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

Most advertisers accidentally find their own advertisements on these arbitrage sites byclicking on an advertisement and being directed to these sites. Since the arbitrager makesmoney by his ability to convert low cost traffic into high value traffic, he will pay forinexpensive keywords and send searchers to these paid sites with much more expensiveclick costs. Often the redirected site is about an entirely different keyword.For illustration purposes, type in rateyourcompany.com and you would expect jobhunting or employer review sites. Instead, ads are displayed for loan refinancing, talentsites and doctor reviews (Appendix K). Unlike affiliate advertising networks, theadvertisers do not receive added value from these arbitrage sites or so called middlemenand often feel that these arbitragers are simply stealing from their advertising budgets.Arbitrage inflates keyword prices while making these crooks rich.7.8 ReferralsOne website pays another website for sending traffic to their site. Often this “traffictrading” is done through automatic scripts using click bots. A user will click on a linkand is automatically redirected to another site. Somewhere within the traffic tradingnetwork, clicks are inflated.On a more grassroots level, the blogger culture has developed a growing trend in clickfraud. In a simple example, a blogger signs up on any blog service, sets up an Adsenseaccount with Google and starts displaying advertisements. Fellow bloggers as a praise of24