Click-fraud protection for an agency: one process for every client
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An agency needs one process, not a heroic review of every account. Direct’s report library has “Invalid traffic”, and the number in it can change if filtering runs later. The help text considers it irrational to review placements by hand and turn off the ineffective ones. Access to goals on someone else’s counter, which the owner can give the person running the campaigns, does not open retargeting. The client’s site has an observation mode and a protection mode.
Click fraud in this process is a line on the card, not a separate tone of correspondence. Below is the order that repeats for every client.
The card: a snapshot that can still arrive
For each client, keep the period and the export date of “Invalid traffic”. Yesterday’s number and today’s can diverge because of later filtering. Write both figures in the client status. Do not erase the old one. Invalid clicks explain why not everything suspicious is already in the snapshot. A refund is not substituted for the export date.
The same card matters more than a handsome slide. Client A and client B are comparable only if both have a date. Without a date, a rise in the figure looks like the agency’s mistake.
Placements: not a batch of manual blocks
Instead of turning ineffective placements off by hand, the help text offers a “Maximum conversions” strategy or key goals: a lower bid where the conversion forecast is worse. On one or two conversions the price can differ sharply from a stable one. That is not a ban on excluding a placement. It is a ban on making a manual review the main process across dozens of clients: it is not rational, and one conversion lies.
In the agency’s rules a manual block is an exception marked “not from one conversion”, not a weekly ritual. Who clicks the ads does not replace that rule with a list of culprits.
Goals without retargeting
If an agency runs the campaigns, the counter owner can allow the use of goals that already exist, automatic and their own, without access to the counter. The Direct user then optimizes the campaigns and sees only the statistics needed to evaluate those campaigns. That permission does not grant retargeting or audience selection. On a recently created counter the option is on by default.
In the process this is a separate onboarding item. Ask for permission to use the goals. Do not ask for “access to the whole counter” if the goals are enough. Do not promise the client retargeting from this permission: it is not there. Do not be surprised that on a new counter the option is already on. Raw visits and the right to change the counter are not transferred by this item.
Click fraud and sklikivanie are not tied to how wide the access is. Narrow access is a normal setting, not a sign that the agency is “not trusted with the bot data”.
Observation, then protection
In observation the check is calculated in full, the visitor is always let through on the outside, a repeat-visit ban is not set, and the log records both the actual let-through and the decision that would have been made in protection. In protection the decision is applied to the visit.
For the agency the mode is a field on the card next to the export date. A new client starts in observation. The switch to protection is a separate, agreed date, not “we turned it on together with the counter”. The log of “would have” does not replace the “Invalid traffic” report: one is about the site, the other about the account, and the account’s number can still arrive later.
Order for the portfolio
Open a card: client, period, date and figure of invalid traffic, room for a second export.
Goals: is there permission without access to the counter, do you remember that it does not grant retargeting, and that on a new counter the option may already be on.
Placements: do not build the week out of manual switch-offs. Ineffectiveness is “Maximum conversions” or key goals. An exclusion is a rare note, not from one or two conversions.
The site: observation or protection, and the date of the change. In observation everyone is let through on the outside.
Do not mix the site log and the Direct snapshot into one figure, “we beat the fraud”.
Before a status to the client, refresh the export. If the number grew, say so about later filtering and show both dates.
Three clients as an example
A teaching example.
The first has a new counter, and permission for the goals is already on by default. Retargeting is not built from that. Invalid traffic was exported on Monday and on Wednesday, the numbers differ, both dates are on the card. The site is in observation, there is a log, and there are no refusals on the outside.
The second has goals allowed separately, and the counter is not open to the agency. Statistics in Direct are only what is needed to evaluate the campaigns. A placement with one conversion is not turned off: the price can be far from stable. A “Maximum conversions” strategy is already on. Site protection is turned on on Tuesday, and the date is written down. Until Tuesday the card said observation.
The third asks on Friday to “turn off all the bad placements like the neighbour”. The rules refuse the batch: a manual review is not rational. One exclusion is allowed if the conversions are not one or two and there is a note on the card. The invalid-traffic snapshot is refreshed at the same time, not copied from the neighbour.
Portfolio checklist
Every client has an invalid-traffic export date.
A repeat export does not erase the previous one.
Permission for goals is not described as access to the counter or as retargeting.
A new counter was checked: the option may have turned itself on.
Manual placement blocks are not the process of the week.
One or two conversions were not called a stable price.
The site mode and the date of the change are written down.
Observation was not mixed up with protection already applied.
The log and the Direct report were not added into one victory.
How a status sounds when it can be sent to everyone
A portfolio status is four identical sentences. Otherwise clients start comparing tone, not figures.
The first sentence is the snapshot. “Invalid traffic on this date is this number, a repeat export on another date is another number, the gap may be later filtering”. Without the second date the sentence is not sent.
The second is goals. “We optimize on the goals we were allowed, retargeting is not built from this permission, there is no access to the counter”. If the counter is new and the option turned itself on, say so, so the client does not look for who ticked the box.
The third is placements. “We run ineffectiveness with a strategy on a conversion forecast. There was no manual block this week”, or “there was one, there were more than two conversions, the note is on the card”. A batch of blocks does not go in this sentence: the rules do not count it as the work.
The fourth is the site. “Observation mode, everyone is let through on the outside, the log has the decisions that would have been made in protection”, or “from this date the mode is protection, and the decision is applied to the visit”. The log is not added to the invalid-traffic number.
Four sentences are shorter than a heroic report and they are the same for the first, second and third client in the example. The numbers, the dates and the mode change. The structure does not. A new manager on the portfolio reads the card, not an oral history of “we cleaned the placements there”.
Where the process breaks
It breaks in three places, and all three are visible on the checklist.
First: one export date was overwritten with a new one. The client sees a jump and hears “we recalculated”. The help text says something else: filtering may have run later. A card without the old figure does not prove that. Put both back.
Second: a retargeting audience was built from permission to use the goals. The help text does not give that right. The Direct user sees statistics for evaluating their campaigns and optimizes on goals that already exist. Audience selection is a separate permission, and it is not in this item. If the client asks for a segment on the site, the process stops and states the boundary. It does not “pick up” more access.
Third: observation was called protection in the status, although everyone was let through on the outside. Then the client expects that suspicious visitors are already not getting in, while the log is only collecting “would have”. The date of the mode change is what keeps that from happening. While there is no date, the status says observation, even if the script has been in place for a long time.
On one or two conversions of a placement the process breaks more quietly. A manager turns a row off “so the client sees action”. The price at that volume can be far from stable, and the help text considers the manual review itself not rational. The action the client sees in these rules is the strategy and the card, not a list of disabled domains. An exception stays an exception and needs a note, or in a month the portfolio is full of grey rows with no reason.
Raw visits are not in the process. Permission for goals does not transfer them and does not give the right to change the counter. The request “export every visitor, we will find the bots ourselves” leaves the onboarding item. Answer it with the access boundary and offer the invalid-traffic snapshot plus the site mode. That is already on the card. The agency does not promise a separate stream of raw visits from these rules.
The process holds by repetition, not by the memory of a strong specialist. Four sentences of status, two snapshot dates, an explicit refusal of retargeting from someone else’s goals, a rare manual block, and the date of the mode. Click fraud in the client letter stays a link to the term, if the term is needed, and does not replace any of the four lines.
The portfolio week that follows is a calendar, not a fire. Monday is the first export of invalid traffic, the date onto the card. Tuesday is a check that new counters’ goal option was not a surprise and that nobody built retargeting “while they were there”. Wednesday is a second export next to the first, if the filter may have arrived; manual placements are not touched, except an exception already noted. Thursday is the site mode: who is still in observation, whose protection date has passed and whose decision is applied. Friday is the four sentences of status, with no new method. Saturday the process does not need: the number in the library can change on a working day anyway, and that is what the repeat export is for, not a shift on duty.
If a client writes on Sunday “the figure is different from Friday”, the answer is ready: send it, we will take another date, later filtering allows that, we will not erase the old line. The answer that is not ready is “we will turn the placements off right now”. It breaks Wednesday on the calendar and the help text at the same time.
The calendar also does not mix the site log with the account. On Thursday you look at the mode. On Monday and Wednesday you look at Direct. The checklist forbids adding Thursday to Monday as one victory. An agency that follows this calendar can change the people on the portfolio: the card can be read without its author. That is a process for every client, not a set of lucky threads.
Leave an empty field on the card, “what we deliberately did not do”. Three refusals go there, the same for the portfolio: we did not erase the old export, we did not build retargeting from permission for the goals, we did not turn placements off in a batch because of one conversion. An empty field that is filled every week with these three refusals is more useful than a list of heroics. The client sees the boundary. A new employee sees that inaction here is following the help text and the rules, not skipping a shift. When the field is empty from forgetfulness, the process is already broken: someone may have erased a date or opened retargeting, and there is nowhere to write it. So the field is filled even in a quiet week. A quiet week is the product of the process.