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Why Click Fraud Is Growing on the Web

nytimes.com — Click fraud most commonly happens when renegade partners, who get a portion of the fees earned by a search engine each time a paid link is clicked, deliberately generate excessive clicks with no chance that any of the clicks will result in a sale for the business that is paying for them

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aaaz 2 years 17 days ago, made popular 2 years 16 days ago

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SeBBBe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It's a weak system really. Easy to exploit. And, like everthing else on the web, when it can make money, it does get exploited. Even the ads themselves are exploiting users with unwanted spam. Adblock FTW.
- Monolith2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Worry over click fraud is unfounded. Google tracks clicks, even the ones from mongolia. They can tell if the majority of clicks from a certain website arent converting into sales, and the amount of money they pay to the website showing those ads diminishes. I know, im in the business.
  
  Further, the amount of click fraud that does get through still doesnt impact the monetary efficiency of google ads compared to more traditional forms of advertising. The amount a company pays per customer is far less with google/yahoo/msn adverts than with print ads... and that would still hold true if click fraud got 10 times worse.
- Monolith2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7And BTW - do we really need a new article on click fraud every 12 hours?
- gregharmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"they can tell if the majority of clicks from a certain website arent converting into sales".
  
  Yeah because Google employees have access to every website's analytics package. So they can just login and see how many sales you got that month, from a specific website.
  
  No. Google only knows if a domain's traffic isn't converting if you tell them. And then they don't know if you're lying or perhaps, mistaken.
  
  What if a search partner or similar sends SOME false clicks, but not enough to where it would generate a huge red flag. What then? You can't tell by conversions, because your conversion rate is still decent.
  
  Organized, well thought out click fraud is almost impossible to detect and it happens frequently. It IS a big problem.
  
  ( I'm in the industry and manage over 5 paid search campaigns, spending is in the 5 digit per day arena. So I have a lot of experience with this and I'm not talking out of my ass. )
  
  EDIT: I'd like to note that this varies depending on the industry your work with as well as the search engine you're working with.
AzBaja, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2I all ways click on every add on every web site I visit, right click open in a new window etc.
- SeBBBe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Yeah, I usually click the ads on websites I enjoy.
- HellifIno, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2-digg for using "add" in place of "ad", even w/ a good deal of previous information showing you how to spell it right.
  
  I'd vote you for -2, but I think you're trying the sarcasm attempt w/out saying so directly...
- da_bradler, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I click on all the digg ads every couple days just to pay my dues and believe me I never bought a damn thing.... arrest me?
- HellifIno, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@da
  
  You're feeding the click fraud bots. Stop it : P
- piesforyou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Been using adblock for such a long time, I didn't even realise digg has ads!
oatmeals, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1NYTimes, registration, and click fraud? No thanks.
newzman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We really need to get a quality CPA service soon. Google is said to have one in the works, but we need it now.
pencilneck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think click fraud will take care of itself.... my guess a system will come up where payment is based on conversion, so 20,000 hits may show up for a web site, but if only 20 purchases, that is what the pay will be based on.
HellifIno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Google recently paid out something in the range of $3 million to advertisers claiming click fraud. This is a TINY percentage of their earnings from the ad revenues. Yet they gave it up to make some advertisers happy.

The rate that click fraud is growing is so pathetically low that it doesn't even really register on the radar of the companies that are dedicated to serving out ads.

Think about it, really. You see an ad for something you THINK you might wanna look at. You click the link. You see it's NOT really what you're looking for, and close the window/tab. THAT counts as click fraud. Why? You didn't explore the site or buy anything, thusly it was a "false" click, and thusly click fraud. Can I hear a resounding "DOH!" ?

Companies are counting valid "oh, this is crap/didn't want to end up here" via an ad window/tab closings as intentional "I only clicked on the ad (or made my bot do so) to earn cash for myself/my friends". They really cannot tell the difference unless they watch the logs and note the IP of the connector. Which they generally don't do.

Meh.
- opencad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Oh this is crap" clicks . . .
  
  That's an innaccurate view of what advertisers think. I know, cause I'm click-based advertiser. I run ads, people click thru, some buy. On that basis I determine how much to invest in click-based advertising.
  
  Click fraud is when I get thousands of times more clicks and fewer sales because my ads are ending up on click-farms and pay to read sites. The solution is to re-evaluate how much of my money Google and Yahoo get. If those folks want the 12000-18000 I used to spend, they have to figure out how to kill off the click farms and pay to read sites. Its not my problem, its theirs. They want my money.
  
  I'm totally happy with "Oh this is crap" clicks. I'm just not interested in "Oooh I just made a penny for clicking on that site" clicks.
kingstarusa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I recently increase my google adword advertisement. It his generating huge clicks from content network but no increase in sale. I was paying triple the cost for 2 weeks. I finally realize this is through fraud clicks.

So, I too think this problem is getting serious. It's probably not hard to have computer or cheap labor to click on them. The IP address is likely to different each time to avoid detection.
- HellifIno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1.. or what you're offering is not wanted?
  
  Just to throw that out....
- kiddailey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So you think that because you didn't see an increase in sales even though you increased advertising spending that it was completely due to fraudulent clicks? Did you consider your keyword selection, your ad placement, your product(s) themselves, demand, and even the quality of your web site? Just throwing more money at advertising doesn't necessarily mean you will see an increase in revenue.
opencad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was a victim of click fraud. I sell CAD training materials. I had ads running 24/7 for two years. About three months ago, sales fell dramatically. I increased ad spending, sales went down. I started looking at logs and found that my ad budget was being used up by clicks from the same locations. The turn around for an "investigation" is weeks or months, and a refund isn't likely. I cut the ads. I've recently started advertising again. I set my ad price to under 25 cents. The result is that my ads are making sales closer to what they are used to because they aren't as attractive to click frauders as the $1-$2 per click through ads I used to buy.
joffa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Worked in the industry on this a bit. The ultimate problem is how do you judge the intent of a click? SO the industry has gone towards putting the risk on the advertiser and letting them bid down the price of key words.
molecool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I got burned with that 4 years ago - bought several hundred dollars worth of 'click throughs'. Not ONE response - not a single one. Never wasted my money like that again - big learning experience... this whole industry is run by sheisters...
aderemiojikutu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hey don't live in illusions, if the bulk of the clicks are not profitably being converted to sales, the Adwords campaign budget of the companies would not be increasing every quarter. Go and check Google's quarterly reports again. It would be foolhardy for a Fortune 500 company to be throwing money down the drain... Enough of these arm-chair and professorial treatise on click fraud.
bbpix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Dudes and Dudess's. You don't support any website by clicking randomly on ads you have no real interest in. Somebody else is paying for that ad. Using someone else's money without their permission to support something you like ain't generosity or philanthropy. It's theft.

SOOO... If you want to support DIgg, (good cause) don't use someone else's money - USE YOUR OWN!
- AzBaja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It never hurts to click them any way I make sure I do it on every pc I log into.
zoom1928, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google isn't paying the money they owe to web masters, and they're using this as an excuse. I know that when I have over 300,000 ad impressions, and Google pays me nothing that there is a problem. The problem is dishonesty by Google.
soviyet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ANSWER: CPM

Get rid of CPC, don't eagerly anticipate good CPA programs. Get rid of all the BS ad programs that favor advertisers looking for extremely cheap but hugely effective ad channels. I can't believe they have the nerve to complain about this.

Here's the reality:
How much would an advertiser pay to run an ad on a television show with 2 million viewers? Several million?
How much would an advertiser pay to run an ad in a magazine with a circulation of 100,000? Tens of thousands?
How much would an advertister pay to run an ad on a website with a million new visitors every day? 10 CENTS A CLICK?

HAHAHA this whole system is a joke. I agree with the complainers. Get rid of it. And get ready to start paying CPM. Everyone wins.
dupswapdrop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't click through and buy anything, in the last year I did do it once and that was for a $15 mp3 player that I am very happy with. But I never buy anything by clicking through ads on websites. Also by clicking through I got about one hundred spam emails a day for about two weeks.
ericesque, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Let me save you some time reading the article...

Why click fraud is growing on the internet:

because people like money.
gilfix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.gfraud.com showcases the issue
AzBaja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1a few cents here is no big deal any way, who would miss that?
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Why Click Fraud Is Growing on the Web

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