rohitj - 11:48 pm on Jul 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

I see no authority in this document but maybe i just haven't heard of click forensics. in any case, to a large extent I believe pricing adjusts overtime to reflect click fraud. Advertisers care about one thing, ROI. Eventually, the ROI goes down as click-fraud goes up. As a result, bids began to retract in industries where click fraud is especially rampant, so you essentially keep the ROI at a constant through this fluctuation of bid pricing. As bid pricing fluctuates, so too does the amount of click fraud in any industry. If one day a thief was receiving $3 per click on a keyword and then the next that same thief was only receiving $2, then he'd also may choose to focus his computing power on another industry..So its in a constant state of fluctuation but maybe that's just how I see it.

What implication does this "fluctuation" have on us?
Well, if click fraud were to go away tomorrow, then advertisers would be wiling to pay that much more for their customer. They would suddenly see a higher ROI and thus be encouraged to bid more. So, the way I see it there is really no long term gain from combatting (or not combatting) click-fraud in especially tight industries.

But i'm just looking at from the standpoint of the publisher. There is a much bigger picture--the end-consumer--which could be looked at if one wanted to make the case as to why we should combat click-fraud.