One in every seven clicks on an advertisement is estimated to be fraudulent, according to the traffic analysis firm ClickForensics. This is alarming when you consider Internet ad spending is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge to over $32 billion in 2011. This is in the U.S. alone, according to researcher eMarketer Inc. and about half of these dollars are going into deals requiring advertisers to pay by the click.
What is Click Fraud?
Click fraud is an Internet crime that occurs in pay per click (PPC) online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a user of a web browser by clicking on an ad for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target. Given all the hype about internet marketing it seems important for advertisers to be aware of the pitfalls. Most academics and consultants who study online advertising estimate that 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake, representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings.
From an excerpt in Businessweek: “Google and Yahoo are grabbing billions of dollars once collected by traditional print and broadcast outlets, based partly on the assumption that clicks are a reliable, quantifiable measure of consumer interest that the older media simply can't match. But the huge influx of cash for online ads has attracted armies of con artists whose activities are eroding that crucial assumption and could eat into the optimistic expectations for online advertising."
When you look at companies like uSocial which buys Facebook friends and pays for more "likes", no one can trust numbers anyway. The whole FB platform, and internet advertising is becoming a guessing game.
However, all hope is not lost.
The thing to remember is that a balanced media plan will give the most profitable results. Putting all your eggs in one basket, and only advertising on the internet, may not yield the best results. I'm not saying not to use internet advertising, I'm simply suggesting that going back to our roots and using traditional media in addition to internet marketing is a more powerful stance and can allow for optimum security in your return on investment.
