One would think that by now, with the huge resources at their disposal, that the big search engines like Google and Yahoo would have delivered on repeated promises to crack down on click fraud.
Don't think that.
Click fraud, where competitors or crooked publishers click on ads to drive up the advertiser's cost, keeps on rising, contends a company that monitors click fraud.
Indeed, in the third quarter of this year, fraudulent clicks accounted for 16.2 percent of all ad clicks, up from 15.8 percent in second quarter and 13.8 percent in the third quarter 2006, according to a new report from Click Forensics. Over the last year click fraud has grown each quarter.
"As online ad revenues continue to grow, so has the click fraud percentage," says Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO.
And that's across all search-based advertising. It's even worse for search engine content networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network, which place ads on web sites and share revenue with their publishers, says Cuthbert.
Here click fraud accounted for 28.1 percent in the third quarter, up from 25.6 percent in the second and 21.9 percent in the first. Says Cuthbert: "Click fraud is growing across the board, but it is growing faster in the content networks."
Click fraud is the No. 1 gripe with the pay-for-click ad model, where advertisers are charged whenever someone clicks on their ad. It can be done by a person clicking manually but increasingly it's done by botnets, computers programmed to click on the ads.
In fact, botnets are a key driver behind the increase in click fraud this year, according to Cuthbert. "In the first and second quarter of this year the botnets activity doubled," he says.
Click fraud is typically the work of a competitor anxious to drive up the advertiser's cost of doing business or a publisher whose site is serving ads from Google or another big ad network, with an eye to lining his or her pockets with increased ad revenue. "The problem is that the publisher has a financial incentive for clicks to occur," says Cuthbert.
Cuthbert contends that more than 70 percent of sites that make up content networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network are sites created solely for the purpose of generating revenue from ads, without any real content. Further, he argues that about 60 percent of ad clicks from those sites are fraudulent. "That’s a bad formula for the advertiser," he says.
For its part, Google begs to differ. It says it doesn't believe click fraud is anywhere near that common on its ad network. "We generally think that the estimates of third-party click fraud monitoring systems are artificially high," referring to Click Forensics, a spokesperson tells Media Life. "We don’t agree that it is an increasing problem."
Google will not release specific figures but has said that fewer than 10 percent of the clicks it tracks are not legitimate, and it says it has systems in place to filter the vast majority of these out. Only 0.02 percent are caught reactively – in other words, after an advertiser has complained, says the company.
Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended Oct. 14, according to Nielsen Online, Microsoft replaced Google as the top parent company, followed by Yahoo, Time Warner and News Corp. Online. The top five brands were Google, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, AOL Media Network and Microsoft.
NexTag was the No. 1 advertiser for the seventh straight week with 5.6 million impressions, followed by No. 2 Countrywide Financial Corporation at 4.7 million. With 30.5 million ads served, Yahoo was again the top advertising site, well ahead of No. 2 MySpace at 4.3 million.
Sessions per person per week remained even to last week at 17, and domains visited per person were also even at 39. PC time per person was up slightly from the previous week, to 17 hours and 35 minutes.
|
Top 25 parent companies
Through Oct. 14 |
|
#
|
Parent
|
Unique Audience (000)
|
Reach %
|
Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss)
|
|
1
|
Microsoft
|
84,788
|
62.3
|
0:42:10
|
|
2
|
Google
|
84,596
|
62.2
|
0:29:11
|
|
3
|
Yahoo!
|
77,195
|
56.7
|
1:07:16
|
|
4
|
Time Warner
|
69,321
|
50.9
|
1:20:50
|
|
5
|
News Corp. Online
|
43,148
|
31.7
|
0:47:18
|
|
6
|
eBay
|
33,516
|
24.6
|
0:55:03
|
|
7
|
InterActiveCorp
|
29,787
|
21.9
|
0:13:51
|
|
8
|
Wikimedia Foundation
|
22,884
|
16.8
|
0:08:12
|
|
9
|
Amazon
|
22,131
|
16.3
|
0:13:50
|
|
10
|
Walt Disney Internet
Group
|
20,290
|
14.9
|
0:20:54
|
|
11
|
Apple Computer
|
20,210
|
14.9
|
0:31:36
|
|
12
|
New York Times Company
|
20,190
|
14.8
|
0:09:51
|
|
13
|
Landmark Communications
|
19,755
|
14.5
|
0:11:21
|
|
14
|
RealNetworks, Inc.
|
17,231
|
12.7
|
0:17:42
|
|
15
|
AT&T Inc.
|
16,886
|
12.4
|
0:20:56
|
|
16
|
Bank of America
|
13,191
|
9.7
|
0:22:35
|
|
17
|
CBS Corporation
|
12,339
|
9.1
|
0:18:50
|
|
18
|
CNET Networks
|
12,012
|
8.8
|
0:07:59
|
|
19
|
United Online
|
11,766
|
8.6
|
0:27:17
|
|
20
|
E.W. Scripps Company
|
11,206
|
8.2
|
0:06:31
|
|
21
|
Comcast Corp.
|
11,093
|
8.2
|
0:32:52
|
|
22
|
Viacom Digital
|
10,762
|
7.9
|
0:26:55
|
|
23
|
Gannett
|
10,663
|
7.8
|
0:10:52
|
|
24
|
General Electric
|
10,359
|
7.6
|
0:10:16
|
|
25
|
Verizon Communications
|
9,775
|
7.2
|
0:20:08
|
|
Source: Nielsen Online
|
|
Top 25 brands
Through Oct. 14 |
|
|
Parent
|
Unique Audience (000)
|
Reach %
|
Time spent per person (hh:mm:ss)
|
|
1 |
Google
|
78,520
|
57.7
|
0:22:35
|
|
2 |
Yahoo!
|
76,242
|
56.0
|
1:07:48
|
|
3 |
MSN/Windows Live
|
62,981
|
46.3
|
0:42:45
|
|
4 |
AOL Media Network
|
57,072
|
41.9
|
1:30:09
|
|
5 |
Microsoft
|
54,450
|
40.0
|
0:16:09
|
|
6 |
Fox Interactive Media
|
37,295
|
27.4
|
0:50:46
|
|
7 |
eBay
|
28,764
|
21.1
|
0:56:18
|
|
8 |
YouTube
|
26,383
|
19.4
|
0:20:56
|
|
9 |
Wikipedia
|
22,747
|
16.7
|
0:08:08
|
|
10 |
Apple
|
20,210
|
14.9
|
0:31:36
|
|
11 |
Amazon
|
17,825
|
13.1
|
0:13:32
|
|
12 |
Weather Channel
|
17,494
|
12.9
|
0:11:36
|
|
13 |
Ask Search Network
|
17,469
|
|
