False Ad Clicks Cost Google 1 Billion Dollars A Year

Meshach writes "There is an interesting story at CBC which claims that Google loses one billion dollars per year to fraudulent ad clicks. The article contains an interesting description how how the company determines if a click is false. 'The company explained that it determines which clicks are invalid through a three-stage system. Most of the illegitimate clicks are automatically detected analyzed and filtered out in the first stage ... The second part uses automatic and manual analysis of the AdSense network to weed out false clicks before they are logged to an advertiser's account.'"

Comments

Re:Ads

[CrazyJim1]

You didn't ACTUALLY specify that your brain could be removed only after said action.

He has the special power of immunity to advertising. Sylar will be around to collect his brain soon enough.

Founders: Click Fraud Is Google's Greatest Threat

[MichaelCrawford]

A while back I read that one of Google's founders said that click fraud is the greatest threat to google's business. This is because Black Hats publish websites with AdSense, then fraudulently click the ads on their own pages. They get paid by Google, and the merchants who placed the ads through AdWords Select pay for the fraudulent clicks, but don't enjoy the increased sales that advertising can bring.

Re:Ledgerlines

[tompaulco]

Hmm, well, they seem to not want to pay me until I have $100 balance in adsense, but they are perfectly happy to bill me every month when I owe them $6.03 for adwords.