Problems with third party click fraud auditers

[Matt]

I've talked about this before, and here's a recent interview stating that click fraud isn't increasing as some would have you believe. They're not stating it doesn't exist, they're simply saying it's not at the level some people would have you believe.

http://tinyurl.com/3xfw2d

Not all outsiders are reassured. A report in July from Click Forensics, an Austin, Texas-based click-fraud auditing firm, contended that click fraud is growing, particularly on content networks like Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network. The report, drawn from more than 4,000 sites' advertising data, asserted that the rate of fraudulent clicks was 15.8% in the second quarter of 2007, up 1% from three months earlier. Within online content networks, Click Forensics estimated that more than 25% of all clicks were fraudulent, up from about 22% in the previous quarter.

Ghosemajumder doesn't buy it. He spoke with Forbes.com about why some third-party auditors overestimate malicious clicks, the myth that Google profits from click fraud and just how the company can reassure advertisers without giving away the secrets of its click-fraud detection.

Forbes.com: Click Forensics reports that click fraud is increasing--you disagree. Why?

Shuman Ghosemajumder: The big problem with third-party auditors is that they continue to count "fictitious clicks," clicks that Google doesn't count as clicks at all, in click fraud estimates. Here's one major example: Users click on a Google ad on Google.com or an Adsense site. When they land on the advertiser's site, they click on products, hitting the "back" button to go back to the landing page. Many browsers reload the landing page each time. We don't count those as clicks, but third-party auditors actually register each click on the "back" button as another click on an ad, which grossly overestimates the number of ad clicks.

The other important point is that auditors like Click Forensics estimate the amount of click fraud that's being attempted, not how much is going undetected and is charged to advertisers. That means they're counting the clicks that we throw away as invalid, not just the ones advertisers pay for.