Harvard professor Benjamin G. Edelman, is suing Google for typo-squatting. Edelman says that Google is profiting from typo-squatting by engaging with companies that are taking advantage of existing trademarks costing advertisers $30-50 million a year.
“This is one of the unsavory ways we all end up paying Google,” Edelman says in an interview. “Users don’t have to write Google a check to receive Google’s services. But, one way or another, Google manages to get users’ money.”
Typo-squatting is the practice of registering web sites addresses that are spelled similarly to the More»

Labels: Click Fraud, google, typo-squatting

Click fraud rates for search advertising remain practically unchanged for the second quarter of 2008 according to ClickForensics. The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent for Q2 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.3 percent rate reported for Q1 2008 and up from the 15.8 percent click fraud rate reported for Q2 2007.
However the average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network, was 27.6 percent. That’s down from the 27.8 percent rate reported for Q1 More»

Labels: Click Fraud, google, Yahoo

Advertising networks pool advertising space at large numbers of websites and then offer this space to advertisers as part of targeted click packages. These networks have been growing dramatically and enjoying great success as advertises struggle to maximize the amount of activity they get for a given campaign.
The New York Times reports and offers an interesting travel market case study that suggests advertisers are shifting their focus from campaigns with larger publishers at higher cost to campaigns where they can maximize the number of clicks per dollar spent.
Unfortunately for advertisers the equations grow increasingly complex after allowances are More»

Labels: Advertising, Click Fraud, PPC

According to Click Forensics, click fraud rates for content networks grew to 28.3% in Q4 2007. In other words 28 cents from every dollar went to fraud. What this report is saying is 28.3% of (PPC) providers and publishers revenue/profits are attributed to fraud. I found it disturbing that the rate was so high and if concerned that advertisers could use the information to take legal action against pay-per-click (PPC) providers and publishers to reclaim their ad spend. So I set out to clarify it.
I asked Click Forensics CEO Tom Cuthbert if he could provide me more More»

Labels: Click Fraud, Online Advertising, Search

Google reported that the rate of click fraud for which advertisers seek a refund represents less than 0.02% of all clicks. The company reported “every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone”, thus is in the interest of Google to reduce this rate.
On the other hand ClickForensics puts the click fraud rate at 14.2%. However ClickForensics’ rate is an overall average of click fraud across the search industry. The rate of click fraud across different ad industry sectors and different search providers varies widely. Those buying expensive keywords as More»

Labels: Click Fraud, Search Tools