Attention! Click-chasing in the Google Display Network
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:52 am
When running AdWords campaigns in the Google Display Network, you should always take a close look at individual placements. It is not uncommon for clicks to bring irrelevant visitors to the site, which only guarantees revenue for the publisher and Google, as the following observations once again illustrate.
Click-chasing in ad delivery in the Google Display Network
During the usual optimization of Google display campaigns, I noticed an interesting development in the past few months. I was particularly surprised by placements that had a significantly higher click rate than is normally the case. These were clearly not mobile apps, where users often have no choice but to click on the ad. So, of course, I started to manually check the websites in question. In doing so, I noticed a new type of ad delivery on various placements in addition to the advertising spaces for banners:
Image_1_also_posted_image
Google ads appear here, wonderfully disguised as navigation, but are only recognizable as such at second glance. According to the support employee, who had never seen this form of ad control usa phone number data before and had to ask technical support first, these are not text ads delivered via the Google Display Network , but ads created with Google DoubleClick. However, I was able to find the following statement on the subject of using DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdWords together : "DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a real-time market for buying and selling advertising that works with the Google Display Network." So it seems to me as if these are AdWords ads after all. I see this further confirmed when you consider the high click-through rates for these placements in connection with the ads that look like page navigation and entice users to click much more than any normal ad.
It gets even more interesting when you click on the supposed menu item. You are then redirected to an overview page with Google ads that are more relevant to the topic you clicked on:
Image_2
and sometimes less...
Image_3
If you look at the display of the ads, you immediately notice that they are ads created according to AdWords guidelines, but that a preview of the landing page is also shown. Unfortunately, there was no statement on this from support.
Click-chasing in ad delivery in the Google Display Network
During the usual optimization of Google display campaigns, I noticed an interesting development in the past few months. I was particularly surprised by placements that had a significantly higher click rate than is normally the case. These were clearly not mobile apps, where users often have no choice but to click on the ad. So, of course, I started to manually check the websites in question. In doing so, I noticed a new type of ad delivery on various placements in addition to the advertising spaces for banners:
Image_1_also_posted_image
Google ads appear here, wonderfully disguised as navigation, but are only recognizable as such at second glance. According to the support employee, who had never seen this form of ad control usa phone number data before and had to ask technical support first, these are not text ads delivered via the Google Display Network , but ads created with Google DoubleClick. However, I was able to find the following statement on the subject of using DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdWords together : "DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a real-time market for buying and selling advertising that works with the Google Display Network." So it seems to me as if these are AdWords ads after all. I see this further confirmed when you consider the high click-through rates for these placements in connection with the ads that look like page navigation and entice users to click much more than any normal ad.
It gets even more interesting when you click on the supposed menu item. You are then redirected to an overview page with Google ads that are more relevant to the topic you clicked on:
Image_2
and sometimes less...
Image_3
If you look at the display of the ads, you immediately notice that they are ads created according to AdWords guidelines, but that a preview of the landing page is also shown. Unfortunately, there was no statement on this from support.