A recent analysis report has revealed that click fraud grew faster than before in the second quarter of the year. The report claimed that percentage of clicks on online advertisements that were bogus reached 15.8 percent in the second quarter of 2007. The report released by Click Forensics held that fraudulent clicks found on online content networks like Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network is more disturbing as 25.6 percent of total clicks were spurious, in comparison with 21.9 percent recorded at the end of the last quarter. Click Forensics in its report argued that the industry leaders such as Yahoo! and Google have largely ignored the trouble.
The leading online firms, Google and Yahoo still claim that the click fraud problem, though actual, is not much prevalent. Yahoo believes that almost 12 to 15 percent of clicks could be bogus, while Google contends that the number is less than 10 percent. On the other hand, analysts and advertisers are complaining that neither company provides enough data to allow them to examine the actual scene in this perspective.
In the meanwhile, New York-based market research firm eMarketer has projected that the North American online advertising fragment is expected to grow by more than $3 billion in 2007 to touch $19.5 billion mark by the end of this year. Speaking over the issue, Tom Cuthbert, chief executive of Click Forensics has said, ‘the problem only appears to be getting worse within the content networks run by companies like Google and Yahoo, it’s very concerning to advertisers, and the botnet issue appears to be fueling this growth’.
Google spokesman Barry Schnitt in his response to Click Forensics’ report, stated that Google does not in fact charge for any click fraud that it detects and claiming that the auditor’s estimates have never reflected the invalid click rates observed at Google.
Read
