Six Ways CLIENTS GET CHEATED Regarding Web Advertising Results

Based on true events noticed by us, here are some little-known facts that outline methods adopted by some media firms and agencies to cheat customers regarding impressions, clicks, and click rate for web banners and their other advertising campaigns. This article also suggests how you can possibly stay ahead of the game

- RAHUL CHOPRA

It was a Monday afternoon. We were conducting a telecon to review ongoing projects, and we were nearing the end of the discussion. Suddenly, our head of consulting interrupted and mentioned that he had just received an email from an important client who insisted, "I want to discuss it immediately!"

We all knew that the client was a global MNC and one of our fast-growing accounts. If we could continue to retain their trust and provide value, we could do a lot of business with them.

"Sure, go ahead," I replied.

"I have just received this email from them, and they are mentioning that they are receiving X% of Click-Through-Rate (CTR) from our website, while they are getting 10-times the CTR % from competing websites. They're asking whether our report is accurate, and if yes, why such a large difference?" "Did you say there's a difference of 10X?"

"Yes!"

There was silence for the next one minute.

Then, I asked, "Is it possible for us to know which websites are these, so we can study them and figure out where are we lacking?" "Sure, give me some time, and we will reconvene," was the reply.

We were thinking that the client would not give us names of the competing websites, stating confidentiality, and it could be a negotiation tactic of theirs to derive more juice from us. But we were wrong.

After four hours, we reconvened. The client had shared the names of the two websites. We also got to know that one was reporting 8x of our CTR and the other 10x.

The head of our Digital Marketing Services team had also joined us this time.

"Err, what's their average-timeper-user as per Alexa or SEMrush?"

"First one has 52 seconds and second's 1.1 minutes."

"What's ours?" 

"28.4 minutes." "So, users are spending 20 times more time on our website but clicking the same banner on their websites 10 times more?"

"Yes, it seems like that."