By Ross MacIver
One of the most popular forms of Internet advertising ispay-per-click (PPC). Merchants place ads with search engineslike Google or MSN and the ad appears whenever someone enters arelevant search.
If the ad is clicked the merchant pays a fee – anywhere from 5cents to $100. It’s a fabulous idea – ad campaigns targeted atyour most likely customers.
It’s such a fabulous idea that Google, the king of PPC, grossed$1.24 billion in the first 3 months of this year – most of itfrom advertising revenue.
Watch out, though. There’s trouble in PPC land. The flip side toPPC is a phenomenon called “click fraud” or “click spam.”
There are two types of click fraud. The first type occurs whensomeone maliciously clicks on your PPC ad to drive up youradvertising costs. It could be a competitor or a disgruntledformer employee.
The second type of fraud involves clicking on affiliate ads togenerate income. Affiliate ads are placed on third party websites and each time someone clicks on an affiliate ad the website owner receives a commission.
Industry observers believe that affiliate click fraud is thebiggest problem of the two. Either way, the result is the same –advertising budget depletion with little gain for the merchant.
Either type of click fraud can be accomplished with the use ofautomated “robots” or by hiring an army of workers. The IndiaTimes reported in 2004 that a “growing number of housewives,college graduates, and even working professionals acrossmetropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads tomake $100 to $200 per month.”
How serious is the problem? It’s hard to judge exactly, butclick fraud is commonly estimated at 20% to 35% of all PPC adcampaigns.
A recently launched lawsuit alleges that Google is aware of themagnitude of click fraud and does not do enough to alertadvertisers of the problem.
The class action suit launched by
Click Defense is a Colorado company specializing in click frauddetection. They claim that they themselves became a victim ofclick fraud when they advertised with Google’s Adwords programthis year.
They are seeking damages for breach of contract, negligence,unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices.
A Google spokesman said that the case is unmerited and thatGoogle will defend itself “vigorously.
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
