Facebook's contract with pay-per-click marketers does not completely protect the social networking service from liability for problematic clicks by outside companies, despite a disclaimer stating that Facebook has no responsibility for click fraud, a federal judge has ruled.
But the judge also ruled that Facebook's disclaimer successfully precludes liability for clicks made by outside companies that are seeking to drive up their competitors' ad costs.
The mixed decision, issued this week by U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, Calif., draws a line between clicks that were "fraudulent" in the sense that the clicker had dubious intentions, and clicks that were improper for other reasons, such as when technical problems prevented users from reaching a landing page.
Fogel ruled that Facebook's disclaimer protects the company only from clicks made by third parties with an intent to defraud, and not clicks that don't go through for more benign reasons.
The ruling left both sides claiming they had scored points in the litigation, which cleared the way for the marketers to obtain evidence from Facebook through the pre-trial discovery process.
"Plaintiffs view it as a significant victory because the judge rejected Facebook's argument that a click fraud disclaimer immunized it against liability for any type of improper third party click," said Jonathan Shub, who represents the marketers. "We believe that the evidence will show that Facebook has immature systems resulting in improper billing of a wide range of clicks for which advertisers should not have been charged."
For its part, Facebook said it was "pleased a number of claims have been dismissed for good." The company added: "We believe the remaining, much narrower, claims are also without merit and will fight them vigorously."
The case dates to last summer, when sports site RootZoo and several other online marketers sued the social networking service, alleging discrepancies between their internal data and the number of clicks they were charged for by Facebook. RootZoo's original complaint alleged that its analytics showed that 300 clicks were generated by Facebook on June 2, 2008, but that Facebook charged the company for 804 clicks.
Facebook asserted that its contract with marketers precluded liability for click fraud because it included the following language: "Facebook shall have no responsibility or liability to me in connection with any third-party click fraud or other improper actions that may occur."
But RootZoo and the other marketers successfully argued that "improper actions" means only clicks made with a harmful intent, and not clicks that are "non-fraudulent but otherwise invalid." Such an invalid click could occur when the same user inadvertently clicks on an ad twice in rapid succession, or clicks on an ad but doesn't actually reach the marketer's site.
Fogel's ruling this week revisited an earlier decision dismissing claims against Facebook stemming from improper clicks by third-party companies. After that decision, the marketers filed amended papers spelling out why they sought to hold Facebook liable for invalid third-party clicks.
Showing posts with label fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fraud. Show all posts
Monday, August 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Click-Fraud Rates Remain At Record Level
The average "innocuous invalid rate" in Anchor Intelligence's network declined to 29.8% in the second quarter of 2010, representing a 36.1% sequential decrease. That means the invalid traffic rate dropped to less than 1% from 7% in the prior quarter, according to the company's Traffic Quality Q2 2010 report released Monday. But the decrease does not necessarily mean good news for advertisers.
Anchor analyzes multiple types of advertising, but predominantly driven by CPC, search ads. While the decrease presents an interesting trend, it does not represent a decline in malicious activity across the Web, but rather a decline in robot traffic such as Web site crawlers and spiders designed to index Web sites as well as a sharp decrease in internal testing traffic like test clicks from ad networks and search engines. The report suggests that since innocuous invalid traffic is generally pre-filtered by ad providers, it rarely impacts an advertiser's ad budget.
While neither the innocuous-invalid rate or the attempted click-fraud rate bode well for advertisers, the malicious intent of the click-fraud invalids generally are worse "because in those instances you're dealing with groups of bad actors who spend lots of time, money, energy, and resources to steal money from the advertising community," says Ken Miller, Anchor's chief executive officer. "Whereas the innocuous is more of an annoying occurrence that many companies can manage, the malicious activity requires systems that are as good as those built by the bad guys, and most companies aren't equipped to do that."
The attempted click-fraud rate remained nearly unchanged, decreasing from 29.2% in Q1 to 28.9% in Q2, but year-on-year the percentage jumped 26%. The Traffic Quality Report aims to provide online advertisers with insights into the magnitude of traffic quality issues observed by Anchor, while providing clear and accurate definitions for the statistics provided.
Another trend that Anchor identified points to targeting smaller, less established ad networks and search engines that may on average become more vulnerable to attacks. It has become apparent that some customers consistently record increases in volume while also experiencing decreases in attempted click-fraud rates. This trend indicates that advertisers are seeing improved performance on ad networks and search engines that defend networks and sites against click fraud.
Anchor also measures click fraud by country. Of the top 30 countries, Vietnam took No. 1 at 37.3% in Q2 when it comes to attempted click fraud, up from 35.4% sequentially. Anchor attributes this to automated, high-velocity traffic from a distinct number of IP addresses as well as traffic from users displaying historically suspicious behavior.
Vietnam's Internet infrastructure is more vulnerable to attack than those of other countries because most computers run on outdated operating systems and Web browsers. Furthermore, the click-fraud attempts originating out of Vietnam in Q2 were believed to be a result of machines that were compromised during politically motivated cyber attacks against blogs criticizing mining projects in Vietnam.
Australia and the United States remain at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, when it comes to the highest attempted click-fraud rates. The click-fraud rate in Australia increased from 35.2% in Q1 to 36.4 in Q2, and the attempted click-fraud rate in the U.S. decreased from 35.0% to 34.0%.
Click fraud is not the only malicious online activity advertisers need to keep an eye on. Video as a promotional advertising tool will begin to attract more mischief by those who want to exploit the Web and its content.
Anchor has successfully tested its ClearMark technology on video ads, but they don't make up a large percentage of the ads the company monitors, mainly because client demand has not yet reached the medium, Miller says. It likely will eventually.
Hackers took advantage of a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on Google's YouTube Sunday, hitting sections where users post comments, according to Network World, an IDG News site. The hack focused on clips related to pop star Justin Bieber. It didn't involve malware, but the code did affect YouTube pages so visitors saw tasteless messages or redirected to external sites with adult content.
Anchor analyzes multiple types of advertising, but predominantly driven by CPC, search ads. While the decrease presents an interesting trend, it does not represent a decline in malicious activity across the Web, but rather a decline in robot traffic such as Web site crawlers and spiders designed to index Web sites as well as a sharp decrease in internal testing traffic like test clicks from ad networks and search engines. The report suggests that since innocuous invalid traffic is generally pre-filtered by ad providers, it rarely impacts an advertiser's ad budget.
While neither the innocuous-invalid rate or the attempted click-fraud rate bode well for advertisers, the malicious intent of the click-fraud invalids generally are worse "because in those instances you're dealing with groups of bad actors who spend lots of time, money, energy, and resources to steal money from the advertising community," says Ken Miller, Anchor's chief executive officer. "Whereas the innocuous is more of an annoying occurrence that many companies can manage, the malicious activity requires systems that are as good as those built by the bad guys, and most companies aren't equipped to do that."
The attempted click-fraud rate remained nearly unchanged, decreasing from 29.2% in Q1 to 28.9% in Q2, but year-on-year the percentage jumped 26%. The Traffic Quality Report aims to provide online advertisers with insights into the magnitude of traffic quality issues observed by Anchor, while providing clear and accurate definitions for the statistics provided.
Another trend that Anchor identified points to targeting smaller, less established ad networks and search engines that may on average become more vulnerable to attacks. It has become apparent that some customers consistently record increases in volume while also experiencing decreases in attempted click-fraud rates. This trend indicates that advertisers are seeing improved performance on ad networks and search engines that defend networks and sites against click fraud.
Anchor also measures click fraud by country. Of the top 30 countries, Vietnam took No. 1 at 37.3% in Q2 when it comes to attempted click fraud, up from 35.4% sequentially. Anchor attributes this to automated, high-velocity traffic from a distinct number of IP addresses as well as traffic from users displaying historically suspicious behavior.
Vietnam's Internet infrastructure is more vulnerable to attack than those of other countries because most computers run on outdated operating systems and Web browsers. Furthermore, the click-fraud attempts originating out of Vietnam in Q2 were believed to be a result of machines that were compromised during politically motivated cyber attacks against blogs criticizing mining projects in Vietnam.
Australia and the United States remain at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, when it comes to the highest attempted click-fraud rates. The click-fraud rate in Australia increased from 35.2% in Q1 to 36.4 in Q2, and the attempted click-fraud rate in the U.S. decreased from 35.0% to 34.0%.
Click fraud is not the only malicious online activity advertisers need to keep an eye on. Video as a promotional advertising tool will begin to attract more mischief by those who want to exploit the Web and its content.
Anchor has successfully tested its ClearMark technology on video ads, but they don't make up a large percentage of the ads the company monitors, mainly because client demand has not yet reached the medium, Miller says. It likely will eventually.
Hackers took advantage of a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on Google's YouTube Sunday, hitting sections where users post comments, according to Network World, an IDG News site. The hack focused on clips related to pop star Justin Bieber. It didn't involve malware, but the code did affect YouTube pages so visitors saw tasteless messages or redirected to external sites with adult content.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Google Sued For Click Fraud For First Time In Five Years
A Seattle locksmith has sued Google for click fraud for allegedly charging the company for clicks on paid-search ads that it believes were made by a competitor.
In a complaint filed in King County state court last week, 123 Lock & Key argues that Google breached its contract and also violated Washington state laws by charging for allegedly questionable clicks.
This lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind in more than five years, when Google settled a class-action click-fraud lawsuit.
A Google spokesperson said the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit and couldn't comment on 123 Lock's allegations. But he said Google has "devoted significant resources to protect advertisers from invalid clicks." He added that the company "will continue to fight click fraud and work with our advertisers to investigate every click fraud claim and credit them retroactively, as appropriate."
123 Lock says in its court papers that it began advertising with Google last October, at which time it received around 15 clicks a day -- a figure that remained stable through March. Between October and March, around 80% of the people who clicked through followed up with a phone call, according to the lawsuit.
Last March, however, 123 Lock began receiving between 100 and 150 clicks a day. "123 would often receive a flurry of clicks within a single minute," the lawsuit alleges. "These clicks never converted into phone calls. Because of the click fraud, 123 was forced to cease advertising on Google."
123 Lock owner Guy Aloni said through a spokesman that he informed Google he suspected that the uptick in clicks was the result of actions by a competitor, but that Google did not satisfactorily respond.
The lawsuit alleges that Google's AdWords agreement with marketers provides that Google has sole discretion over whether to offer a refund for suspected click fraud. But 123 Lock's lawyer, Aric Bomsztyk, argues that Google still has to exercise that discretion in good faith.
Several years ago, allegations of click fraud frequently drew headlines. But in 2006, Google settled a class-action click-fraud lawsuit by agreeing to provide ad credits to marketers that had been charged for improper clicks. The agreement called for up to $60 million in total ad credits.
Since then, Google has faced several cases challenging its placement of paid-search ads on supposedly low-quality sites, but hasn't faced other lawsuits by marketers that alleged that a competitor was driving up search costs by clicking on ads on the main search results page.
In July of 2006, Google began offering a reporting feature that tells marketers how many clicks are being filtered out of Google's system. Overall, Google says it currently filters out less than 10% of clicks. The company estimates that undetected click-fraud accounts for less than .02% of clicks.
By Wendy Davis
In a complaint filed in King County state court last week, 123 Lock & Key argues that Google breached its contract and also violated Washington state laws by charging for allegedly questionable clicks.
This lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind in more than five years, when Google settled a class-action click-fraud lawsuit.
A Google spokesperson said the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit and couldn't comment on 123 Lock's allegations. But he said Google has "devoted significant resources to protect advertisers from invalid clicks." He added that the company "will continue to fight click fraud and work with our advertisers to investigate every click fraud claim and credit them retroactively, as appropriate."
123 Lock says in its court papers that it began advertising with Google last October, at which time it received around 15 clicks a day -- a figure that remained stable through March. Between October and March, around 80% of the people who clicked through followed up with a phone call, according to the lawsuit.
Last March, however, 123 Lock began receiving between 100 and 150 clicks a day. "123 would often receive a flurry of clicks within a single minute," the lawsuit alleges. "These clicks never converted into phone calls. Because of the click fraud, 123 was forced to cease advertising on Google."
123 Lock owner Guy Aloni said through a spokesman that he informed Google he suspected that the uptick in clicks was the result of actions by a competitor, but that Google did not satisfactorily respond.
The lawsuit alleges that Google's AdWords agreement with marketers provides that Google has sole discretion over whether to offer a refund for suspected click fraud. But 123 Lock's lawyer, Aric Bomsztyk, argues that Google still has to exercise that discretion in good faith.
Several years ago, allegations of click fraud frequently drew headlines. But in 2006, Google settled a class-action click-fraud lawsuit by agreeing to provide ad credits to marketers that had been charged for improper clicks. The agreement called for up to $60 million in total ad credits.
Since then, Google has faced several cases challenging its placement of paid-search ads on supposedly low-quality sites, but hasn't faced other lawsuits by marketers that alleged that a competitor was driving up search costs by clicking on ads on the main search results page.
In July of 2006, Google began offering a reporting feature that tells marketers how many clicks are being filtered out of Google's system. Overall, Google says it currently filters out less than 10% of clicks. The company estimates that undetected click-fraud accounts for less than .02% of clicks.
By Wendy Davis
Friday, April 9, 2010
New Study Finds Lower Click Fraud Rates on Social Networking Sites
Study of Ad Campaigns on Top Social Networks Found Click Fraud Rate of 11.5 Percent in Q1 2010; Overall Industry Click Fraud Rate Rises to 17.4 Percent
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Click Forensics®, Inc. today released advertising audience quality figures for the first quarter 2010 from the industry’s leading independent online advertising and click fraud data reporting service. Now in its fourth year, the Click Forensics reporting service provides statistically significant data collected from Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising campaigns for both large and small advertisers across all leading search engines as well as comparison shopping engines and social networks. Traffic across more than 300 ad networks is reflected in the data. Key findings for Q1 2010 include:
“While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it’s widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes”
A study of hundreds of online campaigns from a cross-section of advertisers and third-party ad networks showed traffic from leading social networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to have an average overall click fraud rate of 11.5 percent, significantly lower than the industry average.
The overall industry average click fraud rate was 17.4 percent. That’s up from 15.3 percent for Q4 2009 and the 13.8 percent rate reported for Q1 2009.
In Q1 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were the Philippines, Ukraine and China, respectively.
“While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it’s widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “The results of our new study corroborate this by tracking a lower overall click fraud rate on social networks than we’ve ever tracked on traditional PPC venues. Conversely, the overall industry rate seems to be creeping higher, so we recommend marketers continue to be watchful of their campaigns.”
Since 2006, Click Forensics has published online advertising industry data collected from the first independent third-party Cost Per Click (CPC) and online advertising fraud detection service. The service monitors online media traffic across over 300 ad networks as well as billions of clicks from top search engines, comparison shopping engines, social networks, leading publishers and advertiser web sites – providing the most accurate view of online advertising audience quality.
For more details and to read the full report “Click Fraud Rate Q1 2010,” visit http://www.clickforensics.com/resources/click-fraud-index.html.
About Click Forensics, Inc.
Click Forensics® is the industry leader in audience verification and traffic quality improvement for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides audience verification and traffic quality management solutions for leading online advertisers, publishers and ad networks, including companies such as Progressive Insurance, GenieKnows, Adknowledge, eZanga, Moxy Media, Turn, Traffic Engine, Vegas.com and many others. The company also regularly publishes industry data on online advertising audience quality. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at http://www.clickforensics.com./
Click Forensics and Click Fraud Index are registered trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Click Forensics®, Inc. today released advertising audience quality figures for the first quarter 2010 from the industry’s leading independent online advertising and click fraud data reporting service. Now in its fourth year, the Click Forensics reporting service provides statistically significant data collected from Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising campaigns for both large and small advertisers across all leading search engines as well as comparison shopping engines and social networks. Traffic across more than 300 ad networks is reflected in the data. Key findings for Q1 2010 include:
“While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it’s widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes”
A study of hundreds of online campaigns from a cross-section of advertisers and third-party ad networks showed traffic from leading social networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to have an average overall click fraud rate of 11.5 percent, significantly lower than the industry average.
The overall industry average click fraud rate was 17.4 percent. That’s up from 15.3 percent for Q4 2009 and the 13.8 percent rate reported for Q1 2009.
In Q1 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were the Philippines, Ukraine and China, respectively.
“While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it’s widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “The results of our new study corroborate this by tracking a lower overall click fraud rate on social networks than we’ve ever tracked on traditional PPC venues. Conversely, the overall industry rate seems to be creeping higher, so we recommend marketers continue to be watchful of their campaigns.”
Since 2006, Click Forensics has published online advertising industry data collected from the first independent third-party Cost Per Click (CPC) and online advertising fraud detection service. The service monitors online media traffic across over 300 ad networks as well as billions of clicks from top search engines, comparison shopping engines, social networks, leading publishers and advertiser web sites – providing the most accurate view of online advertising audience quality.
For more details and to read the full report “Click Fraud Rate Q1 2010,” visit http://www.clickforensics.com/resources/click-fraud-index.html.
About Click Forensics, Inc.
Click Forensics® is the industry leader in audience verification and traffic quality improvement for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides audience verification and traffic quality management solutions for leading online advertisers, publishers and ad networks, including companies such as Progressive Insurance, GenieKnows, Adknowledge, eZanga, Moxy Media, Turn, Traffic Engine, Vegas.com and many others. The company also regularly publishes industry data on online advertising audience quality. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at http://www.clickforensics.com./
Click Forensics and Click Fraud Index are registered trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Click Fraud: Using Attribution to Mitigate Risk
Thanks to the influx of the Internet over the past decade, we have all have heard the nightmarish stories of online gone bad, from tales of major security breaches at top retailers to website hacks, spammers and related blunders. And fortunately, marketing departments have gone largely unscathed — until now.
Click fraud is a growing internet crime costing marketers across the globe millions in lost spend. In fact, Alex Mindlin wrote in The New York Times that 25.8% of fraudulent ad clicks are in the United States and 44.1% of ad clicks originating from Vietnam are fraudulent.
Click fraud occurs when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user’s click on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in that ad. Sometimes it’s done by fraudsters who want to steal a portion of the advertising budget of the marketer.
They either manually click on the links from several computers, use a computer program to imitate the manual click and deploy it on several computers, or worst of all, use malicious programs to spread these imitating scripts across several computer networks and use Trojan code to turn the average machines into zombie computers that would run the scripts to generate revenue for the scammer.
In some cases, it’s not fraudsters, but a known competitor. It’s sneaky and immoral, but these competitors see no problem in clicking away at ads in order to quickly deplete daily budgets of others in the market, opening the door for them to bid low prices at the prime time, with less competitive pressure.
Most marketers know that click fraud exists, yet very few measure it and fully understand how it affects their campaigns. It is high time for marketers to understand how much is at stake.
Know If — and How — You’re Affected
In analyzing Visual IQ’s customer base, we have learned that marketers are losing about an average of 16.7% of their PPC budgets to the fraudsters every day. Some marketers even lose up to 45% of their budgets without even knowing about it.
Marketers can figure out if they’re being affected by looking at the performance of campaigns. Low conversion rates, trivial ROI on PPC campaigns, and lagging behind the competition are signs of click fraud.
The percentage of click fraud to the campaign budget varies from marketer to marketer. Each marketer should make their own assessment on how much the click fraud affects their business.
Take Simple Steps Towards Prevention
Prevention is the best method to deal with click fraud. It can be pretty difficult to prove click fraud and it is more difficult to get back the money lost. Instead of looking back with regret, be proactive about preventing click fraud using the following simple methods:
While the above methods are a good first start, the best way to prevent click fraud is by tracking your clicks and analyzing their patterns. Many of today’s attribution technologies can implement click fraud measurement and analysis.
These technologies remove a lot of the manual work above, while backing up potential fraud with scientific proof. The most effective technologies leverage attribution to prevent click fraud by conducting the following steps:
1. Collecting detailed attributes of every click, including the keywords, geographic locations, IP addresses, time-of-the-day, domains, ISP and publishers.
2. Collecting the engagement stack of each of user. Engagement stack of individual users includes the timestamps of every impression, click, conversion and consumption of ads from different channels such as email, online display, search and affiliates.
3. Analyzing the click attributes and engagement stacks to find the clusters of potentially fraudulent clicks.
4. Grouping these clicks into categories like high/medium/low propensity to be fraudulent.
5. Quantifying the damages made by each category — including assessment of damages to the business and losses to the campaigns.
6. Using advanced modeling techniques to find the patterns of publishers, geographical areas, IP address groups and ISPs that produce more fraudulent clicks.
7. Based on the analytical insights from the models, generating recommendations to the media planners to prevent fraudulent clicks. This step is vital for marketers to effectively take action to mitigate potential violations
While it is impossible to prevent 100% of the click fraud, the problem can be highly contained. Marketers with advanced attribution technologies are preventing up to 70% of it and saving millions of dollars every year.
- Make sure that your PPC campaigns are limited to the geographies where you sell you products and services.
- Avoid PPC campaigns in the geographical areas that are prone to more click fraud incidents, like Vietnam and Nigeria
- Have daily budgets. See how you spend your daily budget by hour by hour and flag any activity that looks suspicious.
- Compare the conversion ratios of your PPC campaign with other campaigns.
- Tune campaign parameters on a regular basis to avoid potential click fraud.
- Tackle Click Fraud With Attribution Technology
John Prescott advocates Google click fraud
Followers of UK politics are well used to the major parties undertaking ‘dirty tricks campaigns’ in the run up to general elections, but Labour MP John Prescott has gone a stage further in the run up to this year’s election.
Prescott has urged followers of his Twitter to go to Google and to type in terms related to the election so that the Tory party’s Adwords Ads appear, and then to click on them to waste the Conservatives’ Adwords budget.
Clicks on Adwords cost the advertiser every time a click is a made, and once the daily budget is exceeded, the ads will stop appearing. However, clicking on Adwords Ads deliberately to stop a competitor’s ads appearing is click fraud, and Google takes this very seriously. Also, there are measures in place to detect when multiple clicks are coming from the same source, or patterns of clicks are emerging just to use up an advertiser’s budget. It is therefore likely that Labour’s efforts wouldn’t have dented David Cameron’s Adwords budget too much.
According to the Financial Times, the Tories were bidding on parliamentary search terms, such as ‘budget’ and ‘hung parliament’. The FT also stated that the Tory party was bidding on specific geo terms for local constituencies, which would work out much cheaper as geo targeting your ads is a better way to get results. For example, searching for ‘General Election Cheshire’ or ‘General Election Wirral’ would produce far fewer results, and as such would be less competitive and cheaper on Adwords, than appearing for ‘General Election’.
Labour meanwhile has a smaller advertising budget than the Tory party, so has reportedly been spending its money on SEO and an effort to become a Google News Publisher. Hopefully Labour started its SEO campaign some time ago, as in an area as competitive as politics it can take a long time to garner natural search rankings.
Prescott has urged followers of his Twitter to go to Google and to type in terms related to the election so that the Tory party’s Adwords Ads appear, and then to click on them to waste the Conservatives’ Adwords budget.
Clicks on Adwords cost the advertiser every time a click is a made, and once the daily budget is exceeded, the ads will stop appearing. However, clicking on Adwords Ads deliberately to stop a competitor’s ads appearing is click fraud, and Google takes this very seriously. Also, there are measures in place to detect when multiple clicks are coming from the same source, or patterns of clicks are emerging just to use up an advertiser’s budget. It is therefore likely that Labour’s efforts wouldn’t have dented David Cameron’s Adwords budget too much.
According to the Financial Times, the Tories were bidding on parliamentary search terms, such as ‘budget’ and ‘hung parliament’. The FT also stated that the Tory party was bidding on specific geo terms for local constituencies, which would work out much cheaper as geo targeting your ads is a better way to get results. For example, searching for ‘General Election Cheshire’ or ‘General Election Wirral’ would produce far fewer results, and as such would be less competitive and cheaper on Adwords, than appearing for ‘General Election’.
Labour meanwhile has a smaller advertising budget than the Tory party, so has reportedly been spending its money on SEO and an effort to become a Google News Publisher. Hopefully Labour started its SEO campaign some time ago, as in an area as competitive as politics it can take a long time to garner natural search rankings.
34% increase recorded in the attempted click fraud rate!
A new report from Anchor Intelligence showed that in the first quarter of 2010 the volume of the average attempted click fraud rate jumped from 25.7% recorded in Q1 2009 to 29.2% in Q1 2010 which is a 34% increase on a year-over-year basis.
Anchor Intelligence says that the current rate of the attempted click fraud likely reflects a dramatic growth in botnet scale and volume around the globe.
The report reveals that the highest attempted click fraud rates were recorded in Vietnam (35.4%), Australia (35.2%), and the U.S. (35%). Most of this came from high velocity botnet traffic and coordinated click fraud rings.
Anchor Intelligence says that the current rate of the attempted click fraud likely reflects a dramatic growth in botnet scale and volume around the globe.
The report reveals that the highest attempted click fraud rates were recorded in Vietnam (35.4%), Australia (35.2%), and the U.S. (35%). Most of this came from high velocity botnet traffic and coordinated click fraud rings.
Another Quarter, Another Jump in Click Fraud
Anchor Intelligence has released its report on Q1 2010 traffic quality and as expected, click fraud has increased yet again across the web.
Anchor is reporting a fraud rate of 29.2 percent for the first three months of this year, building on the 25.7 percent click fraud rate over the final quarter of 2009, and representing an almost 14 percent increase. That’s also a 34 percent increase in click fraud from the first quarter of 2009.
According to the report, the continued rise in click fraud is largely due to the dramatic growth of botnets in both scale and volume around the world and we’re inclined to agree. Click fraud rates have been rising steadily for as long as Ecommerce Junkie has been writing about it and it’s no coincidencethat botnets have become an increasingly larger menace over that time period as well.
The report from Anchor also includes data on traffic quality rates by country, with Vietnam (35.4 percent), Australia (35.2 percent) and the U.S. (35 percent) rounding out the top three for highest rates of click fraud among 30 countries across the globe. Again, botnets and click-fraud rings are likely the biggest cause of fraudulent traffic in these countries. The United Kingdom has been hit especially hard by botnet activity over the last six months, with click fraud rates rising to 32 percent there this quarter after only 18 percent in Q4 2009.
“As Internet usage has grown in countries lacking appropriate cybersecurity measures, more and more computers have become infected with malware and used as click fraud zombies,” said Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence. “Through this report, we hope to convey the importance of advertising with ad networks and search engines that partner with third-parties such as Anchor to certify their traffic quality.”
Admittedly, it has been a rough few months for cyber security overall, which probably also explains the continued rise in fraud. There have been recent reports from McAfee and Google on a rise in cyber attacks against blogs in Vietnam that were critical of certain mining efforts. And of course, we had more than thirty companies (including Google) who were victims of cyber security breaches originating out of China back in December and January.
Despite the fact that the U.S. economy is beginning to rebound, businesses continue to tread cautiously when it comes to their online advertising operations and click fraud is a big reason why. We’ve heard instances of advertisers being charged extra for multiple clicks from the same web user in certain cases, which is just one example of how damaging and unfair the wrong kind of advertising activity can be to retailers and other web marketers. As always, we strongly recommend that you do your research before embarking on an online advertising campaign. Once you have a campaign going, we also suggest parsing the clicks and data from your traffic server logs yourself instead of relying on the third parties you’re advertising with who may offer tracking software or tools as part of their packages.
We’ll keep tabs on click fraud data and cyber security news as it arises. Leave us your thoughts and comments below.
Anchor is reporting a fraud rate of 29.2 percent for the first three months of this year, building on the 25.7 percent click fraud rate over the final quarter of 2009, and representing an almost 14 percent increase. That’s also a 34 percent increase in click fraud from the first quarter of 2009.
According to the report, the continued rise in click fraud is largely due to the dramatic growth of botnets in both scale and volume around the world and we’re inclined to agree. Click fraud rates have been rising steadily for as long as Ecommerce Junkie has been writing about it and it’s no coincidencethat botnets have become an increasingly larger menace over that time period as well.
The report from Anchor also includes data on traffic quality rates by country, with Vietnam (35.4 percent), Australia (35.2 percent) and the U.S. (35 percent) rounding out the top three for highest rates of click fraud among 30 countries across the globe. Again, botnets and click-fraud rings are likely the biggest cause of fraudulent traffic in these countries. The United Kingdom has been hit especially hard by botnet activity over the last six months, with click fraud rates rising to 32 percent there this quarter after only 18 percent in Q4 2009.
“As Internet usage has grown in countries lacking appropriate cybersecurity measures, more and more computers have become infected with malware and used as click fraud zombies,” said Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence. “Through this report, we hope to convey the importance of advertising with ad networks and search engines that partner with third-parties such as Anchor to certify their traffic quality.”
Admittedly, it has been a rough few months for cyber security overall, which probably also explains the continued rise in fraud. There have been recent reports from McAfee and Google on a rise in cyber attacks against blogs in Vietnam that were critical of certain mining efforts. And of course, we had more than thirty companies (including Google) who were victims of cyber security breaches originating out of China back in December and January.
Despite the fact that the U.S. economy is beginning to rebound, businesses continue to tread cautiously when it comes to their online advertising operations and click fraud is a big reason why. We’ve heard instances of advertisers being charged extra for multiple clicks from the same web user in certain cases, which is just one example of how damaging and unfair the wrong kind of advertising activity can be to retailers and other web marketers. As always, we strongly recommend that you do your research before embarking on an online advertising campaign. Once you have a campaign going, we also suggest parsing the clicks and data from your traffic server logs yourself instead of relying on the third parties you’re advertising with who may offer tracking software or tools as part of their packages.
We’ll keep tabs on click fraud data and cyber security news as it arises. Leave us your thoughts and comments below.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
3 Ways to Guard Against Click Fraud
By Heather Fletcher
No one likes to be cheated. And click fraud touches a raw nerve for many marketers. So New York-based online advertising network Undertone Networks identified some best practices for agencies and advertisers to ensure the safety of online ads and the brands they represent.
Click Forensics reported in October that the average click fraud rate for the third quarter of 2009 was 14.1 percent, up from 12.7 percent during the previous quarter. "As advertisers, publishers and ad networks are getting smarter, so are the attackers," according to Undertone. "A recently uncovered click fraud ring run out of China involved 200,000 IP addresses and more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks."
Undertone provides the following advice:
1. Engage the ad server as the first line of defense: Most ad servers allow advertisers to pull reports on the country of origin for impressions and clicks. Do your homework on your ad-serving platform to understand how it counts and handles click fraud, and closely monitor site visitors, time spent and activity related to each click. These related measurements help you identify not only fraudulent activity, but which clicks are truly valuable.
2. Don't pay for irrelevant international impressions: Up to 40 percent of publisher site traffic comes from outside the United States, and ad networks are used as a clearinghouse for this inventory. Too often, unsuspecting advertisers serve domestic creative to international audiences who can't act. Unless international users are your target, specify U.S. traffic only in your insertion orders. A growing percentage of click fraud is through foreign IP addresses, so monitoring this traffic will reduce your exposure.
3. Modify terms and conditions on media contracts: By far, the most proactive measure advertisers can take to prevent fraud is to modify the contracts they use with media partners. These amendments include specifically excluding incentivized traffic, use of ad exchange inventory, as well as practices like ad stacking (when a click on one ad actually generates clicks on other associated ads) and daisy-chaining (when the original ad host recycles ads to other sites in order to boost revenue), which makes companies more vulnerable for click fraud.
No one likes to be cheated. And click fraud touches a raw nerve for many marketers. So New York-based online advertising network Undertone Networks identified some best practices for agencies and advertisers to ensure the safety of online ads and the brands they represent.
Click Forensics reported in October that the average click fraud rate for the third quarter of 2009 was 14.1 percent, up from 12.7 percent during the previous quarter. "As advertisers, publishers and ad networks are getting smarter, so are the attackers," according to Undertone. "A recently uncovered click fraud ring run out of China involved 200,000 IP addresses and more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks."
Undertone provides the following advice:
1. Engage the ad server as the first line of defense: Most ad servers allow advertisers to pull reports on the country of origin for impressions and clicks. Do your homework on your ad-serving platform to understand how it counts and handles click fraud, and closely monitor site visitors, time spent and activity related to each click. These related measurements help you identify not only fraudulent activity, but which clicks are truly valuable.
2. Don't pay for irrelevant international impressions: Up to 40 percent of publisher site traffic comes from outside the United States, and ad networks are used as a clearinghouse for this inventory. Too often, unsuspecting advertisers serve domestic creative to international audiences who can't act. Unless international users are your target, specify U.S. traffic only in your insertion orders. A growing percentage of click fraud is through foreign IP addresses, so monitoring this traffic will reduce your exposure.
3. Modify terms and conditions on media contracts: By far, the most proactive measure advertisers can take to prevent fraud is to modify the contracts they use with media partners. These amendments include specifically excluding incentivized traffic, use of ad exchange inventory, as well as practices like ad stacking (when a click on one ad actually generates clicks on other associated ads) and daisy-chaining (when the original ad host recycles ads to other sites in order to boost revenue), which makes companies more vulnerable for click fraud.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Yahoo Settles Lawsuit - lawyers win, advertisers lose.
Yahoo Inc. has reportedly settled a class action lawsuit with some of its search advertising customers who weren't happy about where their ads were showing up.
Lawsuit administrator Rust Consulting sent an e-mail to members of the group that preliminary court approval of the settlement has been granted and posted copies of court documents here.
Yahoo customers who sued claimed that when ads they placed through "Sponsored Search" and "Contact Match," they showed up in spyware, domain name parking sites, typosquatting sites and other undesirable locations on the Web.
They sued the Sunnyvale company (NASDAQ:YHOO) for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, and unfair business practices.
As part of the settlement, Yahoo agreed to offer a new filtering option for ads, and to modify how it handles disclosures and click fraud investigations:
It also agreed to develop and offer a way for customers to control where their Yahoo Ads appear.
Advertisers got screwed again, of the $4.3 million settlement, $4.17 million is going to the lawyers.
Lawsuit administrator Rust Consulting sent an e-mail to members of the group that preliminary court approval of the settlement has been granted and posted copies of court documents here.
Yahoo customers who sued claimed that when ads they placed through "Sponsored Search" and "Contact Match," they showed up in spyware, domain name parking sites, typosquatting sites and other undesirable locations on the Web.
They sued the Sunnyvale company (NASDAQ:YHOO) for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, and unfair business practices.
As part of the settlement, Yahoo agreed to offer a new filtering option for ads, and to modify how it handles disclosures and click fraud investigations:
It also agreed to develop and offer a way for customers to control where their Yahoo Ads appear.
Advertisers got screwed again, of the $4.3 million settlement, $4.17 million is going to the lawyers.
Friday, October 9, 2009
3M In Click Fraud Over Two Weeks? Just The Beginning
A recently disbanded click fraud ring in China racked up $US3 million worth of clicks in two weeks. $US3 million that we’re aware of. Just how detectable is this whole business of racking up fraudulent ad revenue clicks?
That intricate mess of lines above represents a portion of DormRing1, the click fraud bunch that was caught in China. The lines show the relationship of some of the IP addresses involved in the fraud and how they are connected to some fraudulent ad clicks. The whole network actually “involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $US3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period”. Impressive and scary at the same time.
The trouble is that no one really knows how much ad revenue DormRing1 collected before they were caught. Click-fraud monitoring services such as Anchor Intelligence, the ones behind this catch, are evolving to keep up with the scale on which these rings are operating. It’s still difficult to judge just how well they’re doing as they’re having to infiltrate forums and gain the trust of the perpetrators in a manner reminiscent of drug busts. But as the criminals are getting more elaborate, the investigations are too.
That intricate mess of lines above represents a portion of DormRing1, the click fraud bunch that was caught in China. The lines show the relationship of some of the IP addresses involved in the fraud and how they are connected to some fraudulent ad clicks. The whole network actually “involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $US3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period”. Impressive and scary at the same time.
The trouble is that no one really knows how much ad revenue DormRing1 collected before they were caught. Click-fraud monitoring services such as Anchor Intelligence, the ones behind this catch, are evolving to keep up with the scale on which these rings are operating. It’s still difficult to judge just how well they’re doing as they’re having to infiltrate forums and gain the trust of the perpetrators in a manner reminiscent of drug busts. But as the criminals are getting more elaborate, the investigations are too.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Report: 95% of clicks fraudulent?
They say that a click is a click, but according to a recent Mpire report, using AdXpose, all clicks aren't equal. Especially clicks generated from run-of-network (RON) online advertising buys. According to the report up to 95% of these clicks and up to 50% of the ad impressions are generated from fraudulent sources.
by Kristina Knight
AdXpose is Mpire's campaign analysis, verification and optimization technology. Researchers found that just over 50% of the ad impressions delivered and 95% of the clicks generated were potentially fraudulent. This traffic was hidden beneath layers of I-Frames, which are ad units that pull advertising content from another source. Researchers also found a large amount of URL padding. URL padding happens when a range of URLs are made available for an ad but only a few of the URLs are actually used.
Other interesting findings:
• Ad networks need to improve on 'above the fold' ad placement
• Mpire tested three campaigns with 11 campaign buys on 9 ad networks/exchanges
• More than 20 million impressions were served during the test
"Click fraud and impression fraud is far more pervasive than the industry has been willing to admit, yet thus far the industry has taken a laissez-faire approach to policing downstream traffic providers, leading to material waste in campaign budgets," said Marissa Gluck, principal analyst at Radar Research, the company that verified the research. "By delving deeper into site-level data, advertisers and agencies can get a better understanding of the impact of fraud on campaign ROI, and can thus take steps to focus their ad spend on the sites, networks and exchanges that deliver the most legitimate impressions and clicks."
Along with this report, comes news that ClickForensics has identified a new botnet called "Bahama Botnet". The botnet distributes malware, disguising itself as a high-quality source of advertising traffic. Just another reason for pay per click marketers to research advertising networks and pay close attention to how a campaign is performing from beginning to end.
by Kristina Knight
AdXpose is Mpire's campaign analysis, verification and optimization technology. Researchers found that just over 50% of the ad impressions delivered and 95% of the clicks generated were potentially fraudulent. This traffic was hidden beneath layers of I-Frames, which are ad units that pull advertising content from another source. Researchers also found a large amount of URL padding. URL padding happens when a range of URLs are made available for an ad but only a few of the URLs are actually used.
Other interesting findings:
• Ad networks need to improve on 'above the fold' ad placement
• Mpire tested three campaigns with 11 campaign buys on 9 ad networks/exchanges
• More than 20 million impressions were served during the test
"Click fraud and impression fraud is far more pervasive than the industry has been willing to admit, yet thus far the industry has taken a laissez-faire approach to policing downstream traffic providers, leading to material waste in campaign budgets," said Marissa Gluck, principal analyst at Radar Research, the company that verified the research. "By delving deeper into site-level data, advertisers and agencies can get a better understanding of the impact of fraud on campaign ROI, and can thus take steps to focus their ad spend on the sites, networks and exchanges that deliver the most legitimate impressions and clicks."
Along with this report, comes news that ClickForensics has identified a new botnet called "Bahama Botnet". The botnet distributes malware, disguising itself as a high-quality source of advertising traffic. Just another reason for pay per click marketers to research advertising networks and pay close attention to how a campaign is performing from beginning to end.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Marketers May Not Recognize Click Fraud
Research released this week on click fraud from Ben Edelman, attorney and assistant professor at the Harvard Business School in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit, suggests online marketers lack the technical expertise to tell when they're being robbed.
Edelman finds online advertising fraud can happen without sophisticated spyware, even to cost-per-action advertisers. At first glance, conversion-contingent advertising (cost-per-action/CPA, affiliate marketing) seems the perfect way to prevent online advertising fraud. By paying partners only when a sale actually occurs, advertisers often expect to substantially eliminate fraud. Unfortunately, he says, this view is overly simplistic and optimistic.
Edelman notes in his report that banner ads from Allebrands invisibly load affiliate links, which is the simplest example to understand. Other affiliates load affiliate links and drop affiliate cookies as users merely view a banner ad. By viewing a banner ad on a third-party Web page, he explains, "the affiliate can drop its cookies and obtain a commission on purchases users make from the targeted merchants within the return-days period."
Edelman finds online advertising fraud can happen without sophisticated spyware, even to cost-per-action advertisers. At first glance, conversion-contingent advertising (cost-per-action/CPA, affiliate marketing) seems the perfect way to prevent online advertising fraud. By paying partners only when a sale actually occurs, advertisers often expect to substantially eliminate fraud. Unfortunately, he says, this view is overly simplistic and optimistic.
Edelman notes in his report that banner ads from Allebrands invisibly load affiliate links, which is the simplest example to understand. Other affiliates load affiliate links and drop affiliate cookies as users merely view a banner ad. By viewing a banner ad on a third-party Web page, he explains, "the affiliate can drop its cookies and obtain a commission on purchases users make from the targeted merchants within the return-days period."
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