Click Fraud Rate Grows To 17 Percent
By Anna Johnson on February 5th, 2009In a worrying sign for Internet marketers and, specifically, pay-per-click advertisers, eMarketer reports that the rate of online click fraud is on the rise.
There are various definitions for ‘click fraud’, but in this case, eMarketer defines it to be the occurrence of an automated computer program imitating a legitimate user by clicking on a search ad to generate a bogus click cost.
Click Forensics, which tracks click fraud via its Click Fraud Index, estimates that the rate of automated click fraud was 17 percent for the fourth quarter of 2008. It was 16 percent in the previous quarter.
In terms of which nations are home to most of this ‘botnet’ driven click fraud, Click Forensics says that most click fraud emanates from the US, followed by Canada (7.4 percent of total click fraud), Germany (3 percent) and China (2.3 percent).
Source: eMarketer, “Click Fraud Climbing,” eMarketer, February 4, 2009
