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

Search engines have been accused of being too lax in warning advertisers about the risksof click fraud. In addition, they do not do enough to protect advertisers. Lastly, theyhave been slow to remedy the problem. Do the pay per click search engines care aboutclick fraud? In a blog posted in December 2006 by Google Product Manager ShumanGhosemajumder, he states its top priority is to protect advertisers. It is for this reasonGoogle does not disclose any proprietary method which would allow click fraudperpetrators to reverse-engineer their systems. It is this lack of transparency that hascaused mistrust between Google and its advertisers. The search engines do not releaseany information as to the actual instances of click fraud either. There is no accurate wayfor advertisers to determine the extent of the problem because search engines refuse todisclose such data. They simply state that they have the appropriate systems in place todetect the majority of click fraud and advertisers are reimbursed accordingly for the badclicks.A company like Google monitors hundreds of thousands if not millions of sites currentlyusing Adsense. Third party auditing companies cite click fraud levels as high as 30 to40% of all clicks and that search engines are not doing a proper job in preventing clickfraud. Google claims they do not have access to vital web log data that the advertisermaintains and if they did, it would it be practical for them to analyze given the sheervolume of data. Regardless, Google stated in February 2007 that the percentage of actualclick fraud is .02%, with ”invalid” clicks at just 10% 35 . This statement was loudlycriticized in the media.35 CBC.ca, “Google says it loses $1 billion a year to false ad clicks”,http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/03/02/tech-googleclickfraud-20070302.html, Retrieved May 13, 200828