The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising

Truth 28. The click fraud conundrum

To determine if a click is fraudulent or invalid, one needs to define a click. Easy, right? Perhaps not. The reports on the magnitude of click fraud vary dramatically. Similarly, the data on overall click quality and which factors tend to correlate highly with quality are scarce. (Many organizations, including my own, have done their own analyses.) Everyone’s jumping on this bandwagon. So, I’ll focus on the most basic premise: the click. What is a click, and when should a marketer be charged for one? Similarly, when should publishers be paid for one?

The crux of the click fraud issue is marketers shouldn’t have to pay for clicks that aren’t authentic or valid. A tangential issue is what other clicks ...