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

enrolled as affiliate sites 29 . Software repeatedly links these sites to legitimate sites. Thisgenerates traffic, and in turn, clicks from unsuspecting visitors. The content on thesesites are generally sparse and serve no purpose other than re-direct traffic.7.12 Blogger CommunitiesThis is another form of profit sharing for the search engines. Online communities aresetup whereby bloggers get paid to write. Advertisements are targeted towards thearticle. One such site is called Xomba which is affiliated with Google Adsense. All thatis required of the blogger is to setup a Xomba and Adsense account, post a blog andchoose specific keywords. Adsense will place targeted advertisements to the blog basedupon the keywords chosen. Click revenue is shared 50/50 between Google Adsense andthe blogger. Similar to the schemes described above, fraudsters click on theadvertisements on their own blog or donate clicks to fellow bloggers.8. Conflicts of Interest8.1 Google and YahooWhen a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the search engine profits and hopefully, sodoes the advertiser. The biggest search engine is Google. Google has 75% of the USpaid search market share while the next largest, Yahoo has only about 9% 30 . Google,like all the search engines, has a financial interest to promote click fraud, at least in theshort run. Google’s profits from online advertising in 2007 are estimated at $16 billion29 Esparza, Susan, “Eliminating Click Fraud”, http://www.bruceclay.com/articles/eliminateclickfraud.htm,Retrieved May 11, 200830 www.emarketer.com, Retrieved May 11, 200826