Online Advertising Survival: Combating Click Fraud - University of ...

Affiliate programs are popular methods for online businesses to generate advertisingrevenues. Search engine affiliates are Web sites that implement results from a searchengine onto their own Web sites. Agreements are generally made with the major searchengines like Google and Yahoo to recycle advertisements to these affiliate Web sites(Appendix J). As part of the advertising agreements with Google and Yahoo, theadvertiser either consents or opts out. These affiliates receive a share of each click.Typically, the affiliates will target search terms with high bids on their Web site using alow cost bid to direct traffic to their site. Anyone can startup an affiliate site and startdirecting traffic to your site in a matter of minutes.For instance, the affiliate creates a Web site using a generic search term “shoes”. Thesearch term “shoes” will likely have a low bid cost of $.01 given its broad and genericmeaning. Their affiliate site contains unique advertisements with individual searchphrases, such as “Cole-Haan”, which likely garners a high bid cost. If the Cole Haanadvertisement is clicked on, the affiliate network, along with the search engine, willreceive a portion of the click revenue. Using simple math, if the affiliate receives morethan $.01 from the Cole Haan advertisement, they make a profit.22