Click fraud is the latest ‘hot topic’ circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign?
Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc. With around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Here we offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign.
What is Click Fraud?
According to Wikipedia “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link”
Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% – 15%...