Bad economy increases fraud click volume

Click Forensics’ Click Fraud Index shows that the click fraud, occurring when a program imitates a legitimate user by clicking on a search ad, has been rising in the times of bad economy. 

Now in its third year, the index shows that the overall industry average click fraud rate grew to more than 17% for the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 16% in the previous quarter. Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics noted that “Both the overall click fraud rate and the rate of click fraud originating from botnets were the highest ever in Q4 2008.” According to the index Canada had a very high rate of click fraud in the fourth quarter of 2008, with 7.4%. Germany and China had a less rate of the fraud with 3% and 2.3% respectively.

Mr. Cuthbert cautioned advertisers by saying they should “pay close attention to their online campaigns” during the next year, as the rate might continue to rise.

Source: eMarketer