Bogus Clicks on Web Ads Continue to Rise

AP via Yahoo! ^ | July 16, 2006 | Michael Liedtke

[AlextheWise1]

wow i think id expect more like 15% real clicks

[claptrap]

Internet business like most store front business is
plagued with dishonesty and con games. Most producers
of products fail to stand behind their products.

[ChadGore]

Google is the biggest over valuation in American history.

[hedgetrimmer]

How do you commit 'click fraud'?

[Nachoman]

I got to get my eyes checked. I thought that read bogus chicks. I was expecting a story on Russian mail-order brides.

[ovrtaxt]

lol there are plenty of Bogus American chicks too.

[Brilliant]

I'm guessing by having some loser spend his time clicking the ad so that you get paid more.

[Churchillspirit]

I recently had a bad experience with on line promotion.

I responded to an announcement that I had won a free meal for two at a restaurant to be selected from a list provided. All I had to do was try a product from another list provided.

I chose Video Professor. Sure enough the video arrived, after my credit card was charged with the shipping and handling. Fair enough. However the next week my account was charged $79.95 by Video Professor. I immediately returned the video, which I had not opened and eventually received a credit of $79.95.

A few weeks later another video arrived from Video Professor and I was again charged shipping and handling. This time my bank wanted to cancel by debit card and issue a new one (what a hassle). I told them to forget it.

Net result - I paid approx. $10. and never did get the free dinners.

Morals - 1. there are no free lunches - or free dinners either.

2. Never respond to an offer on line from an unknown source.

[expatpat]

They need to charge for converted visits to the website.

[Major Matt Mason]

If you are the owner of a web site (or publisher) that features banner and text advertising, you personally are not allowed to click on those banners or text ads. Also, you are not allowed to entice site visitors to click on the advertising. Both of these instances would be considered click fraud because, in a situation where you are being paid per click, these clicks would only be made to receive payment and not with the intent to actually purchase a product (or whatever action is required by clicking on that ad). Now, this could be a tough thing to prove since clicks aren't created equally - not everyone that clicks on advertising is going to purchase something. Usually, though, there is probably a sudden surge in clicks that is not joined by a surge in traffic which makes it easier to spot the fraud.

There are other, more nefarious forms of click fraud, such as someone from a rival site intentionally clicking on the advertising at your site to try to cause you problems with your advertising networks. Or, if you are an advertiser, a rival could intentionally click on your ads to drive up the cost of your advertising bill.

[weegee]

Smoke and mirrors and an unethical industry.

Reminds me of newspaper circulation figures and Hollywood's creative accounting.

But legislators have never done much to prevent the sale of your private information between these commercial interests. So now we are faced with rampent spam, identity theft, and fraud. The barn door is still open.

[weegee]

Perhaps a javascript to automatically credit the click.

The are popups as well as popunders.

And then there are the popups that launch popups. Some such sites buy expired domain names (or buy soundalikes), direct you to a "search engine" they load onto that page and then do all sorts of nasty things to your computer (that was how I got gator's spyware without ever clicking anything).

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Excellent description for the layperson out there.

[ichabod1]

Try my product. Always wondered what his hook was. Now I know.

[ichabod1]

Really, it's so easy to get a massive inocculation of malware from one simple mistake that I wonder how people who don't know much about computers are able to stay up and going at all.

[G. Stolyarov II]

It seems that Google and Yahoo! are on the defensive in a standard cycle of offensive/defensive buildup. There is a system with a potential to be abused and exploited. The abusers and exploiters devise an ingenious way to carry out fraud. Those who run the system need to raise their defenses to counter the current fraud-- but the fraudsters eventually manage to outmaneuver the defenses and create a new scheme. This is somewhat analogous to the historical defense/offense escalation in the military realm. The moment someone builds a new fortress or defense system impregnable to old attacks, somebody else will try to find a way to breach the new defense system.

I am
G. Stolyarov II
http://www.panasianbiz.com
http://www.thebizofknowledge.com
http://www.risingsunofnihon.com
http://www.zhonghuarising.com
http://rationalargumentator.com

[sully777]

Is this the same thing as ad pimping?

I've seen non-profit churches claim their message/outreach is going out to the world based on the number of hits on their sites. And since they are non-profit (their supposed community outreach services have no profit/loss/etc) the number of hits supposedly show "effectiveness" which drives their donation base.

[reagandemo]

"They need to charge for converted visits to the website."

Ok as a publisher you are required to do not only the advertising but the sales and support for them also. I don't think so. What works and works well is to charge a set price for impressions. That is how many people look at the ad. Your client does not get charged for false responses and they will re-book based on the cost per acquisition that they come up with.

[giotto]

Most often, Web site owners repeatedly click the ads on their own sites to generate money for themselves. In other cases, advertisers target the ads of their rivals to drain their marketing budgets.

I would think that in most cases this would generate only one click per user. At least this is how Yahoo does it. Unless the fraudsters are killing their cookies and then clicking again, I don't see how a single user could rack up multiple clicks.