Wed, 13 Oct 2004

Click Fraud Threatens Web

OK, click fraud is a real problem. But what, exactly, can be done about it? The short answer: very little. It's the model that's flawed: paying per "click" rather than per "impression" actually facilitates fraud. And until the model changes (and web advertising prices correspondingly drop), fraud will continue.

Someone could make the argument that watchdogs have better things to do. But click fraud -- endlessly clicking on ads to generate cash or hurt a competitor -- is a serious threat to the web business, and no one's doing much about it. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg.

(link) [Wired News]

/Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time