Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Google Tighten Adsense Ads in an Attempt to Reduce Unintentional Click Fraud

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Google have announced that clicks on syndicated ads in from their Adsense programme have been tightened up.

In the past any part of the advert was clickable, which contributed to unintentional clicks and as a result very low quality clicks.

Full details can be seen on Techcruch

The new standard required users to click on the title or URL within the ad to generate a click through to the website.

In my opinion, tightening up the content network is a very important tasks for Google, at the moment it is estimated by Click Forensics that 28%+ of clicks from the content network are fraudulent. Targeting the clickable area is a very positive step. This will stop website owners building deceivingly crafted MFA sites with CSS that covers the ads and causes clicks ( a topic for a future more indepth post).

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3FN Marketing Enhances Their Fraud Detection System

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

3FN a second tier pay per click company has boldy announed that it now detects 98% of click fraud attempts through new fraud detection software.

Read the full press release.

It is my opinion that smaller second tier companies need to introduce inovative practices like this to enhance their product and help take market share from the PPC giants.

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Intel Capital Invest $10M in company producing Click Fraud Software

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Intel capital today announced a $10 million investment in Iovation, a company specialising in fraud and security solutions, including click fraud.

The complete press release can be seen at the Iovation web site, but the part which caught my eye was:

The company provides the first device reputation service aimed at protecting business on the Internet. The real-time service prevents online fraud including charge-backs, identity theft, phishing, click fraud and other abuses of online services such as child predation, stealing or cheating, posting unwanted content, and chat abuse.

This is a new company to me, and one I will be watching in the future.

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For the ClickBot Doubters

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

There are many people who doubt that Click Fraud is a real problem, the following search phrase lead a reader to my blog.

program a clickbot

Try as hard as I can, the only reason I can see that someone would type this into Google, is to find how to setup a click fraud attack.

A low noise click bot is highly likely to bypass the Google filters, and people are out there, trying to find how to do this.

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Combating Click Fraud E-Document

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

I have recently come across an interesting e-document called (AF) Combating Click Fraud. It is written by IncreMental Advantage and has contributions from some of the major players in the click fraud arena.

The publishers review is shown below:

While its origins go back to the late 1990’s, its only over the past few years that “click-fraud” has come to the forefront and become a topic of concern for advertisers, web publishers, and search engines alike. IncreMental Advantage estimates that click fraud cost Internet advertisers close to $ 700 million in 2006. Click fraud has become so pervasive that it has begun to significantly stunt the growth of Internet advertising. Given the global reach of the internet and e-commerce, the issue is not isolated to the United States. And while there are many differing views on the severity of the issue, no one can deny its existence. Among the issues addressed in this report are: • Competitors committing click fraud • Keyword manipulation including jamming, gap surfing, and friendly URLs • Clickbots and click farms • Domain tasting • Click fraud arbitrage • Litigation against click fraudsters • Technological solutions This report features interviews with senior executives of companies offering technological solutions and financial alternatives as a means to combat click fraud. These include:

  • Fair Isaacs Corporation
  • Authenticlick • ClickLab, LLC
  • Think Partnership
  • MordComm, Inc. /AdWatcher
  • ClickDefense Inc.
  • ClickFacts Inc.
  • IonReport, LLC

The e-document is available for download from amazon.

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