Click Fraud on the Rise

Greg Sterling points out this press release by Click Forensics that documents the rise of click fraud. According to Click Forensics

Google and Yahoo are better at weeding out click fraud than smaller Web sites, but Click Forensics still concluded both companies are being hard hit. About 12.8 percent of the clicks on ads served up by Google and Yahoo are deceptive, up from 12.1 percent three months ago.

While it maybe fairly obvious or assumed by all that click fraud is on the rise, it is always nice to have some data behind it, although I believe fraud is more rampant then anyone believes.

I would love to see the data behind this such as if content network was included or if this was only search networks because I have a sneaking suspicion that content network click fraud is well higher then 14.8%.

The most amazing thing we can take from this study is that if we do the math by examining the rise in click fraud, vs the rise in PPC spend compared to last years estimate $800 million fraudulent clicks, we can see that click fraud is about a $1 Billion dollar a year industry. I wonder how many more click fraud tanker ship are sailing around out there!?