Cnet today runs a piece on click fraud, the practice of driving revenue through fake clicks on paid search links. This has been something of a whistling-past-the-graveyard issue for the entire paid search field (see here and here). Stefanie Olsen reports. Worth a read.
….some marketing executives estimate that up to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be based on nonexistent consumers in today’s search industry.
In one recent example of the problem, law enforcement officials say a California man created a software program that he claimed could let spammers bilk Google out of millions of dollars in fraudulent clicks. Authorities said he was arrested while trying to blackmail Google for $150,000 to hand over the program. He was indicted by a California jury in June.