The Platform Shows Conversions for Objects with No Clicks

You may see conversions appearing in the platform which are attributed to an object in the platform (a keyword or creative) which has had no clicks.

What Causes The Issue?

There are a number of things that can cause this issue. We'll list these below.

  1. If this is a rare occurrence for this object, this may be due to the publisher refunding the click for a variety of reasons (i.e. suspicion of fraudulent clicks from the same user). Although the publisher has refunded this click, the platform still shows the synced down data before this action occurred on the publisher's end.
  2. If this is a consistent occurrence for this object, this may also be due to suspicious activity as well as the conversion pixel not being implemented on 'Thank You' pages (regular conversion pages) but instead on landing pages that can allow a bot to crawl.
  3. If you see this behavior consistently, it may be due to tracking parameters still being appended to URLs that are not linked to the platform. This can occur if you've had objects linked in the past, removed them, but not removed the tracking from the URLs. In such a case, when attributing revenue, the platform would not find the relevant creative ID and therefore skip it and attribute to the keyword ID.

How To Fix The Issue

The solution for the problem differs based on its cause, as follows:

  1. In this case, we would suggest reaching out to the publisher to check whether or not they have refunded any of your clicks recently. They may also be able to explain why they did this.
  2. If you believe the conversion pixel has not been implemented correctly, please contact our Support department who will be happy to check this for you.
  3. In this case, you will need to double-check the URLs for your inactive objects and ensure that they no longer have any platform tracking parameters appended to them.

Written by Marketing @ Marin Software

Last published at: June 30th, 2023