Click Fraud is Down, and Up
The latest numbers released by Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company, indicate that while click fraud during the first quarter of 2008 is down compared to the fourth quarter of 2007, it is up compared to the same quarter last year.
During the first quarter of 2008, the overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.3%, reflecting a decrease from the 16.6% observed during the previous quarter. However, this was an increase from the 14.8% reported during the first quarter of 2007.
The average click fraud rate of pay-per-click (PPC) ads shown on search engine networks, including Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher, was pegged at 27.8%, reflecting a decline from the 28.3% reported for the fourth quarter of 2007. However, as with the overall industry average, this was an increase from the 21.9% rate observed during the same quarter last year.
Click fraud traffic from botnets increase 8% from the previous quarter, and Monaco (3.1%), Ghana (3.1%), and New Caledonia (2.4%) were the three leading countries of click fraud originating outside of North America.
Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics, said that these quarter-to-quarter declines reflect the increased filtering that Google and Yahoo! seem to be doing. “If advertisers, publishers and ad networks continue to take proactive steps to filter out this lower quality traffic, the click fraud rate could trend downward even further, and that’s good news for the entire industry,” he said.
Source:
http://www.clickforensics.com/Pages/
Releases.aspx?r=Industry-Click-Fraud-Rate-Down
