False Ad Clicks Cost Google 1 Billion Dollars A Year 233
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.'"
There's definitely some problems... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bad math, bad logic. (Score:3, Informative)
However, they'd also stand to lose a lot of customers. Our AdWords bill is high enough for a small company, paying extra hundreds or thousands a year for fraudulent, worthless clicks would scare me the hell away from AdWords.
Much of AdWords' value to Google is in keeping a high number of subscribers to keep the bid prices up relatively high on popular keywords. Losing popular subscribers could send prices down, costing them even more money than from losing an individual customer.
Re:Ads (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ledgerlines (Score:4, Informative)