How bots traffic affects advertising

[dennisgorelik]

PostJobFree charges other job boards for job seekers traffic that PostJobFree sends them.
If PostJobFree counts bot traffic as a valid traffic - that may increase advertising revenue quite significantly.
Unfortunately, bot traffic, almost never has any value for the advertisers.
So in 1-3 months most advertises figure out that the traffic is inflated and does not deliver enough value for the cost.

In business it is better to focus on long-term goals and try to keep customers (advertisers) happy.
I want our customers to keep buying job seekers traffic from PostJobFree -- for many years.

That is why we:
1) Put a significant effort for detecting useless bots traffic.
2) Do not charge advertisers for bots clicks.

Still, some decisions about what to do with bots clicks count -- are tricky.
In particular, when I need to decide how much to communicate to the advertiser.
I will write about one such tricky case in the next post.

Comments

[proben]

Can you simply define a certain number/percentage of clicks considered as bots by default and specify it in the contract? The number may vary in time and might be reconsidered let's every 6 months.

[dennisgorelik]

> define a certain number/percentage of clicks considered as bots by default and specify it in the contract?

I may.
But what is the reason to do complicate contract?

Why not just eliminate bots from advertising invoice statistics?

The number of bots clicks may vary greatly from month to month.

If bots' behavior stable, then we may to deal with bots by lowering prices by fixed percentage or discount clicks.

[proben]

Most important is to clearly specify how many clicks were excluded every month. So instead of lowering prices it should be lowering number of clicks and that part should be clearly communicated to client.

[dennisgorelik]

We do not even count bot clicks.

What is the benefit of counting bots clicks?
Counting bot clicks takes additional effort and adds noise to invoices.

[proben]

Да не нужно точно считать, приблизительная оценка вполне прокатит. Главное объяснить что цена за реальные клики, а процент на боты мы вычитаем в соответствии с аналитическими данными каждого месяца. Уменьшение цены сработает намного хуже и будет скорее демотивировать.

[dennisgorelik]

> Уменьшение цены сработает намного хуже

Что будет хуже при уменьшении цены?

Кстати, если клики ботов вообще не упоминаются в инвойсе, то о каком уменьшении цены идет речь?

> и будет скорее демотивировать.

Демотивировать от рекламирования работ у нас?