Why real time reporting matters for PPC advertising

Real-time reporting helps PPC managers identify trends before they become costly. Instead of waiting for Google AdWords reports, PPC managers can use HitTail to spot abnormal activity in their paid search campaigns in real-time. Watching the real time report in HitTail often shows clicks for broad match keywords that advertisers should not be bidding on or shows a discrepancy in clicks that HitTail records compared to what Google reports. This discrepancy can sometimes be attributed to click fraud.

Here are some examples of both scenarios:

1) HitTail identifies negative keywords that drive up the cost of broad match campaigns

Example - Martin Kelley used HitTail to discover that Google was misdirecting his ads which ended up saving his client $20K.

2) HitTail can detect click fraud

Sometimes there is a discrepancy between the number of clicks Google reports vs what appears in HitTail's real time report.

Example - David Kyle discusses his experience with HitTail detecting click fraud for his AdWords campaign. Recently, Google reported 6 clicks and HitTail reported only one in the same time period. David verified that the additional clicks were from a Chinese IP address that was sending fraudulent clicks to a geo-targeted campaign for a city in North Carolina. See this forum discussion and thread for more details.

The best part about this is the fact that you can make these observations way before your AdWords or Analytics reports become available. With this data, PPC managers can log in to their AdWords campaigns and make the necessary adjustments, potentially saving money for their client in wasted clicks that could go undetected without the use of HitTail.

For that reason alone, Pay Per Click managers should consider trying HitTail Premium to stay on top of their paid search campaigns in order to make adjustments in real time that could save money in the long run.