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A year ago, DiamondHarmony, an online jewelry store, decided that it had outgrown its sole source of advertising, which was eBay.The company added an elaborate marketing effort on search engines that included a pay-per-click advertising campaign based on keywords and phrases. For its trouble, DiamondHarmony became ensnared in click fraud.
Instead of actual prospects, the clicks were coming from fraudulent sources. The fraud, which cost DiamondHarmony $17,000 over seven months, was uncovered through analytical software the company installed from ClickTracks of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Click fraud growing on the Web [news.com.com]
I'm not surprised it's growing, especially as online advertising spend is up. [webmasterworld.com]
It's odd -- despite all the howling from its customers about the partner distribution of paid ads, OV ignores it, and goes further into new and questionable ventures with it. The only way to force them to fix the problem is to leave them in sufficent numbers, they have to react.
It's easy enough to figure out why the management at Yahoo / Overture ignore the problem - it has gotten so bad that to fix it would tear out the bottom of their gross revenues. This problem has been building for at least two years and will get worse not better. They are in too deep.
Another FindWhat / Miva story for those of us who have been around for awhile.
Companies like google, yahoo, msn, lycos etc. are working to fight click fraud.
It's good for us, because the more fraud they fight means more free traffic for us.
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:11 am (utc) on Oct. 17, 2006]
