Just when we thought, we had heard it all about “fraud on the internet”. There are the “fishing” emails, enticing (or more likely scaring) users into giving up their bank account (or paypal) information. There is the “multi level marketing” schemes, the ID thefts, the spyware. The SCAM-THRU-SPAM market is just huge…and not necessarily limited to financial losses. Think of those “15 million dollar waiting to be picked up from that Nigerian bank account” scam. When the gullible follow up and actually fly to Nigeria , they get kidnapped and ransomed. Occasionally murdered. Makes the “cheap Viagra” brokers look like good Samaritans!

All these abuses are reducing our trust in the internet and e-commerce. Which is a shame, given the efficiency and cost savings that this medium allows, especially in terms of targeted advertisement. One example of such advertisement is PPC, or Pay Per Click. This is a great improvement over the good old flashing banner ad's that we all know(and have grown to hate). The Pay Per Click ad's are text base, with no slow loading flashy graphics detracting from the site. Best of all, they are context dependent. They get displayed only when a person searches for a certain “matching keyword”. PPC is extremely popular for one reason with advertisers. It's simple to demonstrate that it brings traffic to their site. For the people searching for something it's sometimes a shortcut to click on PPC ads rather than sift through the clutter that search engines often display organically. This Pay Per Click (PPC)advertising market size exceeds $5 Billion/year and keeps growing. Often at the expense of radio, TV and magazine advertising. Whether it's cost effective to use such a program or it gives you the requisite ROI is topic for another web analytics discussion.

Unfortunately, if you advertise your site via Pay per Click Programs like Google Adwords & Overture, then it's exceedingly likely that you are a Click Fraud Victim. Click fraud, takes place when a person or program visits a website with no intention of browsing the site, purchasing a product or performing any other type of conversion action. The intent is to make the advertiser suffer losses (or make extra income). This new type of cyber fraud is on the rise, and estimates on the loss to the advertiser through click fraud vary between 10-40% depending on the keyword and the industry. A simple calculation shows us that the advertisers are shelling out $ 500 Million to 2 Billion per year to click fraudsters. Google and Yahoo are among the leading providers of advertising links, usually targeted to the audience based on the contents of a page. The issue, to some extent boils down to the difference between a genuine user(sometimes referred to as a “good faith” visitor) and a click fraud artist. According to a Newsweek article, Google and Yahoo are struggling to adjust the definition of “good-faith click” and their policies, and methods of preventing this new type of click fraud. Given the rampant rise, it's a work in progress.

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