Click Fraud From Botnets Still a Serious Problem

There is no slowing down of botnets, revealed by the recent Click Forensics report that highlighted a 10% increase in click fraud via botnets during the third quarter of 2008, as reported by bizreport on October 24, 2008.

Moreover, on the whole, click fraud is observed to be steady at approximately 16% during Q3 2008, declining slightly by 0.2% from Q2 2008 and on an annual basis. Also, other than the US, click fraud more often emanates from Russia (4.9%), France (4.8%) and the UK (3.5%).

According to Tom Cuthbert, President, Click Forensics, advertisers are making gains by proactively blocking fraud so that it cannot affect online campaigns. However, click fraud transactions from botnets are continuously growing and it is one vital area that the industry and advertisers need to monitor closely, as reported by bizreport on October 24, 2008.

The Click Forensics report also notes that there is a 27.1% click fraud rate for PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads appeared on results of search engines such as Yahoo publisher Network or Google Adsense. Researchers also observed an overall increase by 2% in click frauds from botnets. Further, botnet traffic accounted for 27.6% of the total traffic of click fraud in Q3 2008, an increase from 25.2% in Q2 2008.

Besides, the problem of click fraud arises when any user clicks on a PPC ad either inadvertently or because of some malicious intent. For instance, a competitor may click a PPC ad with the purpose to boost its ad spending. Further, a publisher might click PPC ads on his site to get more commissions. However, click fraud may also include activity that is free from malicious intent although that click might not mean anything valuable for the advertiser for example if anyone clicks an ad inadvertently or twice consecutively.

To conclude, at first sight, these figures might appear frightening; however, they might not represent the deduction in doubtful clicks taking place via search engines. As a matter of fact, Google says that there is just .02% of actual click frauds out of the total number of clicks.

Related article: Click Fraud in Q3 Rises for Industry, Including Yahoo! & Google

» SPAMfighter News - 06-11-2008

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