worse spread across the other networks as well before it gets better or solved but I hope I am wrong.
