Introduction

The purpose of affiliate marketing is to reward affiliates for sales and leads from driving targeted traffic to a merchant’s site. Artificial traffic and forced clicks abuse the basic contract between merchant and affiliate by surreptitiously affecting a cookie drop on a user’s machine. They can be classified as fraud as there is an intention to benefit financially by abusing the terms and conditions of the contract.

What is ‘artificial traffic’?

Artificial traffic can be defined as traffic that is directed to a merchant site by automated means such as spiders, auto-refreshers or automated pop-ups and pop-unders. There are many different types of artificial traffic, with more being invented each day. Some of the most common include:

• Artificial traffic generated by Spyware and Adware, software installed on the users computer with or without their knowledge.
• Incentivised traffic or “Paid-to-surf” activity where the user has no intention to view or to complete a transaction.
• ‘black hat’ SEO technique or otherwise known as “spam-indexing” to artificially boost search engine rankings.
• Cyber squatting, whereby url typing errors lead via an affiliate redirect to the merchant site, also qualifies as a form of artificial traffic

Unscrupulous affiliates have been known to use artificial traffic to profit from CPC campaigns, as well as CPA campaigns.

What are ‘forced clicks’?

The activity known as ‘forcing clicks’, which usually results in cookie stuffing, plants a cookie on the user computer irrespective of whether the user has taken an action signifying any interest in the merchant site or products. Examples of forced clicks include:

• Pop-ups or pop-unders of merchant landing pages within the framed browser window
• Click tracking links triggered on a banner impression on the affiliate site which trigger the cookie drop but do not refer the user to the merchant’s site. This is also known as post-impression tracking. Cookie-stuffing is the repetition of this process in one instant without the users knowledge.
• Discount voucher code misrepresentation (‘click-to-reveal’) whereby deceptive or misleading links entice the user into a click (also referred to as a incentivised traffic)

How can I spot artificial traffic and forced clicks?

High volumes of traffic originating from recurring or the same IP address are a good indication of suspected fraudulent activity. Certain countries also have a higher propensity to originate artificial traffic and forced clicks. This type of traffic also has an extremely low conversion rate and can be malicious in its intent and not just fraudulent. See Spyware and Adware for more information.

How can this activity be prevented or neutralised?

Both merchants and Networks need to be vigilant against this activity. Merchants should be particularly aware of the potential risk associated with CPC campaigns. Networks should develop technical solutions to automatically monitor on an on-going basis any unusual and potentially harmful activity. Geo targeting and other fraud protection tools should be employed where possible.