I run my ad reports to get current MTD costs. Then I pore
over my server logs, extracting everything I know to be
from an ad campaign. (The URL is tagged) This goes into
a spreadsheet. The Ad costs go into the spreadsheet.
My customer records (with IP Addresses and last invoice)
go into the spreadsheet. All the data is there.
When the magic is done, I can sort sort my server log data
by IP address and date, which clearly shows any pattern
of excessive clicks. Any suspicious clicks are verified
by checking the server file status. A 200 tells me the
clicks are probably being served to different users at
the same IP address. A check of the referrer usually
verifies this, as most are AOL servers. But, any 304's,
or even a series of them to the same address, same day and
same general time are highly suspicious clicks, IMO.
So what is an acceptable level of these suspicious clicks?
At what point would I want to try to recover from them?
I understand everyone's level of tolerance might be
different, for different reasons.
Here's something I have observed frequently. A user will
click an ad twice, usually minutes, if not seconds apart.
The second click got a 304 server response. But the user
goes away, never to be seen again. OK, so I paid for 2 clicks.
How many of these are acceptable in a given period?
10 different users, 20, 0?
<aside>
The last question tends to lead my thoughts in a different direction. If that number were excessive there would most
likely something on the site that needed attention, especially if the same thing were happening across
different ad venues and at the same page.
</aside>
<shrug>
<mumble>
grandpa
Dixon.
