Second Tier PPC Programs You Can Trust

So, after 2 months of testing just about every second tier PPC program it seems, I have come to a number of conclusions.  Some may be accurate, some may be just plain wrong, but they are all fact-based.  Two general conclusions are that it’s hard to trust any of these vendors and cheap just will not work to drive conversions.

PPC click fraud is a huge problem.  I have heard estimates running as high at 80% of all paid clicks being click fraud.  Among second tier networks, I think this ratio is higher, much higher.  On many, I saw average bounce rates of 90%+.  Bounce rate alone is not a measure of click fraud, but if you track goals and make a goal a page that is deep in your site and associated with engagement, you can quickly see who is sending you good traffic.  Looking at this I saw rates of bad traffic well over 95%.  So, what do you do?

My conclusion is that you need to look at PPC networks that are simply less likely to be subject to this fraudulent activity.  You can wait for PPC networks to clean up their act, but I would not hold your breath.   More to come.