New Google stats suggest click fraud rates 2% and under
Check out this article on an apparent Google report of actual click fraud figures on the markets leading search engine.
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/12/google-click-fraud-rate-two-percent.html
The click fraud rate – as discovered by most AdWords advertisers – is on average, less than 2% of all clicks through Google’s system.
If this report is to be believed it is certainly a good thing Google have started opening up about click fraud or invalid click figures as they see them and certainly if the exact numbers of invalid click figures were published it would make interesting reading. However SOTB still sees these figures as potentially misleading as they are across the board averages and do not represent individual advertiser experiences. With AdWords advertisers in their millions investing valuable marketing budgets in AdWords this 98% success rate on Google’s part is highly unlikely to be evenly distributed across these advertisers. Instead the 10% who do experience ‘serious click fraud’ (by that I mean above 5% although 2% is still serious in my opinion) almost certainly bring up the averages of the 90% who experience virtually no invalid clicks.
Furthermore there is no monetary value offered to these figures. Lets not forget an invalid click could cost an advertiser £5 or it could cost 5p. Common sense would say the prerogative of the click frauder’s is to target the more expensive end of the market rather than the spare change end, especially when it is the big budget accounts of the competitive high CPC markets i.e. loans, credit cards, mortgages which tend to get targeted most often in social click fraud scams on the AdSense network.
Take the 2% click fraud rate out of the context of Google’s finance sphere for a second and consider that 2% of £1 million a year AdWords spend is £20,000 (above the average salary of a marketing graduate in London!).
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