purplecape - 10:25 pm on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

Where's the peril? If click fraud really is 17%, why can't advertisers just take that into account in their bids and budgets? To me, and maybe I'm naive, that doesn't seem like a lot and is also easily compensated for.

If there were more fraudulent clicks out there than valid, I'd understand the concern, but unless I've interpreted this wrong, 5 out of 6 clicks are valid, according to Click Forensics (and they're a biased source...).

Disclaimer: I'm just a guy with a small content site that goes back to 1996 (so not MFA!), so if I'm missing something obvious please explain in simple terms.