Medical Marketing Online: Click Fraud
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Don’t think it’s already happening to your plastic surgery, laser clinic or cosmetic dermatology practice? Here’s a recent quote from Michael Caruso, CEO of click fraud services vendor ClickFacts in an interview:
In particularly fraud prone verticals such as finance, class action lawsuits and medical, we see click fraud rates in the 30%-45% range. These are all categories that see high keyword pricing in the auction model. That makes them particularly tasty for click fraud artists. “If you can make more money from the dark side than the light side of search, there are plenty of people who will take advantage. Plus, it’s not even technically illegal yet.”
There are two ways that your med spa, laser clinic or skin clinic marketing budget is being drained:
One, competitors who see your ad simply click on it, draining your advertising dollars. Two, click fraudsters set up ‘affiliate’ sites are set up that run your ads where they are clicked on by bots or employees. These sites are the most damaging since you’re paying for every click without any return. Click fraud around dermatology or plastic surgery clinics can be very lucrative since plastic surgery, laser clinics or cosmetic dermatology practices are becoming such a competitive market and the payment per click can be very high.
Unfortunately, to keep your marketing budget safe you have very few tools. You can bet they’re not that Google’s not interested in your individual account, especially since Google is making money from click fraud when your ads are clicked on.
Start by limiting your exposure to click fraud. If your dermatology or plastic surgery clinic is still running an Adwords or Yahoo campaign, they allow you to limit the maximum amount you spend in a day. Take advantage of this feature by limiting your maximum cost to what you can afford to spend. You can also look for the tracks of click fraud by examining the reports you might have available to you. Multiple clicks coming from the same IP address are a sure sign of fraud.
Countries like Malaysia have become such a haven for click fraud ’sweat-shops’ that clicks generated there are completely discounted by Google and accounts for Adwords or Adsense are routinely turned down.
If you’re going to run search ads, try to protect your plastic surgery, laser clinic or cosmetic dermatology practice. You can be sure that you’re the only one trying to.
Laser Clinic MD is a medspa community of Plastic Surgeons, Cosmetic Dermatologists, and Aesthetic Physicians with more than 4,500 medical spa members world-wide. Medical Spa MD offers physician resources like Botox from Canada and information for skin clinic & laser clinic patients.

