Click fraud can be as simple as one person starting a small Web site, becoming a publisher of ads, and clicking on those ads to generate revenue. Often the number of clicks and their value is so small that the fraud goes undetected.

However, huge numbers of clicks appearing to come from just one, or a small number of computers, or a single geographic area, look highly suspicious to the advertising network and advertisers. Clicks coming from a computer known to be that of a publisher also look suspicious to those watching for click fraud.

NYT says that web advertisers are still struggling to fight click fraud and estimates suggest that 13 percent of the total of online advertising clicks were fraudulent last year.:

Search engines like Google say that they have the problem under control. Google says that advertisers contend that fraudulent clicks account for just 0.02 percent of all online activity. If Google and an advertiser agree that a click is fraudulent, it offers the advertiser a credit.

Reggie Davis of Yahoo says he believes that Google’s click fraud rate of less than 1 percent is not accurate. “We’ve disclosed that our rate, before hiring Click Forensics, was between 12 and 15 percent,” a number that includes invalid clicks, or traffic that an advertiser should not pay for, he said.

NYTimes.com

Asked By: Amit Agarwal [41 ]