You would think with the growing technology the Search Engines possess, click fraud would be waning do to superior detection. But not according to advertising experts. Adotas quotes Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence, of his concern over click fraud volume increasing in 2009:
"We predict that click fraud will increase in 2009, as more ad dollars move from branding to performance-based advertising. Much like spam volume grew as email volume increased, we believe click fraud volume will grow in tandem with increases in CPC/CPA ad spend. As click fraud grows, it will reduce advertiser ROI, which will in turn lead marketers to become increasingly concerned with click fraud in 2009. If marketers begin to see drops in ROI due to click fraud, this could adversely affect online advertising growth - much the way ID theft affected online commerce in the early days of the Internet - if networks fail to take additional measures to improve their detection of click fraud, according to Ken Miller, CEO, Anchor Intelligence.
Will Ken's prediction ring true? I believe so, as tougher economic times always seem to raise criminal activity. And it will always be against the Search Engine's own interests to detect click fraud, especially now that profits are waning. So make sure you keep yourself protected by installing click fraud detection software on your site.
Read the full article HERE.
Has anyone else noticed a disturbing pattern in your pay-per- click advertising campaign, of the same IP addresses clicking on your ad, spending one or two seconds on your website and then leaving?
That's called click fraud and it's a major problem among all of the pay-per-click search engines.
Click fraud is a scheme that takes advantage of online advertising programs like those offered by Google, Yahoo/Overture, Findwhat and others. A fraudulent website is set up and participates in programs like Google's AdSense program. Unlike legitimate websites that attract human visitors to the site, fraudsters use software "hitbots" or employ boiler-rooms of low-wage employees from other countries to generate clicks on ads, and then collect commission from pay-per-click programs
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A year ago, DiamondHarmony.com, an online jewelry store, decided that it had outgrown its sole source of advertising, which was eBay.
The company added an elaborate marketing effort on search engines that included a pay-per-click advertising campaign based on keywords and phrases. For its trouble, DiamondHarmonyDiamondHarmony became ensnared in click fraud.
Instead of actual prospects, the clicks were coming from fraudulent sources. The fraud, which cost DiamondHarmony $17,000 over seven months, was uncovered through analytical software the company installed from ClickTracks of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Martin Fleischmann put his faith in online advertising. He used it to build his Atlanta company, MostChoice.com, which offers consumers rate quotes and other information on insurance and mortgages. Last year he paid Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO )and Google Inc. (GOOG ) a total of $2 million in advertising fees. The 40-year-old entrepreneur believed the celebrated promise of Internet marketing: You pay only when prospective customers click on your ads.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently revealed that he clicks on Google ads "all the time." Asked at the Search Engine Strategies Conference earlier this month "When was the last time you clicked on an ad, and why, at Google?" Schmidt acknowledged:
I do it all the time, probably because I want to make sure that everything was working.
Are such evaluation clicks by the Google CEO registered by Google as "invalid clicks" and filtered out before advertisers are billed? Or, are Google advertisers charged for a click each time Schmidt clicks on a Google ad under the guise of making sure that "everything was working?"
