The Cost Of Click Fraud

Click fraud is a serious problem complicated by the fact that click fraud data is in short supply. The Click Fraud Index aims to change that.

The good news is that the incidence of click fraud appears to be lower than the disturbingly high figure of 20% to 40% that has been suggested.

The bad news is that at 14%, that's still a lot of bad clicks.Any company losing 14% of its marketing budget should sit up and take notice. As the Click Fraud blog notes, "It still means that click fraud could account for over $750 million in 2006." I suspect Google will look very smart for settling its click fraud problem for a mere $90 million, at least until cases brought by other companies come to trial.

The subject is sure to come up at the Ad:tech Conference in San Francisco next week.