October 11, 2006
Pay-Per-Click Fraud Exposed
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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Posted by dj at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
Click fraud growing on the Web
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.
Posted by dj at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
The dark side of online advertising
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.
Posted by dj at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2006
Google CEO clicks ads 'all the time,' are his clicks marked 'invalid'?
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?"
Posted by dj at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2006
Click Fraud Threatens Web
The Federal Trade Commission believes that no place is more fraud-friendly than the web. The agency estimates that more than one in 10 Americans (perhaps as many as 30 million people in this country) have fallen victim to fraud. Last year, internet-related fraud complaints surpassed all others, comprising 55 percent of all digital malfeasance, and for the first time the net supplanted the telephone as the most popular initial point of contact for dupers to meet dupees.
An almost endless array of clever schemes exists to separate consumers from their money. There are cross-border scams that consist of fake foreign lotteries, phony prize promotions, advance-fee loan cons and the infamous Nigerian scam. Charity scams take advantage of consumers' generosity while so-called home-opportunity scams zero in on people looking for an easy way to make a few extra bucks. Identity thieves "phish" for personal information, like account numbers and PINs, which they use to sink your good credit (while sucking every penny out of your bank account). Pop-up spammers rely on nefarious methods to secretly wrest control of your PC desktop so they can pummel you with ads. Auction fraud accounts for half of the complaints the agency receives.
Posted by dj at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
