Who is wasting your ad budget: competitor bidding, ad hijacking, or click fraud?

These are three different problems. Competitor brand bidding is legal and common. Ad hijacking is someone impersonating your ad to intercept your traffic. Click fraud is invalid clicks, which Google already filters and credits. Diagnose which one you have before buying a tool to fix it.

Competitor bidding on your brand

A competitor buying your company name is ordinary and usually permitted, though using your trademark in their ad text often is not. The fix is not outrage, it is presence: bid on your own brand terms so you hold the top position, keep your brand ad copy specific and confident, and make sure your Google Business Profile and organic listing are strong. Brand clicks are cheap, and ceding that space costs more than defending it.

Ad hijacking

This is a different animal. Someone, often an affiliate, runs an ad that copies your ad text and shows your display URL, intercepting traffic you would have gotten anyway and claiming commission or redirecting it. The detection method is boring and effective: search your own brand terms from different locations and devices on a regular schedule, watch for sudden drops in brand impression share that do not match your spend, and look for referral traffic arriving through unexpected redirects. We have written about this in more detail on the blog.

Click fraud and invalid traffic

Google's help documentation defines invalid clicks as clicks that "don't represent a genuine interest in your business," and states that when its automated protections determine clicks are invalid, "those interactions are filtered out of your campaign metrics and removed from your billing." It also says that if invalid clicks are detected after billing, "you receive a credit on your next invoice where appropriate and possible."

We will not quote you a percentage of spend lost to click fraud, because the credible published figures usually come from companies selling click fraud protection, which is not a neutral source. What you can do without spending anything: check the invalid click columns in your own account, watch for placements or IP ranges producing clicks with zero engagement, and use placement and IP exclusions where the evidence is in your own data. Buy a third party tool only if your own numbers justify it.

Related: What is Ad Hijacking And How to Protect Yourself, How do you track leads and conversions?, What data and analytics services does LevelUp Digital offer?, and our data and analytics page.