Click Fraud Might Be Down, But It’s Still Scary
Click Forensics’ numbers for Q1 of 2009, per their recent press release, are a little startling to someone who’s worked with paid ads for a long time… through all of 2008, click fraud numbers climbed, topping 17% for Q4 of last year. This year, there’s a 20% reduction to level around 14%. What’s scary about this? The Click Forensics quote, which I nabbed from Andy Beal’s site…
One new type of fraud discovered this quarter was perpetrated by malicious scripts that execute when a visitor views a web page disguised as relevant content or search results. The script initiates “Zero-iframe” or off-screen clicks that route the visitor session through an alias referrer website, and on to unsuspecting advertisers who pay for the phantom click. All this occurs transparently to the offending site’s visitor; they never see the ad or visit the advertiser, and their computer is not infected with any type of malware or botnet.
The other really interesting item, to me, was the statement that the greatest percentage of click fraud originating outside the good ole US, came from Canada, the UK, and Germany. My SEO background in malware attacks had me thinking Asia would dominate as the source of click fraud, but apparently, that’s not necessarily the case with paid ad fraud.
The good news across the board though, is that the PPC platforms themselves are accounting for the drop in click fraud, as they’ve become more sophisticated in preventing it. The bad news, of course, is that click fraudsters are moving to other types of ad networks, which are still more susceptible to these sorts of attacks. Darn.
Sorry, ouija has no special extra insight.
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