Click fraud up in 2008

CNET – Study: Click fraud closed 2008 at all-time high:

Click fraud lets Web sites increase revenue from ads supplied by services such as Google’s AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network, though those companies take measures to screen out bogus links so advertisers don’t have to pay. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, according to a new report from Click Forensics, a company that monitors for click fraud and sells detection services.

“The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2008. That’s up from 16.0 percent in the third quarter of 2008 and from the 16.6 percent rate reported for the fourth quarter of 2007,” the company said Wednesday.

The last few years I’ve had to drop some advertising partners I’ve used used since 2000 because they became infested with affiliates practicing click fraud. Google Adwords has been pretty good about rooting out this sort of thing and I’ve been steadily shifting most of our search engine advertising to them.