I just came across this post while looking around for people to tell about ClickProtector. We just relaunched our site and started a free click fraud monitoring service, along with our pay service. You should check it out – http://www.clickprotector.com

Eric

I don’t think there’s a robot out there willing to pony up a credit card number and actually buy something!

One problem is internet outlets that rely on advertising dollars don’t want to admit that their mediums don’t work as advertising vehicles! They’ll sell you an ad, but they don’t want to hear about it when the ad doesn’t produce sales!

So for the time being, with their technology at least, the advertiser should be at comfort advertising with them. Anyway, if your tracking senses an abnormal traffic wave from one ip, then simply put = click fraud.

Here’s the link:
http://www.clickfraudindex.com

Ads appearing on splogs or parked domains do stink, but how is that click fraud? The end user decides if they want to click or not. Most users close the browser in disgust. However, if they click on an ad…isn’t that legit?

I think I may have overlooked clicks on syndicated ads through AdSense type networks. I know the major search engines can detect click fraud on their own sites, but what happens when an ad purchased through Google gets placed on some random syndicated site? Can Google detect click fraud on that site?

Hmmm…they could if the ad click redirects through their servers before getting to the ad destination site. We used to call these “jump servers” and I assume this is how they do it now but I’m not sure.

Simple analysis of how many times per minute an ad is clicked,, or how many times a certain IP address clicks on an ad, or historical analysis of click through rates, can usually uncover click fraud.

On the other hand, the best kept secrets in business are the extent of credit card fraud, and cell phone cloning fraud. The credit card companies and cell phone companies don’t want anyone to know how rampant the fraud is because it would encourage even more fraud. Perhaps the search engines and big sites have similar motives?

What I am saying is that click fraud is relatively easy to detect and prevent. I know the search engines do this on their own sites. How aggressive they are about fraud on syndicated sites…I don’t know.

Any advertiser who still pays CPM rates for page views should have their head examined. Fraud in page view counts and spam sites generating useless page views is indeed rampant and does constitute a fraud…but not click fraud.

@Mitchell: That would identify the most basic fraud, what about fraud done by zombie networks?

Maybe the line is somewhere in between what Mark and Don are saying, at least from monetization point of view, not talking about the intention behind the click.

If Google monitored which sites displayed their ads than if splogs and spam sites were rejected, the financial incentive for them to be formed wouldn’t be there and two problems could be solved at once. No more splogs and spam sites, and less click fraud. While a splog !=clickfraud, it can easily be used as a launching pad for it.

Yes, pay-per-sale is quite possible. Imagine if Google provided a way for AdWords advertisers to have customers buy using GPay and only pay for the ad if a sale was made. With the ad and payment system integrated, it’s no problem to track whether clicks resulted in a sale. The Adwords algorithm would change to reflect the click-to-sales effectiveness of the competing bidders rather than the click-to-bid-price.

Why would Google want to give up the sure thing of PPC? First, click fraud is a lot harder to stop than some people think. Google and merchants are losing a lot of money to it, and hand-to-hand combat with offenders is tedious in a market this big. Second, pay-per-sale would not be subject to the 14% (or higher) “click fraud tax”. That makes costs lower for Google, the merchant/advertiser, and the customer. The three of them can divide those savings rather than giving them to criminals.

The existence of PPS doesn’t mean that PPC goes away, because there are some things that can’t be measured by hard sales. However, if a product *can* be measured by sales it’s almost a sure bet that it *will* be more efficient to advertise using PPS rather than PPC.