In a series of posts, we would like to bring you an introduction to the main subject areas of click fraud. In this post the topic of publisher click fraud is discussed.
Publisher click fraud occurs when a website owner publishes an advertisement on their website from syndicated ad programs such as Google’s Adsense or Yahoo’s Publisher Network. Using these programs the fraudster is allowed to add advertisements to their site, which, when clicked upon by visitors, generates a payment. The fraud occurs when the owner clicks on their own ads in an attempt to generate fraudulent income.
The majority of ads distributed by these syndication systems are pay per click which means the advertiser only pays the ad provider when a user clicks on the ad. The ads are placed upon syndicated sites in the hope that real users will click through and generate a sale or other action.
Publisher click fraud (also know as content network click fraud) is a growing problem, analysis has shown that this type of fraud was running at 28.1 percent in Q3 2007*
* source Click Fraud Index
This type of fraud is committed in one of three ways:
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The first is manual clicking on ads. The website owner repeatedly clicks on their own ads.
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The second method is via a click farm. Click farms will be discussed in depth later in this series of posts, but in brief a click farm is a group of low paid workers, usually from the developing world, who will click on ads for a tiny fee. They will act like real website visitors, clicking on a number of links in an effort to fool the invalid click filters. As long as the out payment for the click is greater than the cost of the click farm staff revenue can be generated.
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The last method is the use of click bots, again this is a large topic deserving it’s own post later in the series, but a click bot is a computer program, which, as the name suggests can generate hundred or thousands of clicks. These clicks come from infected machines connected to the internet. This creates a difficult task for the pay per click suppliers to spot.
The search engines have filters in place to catch publisher click fraud, but the efficacy of these filters is very hard to judge as there is a distinct lack of visibility of invalid click activity against your campaigns from the search engines.
Publisher click fraud is a growing problem which is driving many advertisers away from the content network, an excellent advertising medium when used in the manner it was designed for.
Next in our introduction to click fraud series we will discuss competitor click fraud.
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Neil Matthews is an independent click fraud consultant; details of his work can be seen at Fraudulent Clicks