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The Advertisers Bane Click Fraud
ith the geometric growth Yahoo's estimated $3.7 billion
in the popularity of the revenue for 2005.
Internet all over the
world, commerce has taken a new How does it work? Simple. There
form. Ads posted on websites have are two ways: results page ads,
always been meant to generate and ads in other sites.
income for the site owner -
whether they are ads for their When key words are searched using
own products or ads by sponsors a search engine, the results page
who pay for the ad space. When will display links to pages that
that did not seem to take off as are relevant to those words.
expected, search engines had the These links are placed there
brilliant idea of making ads through a partnership program
relevant to those who use their between the search engine and the
sites. advertiser. Each time a visitor
clicks on the link, the
That gave life to the phenomenon advertiser is billed.
of the "pay-per-click" ad or the
PPC. This generated good income For websites, a second kind of
for those who opened their sites affiliate program is entered
for such ads. It has grown so into. The search engine places
much that it has become an ads on the pages of a website
industry in itself only in the based on the topic on that page.
recent years. If a blog entry talks on cars,
the ads on that particular entry
Advertising in this manner has will focus on various
reached unprecedented heights in automobiles, makers and dealers.
the recent years. Industry Every time a visitor clicks on
sources say keyword advertising the ads, the advertiser is billed
amounted to just about half of and search engine splits this
revenue with the site-owner.
A little more complex than that
Ideally, this should make all is a competitor clicking off a
parties concerned happy. But, lo, little at a time on the ads of
people find ways to change this various companies. This raises
scenario and turn it to their own little enough suspicion but still
advantage - to avoid having to does the work, slowly but surely.
pay advertising fees and to make
competitors pay more for If a company puts a cap on its
ineffective service. advertising budget - which is the
case for most - this means that
Then Fraud Comes In the ads will have a short
exposure time, thereby lessening
People will find ways of getting the possibility of more hits from
around the payment scheme. Others better sources.
will target competitor sites,
just to leverage their own. With This method of click fraud is so
these incentives in mind, simple it can only come from a
fraudulent clicks on ads have very unsophisticated party. But,
already cost tens of thousands of the others are getting more and
dollars, and all it needs is more creative.
someone to want to mess up the
"pay-per-click" (PPC) system. There are "bots" that will click
and ensure that the source IP
The simplest way to do this is to addresses are varied enough and
have someone click on your harder to trace back. Some of
competitor's ad so many times. these bots can even generate IP
Nothing comes off that clicking addresses that lead nowhere like
frenzy but a hefty bill for your error 404 messages or simply to
competitor. addresses that don't exist.
As a gesture of goodwill and
Some companies have resorted to partnership, Yahoo! has
developing websites filled with encouraged the use of third party
gibberish along with the key developers to help pull down this
words used by the competitor, statistic drastically. When the
hence the ad appears in a site words "click fraud" are used in
that will not generate hits. This the Yahoo search engine, it will
serves to lower the performance generate a list of companies like
of the ads until the site Authenticlick, Click Defense,
degenerates to the later pages of ClickAssurance, Clicklab,
the search engine until it is Clickrisk, VeriClix,
finally dropped. Taking off from WhosClickingWho who have created
this is the idea of the "splog" tools to analyze clicks on ads
or the spam blog. This site and detect suspicious activity.
creates content taken from
popular sites to generate Armed with relevant information
"active" content. This then from these analysts - like ad
solicits ads of "relevant" sites campaign name, IP addresses,
and helps lower the performance keywords used for the searched,
of those ads. referring or origin pages,
geographic origin of the clicks,
Yahoo and Partners unite the number and times of the
clicks, and other relevant data -
Advertisers are feeling the brunt an advertiser can then use the
of this problem. Some have even information to lodge a legal
reported experiencing as much as complaint against the erring
40% wastage of advertising party. Of course, this will prove
budgets due to the fraudulent a little more difficult with the
clickers. more sophisticated forms of click
fraud, but it's a start.
that is possible.
Yahoo! is also looking into
making the click-through process Industry pundits are proclaiming
more sophisticated, in response. the impending doom of the
For example, they can limit the industry, saying new means of
payment for ads that were income generation for ads will be
followed-through with another discovered and used in lieu of
action the destination site, e.g. the existing problematic
a registration page. But this situation.
will translate to lesser revenues
for the affiliated sites that But there is still hope. If
show the ads. fraud-mongers are creative, so
are the industry professionals.
As a result of this campaign, For now, advertisers can guard
hundreds of individuals were sued against fraud by using whatever
by advertisers in 2005. Some have tools are available. Rest
been punished and more cases are assured, more tools will address
still pending. This makes the this problems in a more effective
scenario less grim. Still there way. It may just be a matter of
is a long way to go before time.
solutions to this problem can
totally address the problem, if
About the Author:
For more information please visit http://www.theinternetone.net
Read more articles by: Danny Wirken
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
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