The New Face of Click Fraud
According to an article in the New York Times, a recent study indicates the not only has the rate of click fraud risen dramatically over the last year, it is taking on new forms which make it more difficult to detect.
Click fraud is a type if Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. As a result, advertisers end up paying for fraudulent clicks on their ads.
According to summary findings recently released by on-line ad-tracking firm Click Forensics, over the last year, the level of fraudulent clicks on legitimate advertisements reached the highest rate since 2006. Additionally, according to the firm's chief executive, the firm is starting to see fraudulent clicks routed through mobile devices, like wireless Internet cards. Such clicks are harder to detect than those coming from wired computers because the wireless card case effectively disguises the origin, lumping them in with legitimate mobile users under a single originating address.
KPA was previously involved in class actions against Google and Yahoo related to click fraud alleging Google and Yahoo did not do enough to prevent click fraud. These class actions resulted in settlements benefitting advertisers who paid for fraudulent clicks.
