About a year ago, Google forced a transition from Google Smart Shopping Campaigns to P-Max Campaigns. In this blog, we introduced a case study of fraudulent clicks in Google’s automatic optimization campaigns, specifically highlighting issues with Smart Shopping Campaigns. This time, we’d like to present a case study regarding P-Max Campaigns.

The client in question operates an e-commerce business in the printing industry and spends an average of around 10 million yen per month on Google Ads. In this case, the P-Max Campaign stood out with an overwhelmingly high rate of fraudulent clicks. Additionally, one of the display ads also experienced a high rate of fraudulent clicks.

Currently, many advertisers operating e-commerce businesses allocate a significant portion of their budget to P-Max Campaigns. In a situation where advertising agencies are also heavily relying on these automatic optimization campaigns, there are still relatively few advertisers and agencies taking measures against these glaringly high fraudulent click rates. We hope that more advertisers and agencies will follow the example of this client by first visualizing the current situation through trials and assessing the need for countermeasures.

Masaki “Mark” Iino
Founder & CEO
SOPHOLA, Inc

P.S. Last weekend, I visited the Matsumoto Museum for the first time. Yayoi Kusama’s artwork was absolutely fantastic!