The pros and cons of IP blocking in advertisements

Someone is showing you something on your website - panic - they click an ad!

Why do they do it?

It’s surprising how many people do it. Whether it's pure laziness or just because it's easier to find a particular page on Google than it is on your site.

It costs and it hurts paid search marketers: we can see our return on ad spend (ROAS) drop and costs climb. You might question how much it will really add up to? I once had an hour-long meeting and saw a colleague click 6 different ads during that time. How often were they clicking ads daily?

The solution to this?

As much as we can try to train staff and advise them not to click on ads. One of the better solutions is to IP block your company location.

It’s much harder for them to click on ads, and discourages laziness. I worked at a company of fewer than 100 people who saved £2000 a year IP blocking their website in this way.

Whilst for some, this is not a huge amount, it is going to be relative to the number of people in your business, and with rising CPCs and marketing budgets being constantly squeezed, marketers should be looking for any savings they can make.

First, let us delve into the positives of IP blocking:

Pros

Budget Control

Blocking internal IP addresses (e.g., your company or clients) can prevent accidental clicks or impressions that can waste ad budget. This is especially important if you have a limited budget.

Data Integrity

Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of advertising data is essential for making informed decisions. Blocking internal IP addresses during ad campaigns safeguards against data distortion resulting from clicks or impressions generated by team members or clients. This is critical for accurate performance analysis.
Additionally, this limits testing. If you are running an experiment on Google ads, having people within the company who are not going to buy anything clicking on ads is going to hamper your findings.

Accurate CTR

Even if your colleagues don’t click your ads, they will still see them. This means your ads will gain impressions, and by not clicking, they are unintentionally lowering your click-through rate (CTR). If this happens often, it will make Google think that your ads are low-performing, and they will show them less.

An Easy Life

Marketers have to justify themselves a lot, and sometimes it feels like you are spending more time justifying and explaining what you are doing rather than the actual doing. If people within the company can’t see your ads, it will most likely mean fewer questions about what your strategy is.

Cons

You lose an extra set of eyes

We all make mistakes, it’s only human, but clients and colleagues being able to see the ads can help to ensure ads are accurate. However, if companies or clients really want to check the ads, they can do this in incognito mode, there are ways around this. 

Working from home

In our post-pandemic work with an increasing number of us working from home, is it going to make as much difference? You might possibly need to block hundreds of addresses which could also be shared by potential customers.

Alternative Solutions

There are a few other approaches you can take to try and avoid this issue:

• Improving the search bar on your website. This should help improve your website for customers or clients. This is ideal if you have a development team to support you.
• Bookmarking frequently needed pages. Encourage current staff to add frequently visited sites to a bookmark bar so they don’t need to search for it. Set this up automatically for any new starters.

Conclusion

It’s, unfortunately, as is often the case in digital marketing, not a one-size-fits-all approach. It will partly depend on the size of your company, how many people are working from home and where your priorities lie. Considering these will help you to decide if IP blocking is a worthwhile approach.