No doubt, there is fraud in the system. If you want to be successful in using these ad platforms for your business, you will have to accept that as a fact of life.
What you need to do is to exclude bad placements/websites from your campaign. But even before that, you have to see if your ads + landing page are compelling, or you'll just waste a ton of money.
This part is more art than science, and requires being objective about the subjective, and what I mean by that is: being honest about what you're offering and if it's actually valuable to your prospects, and then seeing if how you're presenting your offer is simultaneously clear and breaks through the noise.
At the end of the day we're still talking about sales, just in a new form, in a multi-dimensional bazaar called the Internet.
Only you know how you set up your ads. Did you use the right keyword targeting? Location settings? Is your ad copy relevant to what you're actually selling or even to your website? Does your website have clear CTAs and copy? What is considered your conversion goal? Are you advertising in a popular market? Have you tried optimized with A/B testing for any of the above?
That is, people that have visited my site in the past(with separate ad groups to test "expanded audiences"), currently visiting another site with the target keywords, from a targeted location.
And ads are generic branding and go to the homepage.
If they've visited before, why will they come again without a reason? Your ad has to actually convince them to do something beyond read the same thing twice.
> I find it hard to believe that 97.5% of people can click a link to a website and not even accidentally click something on that website.
Depends on the type of site. If I follow a link to read something, I'll probably read it and leave. If the site tries to make me click something, I'll probably just leave.
I'm not referring to real conversions, where yes, skills in marketing and using the tools does make all the difference.
All I'm saying is that I paid for 200 clicks that appear to not even have real people clicking anywhere at all.