Holy crap! I mean, I knew it was bad, but that's just ridiculous!
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/0...2.html?ref=rss
Google says it loses $1 billion a year to false ad clicks
Last Updated: Friday, March 2, 2007 | 1:40 PM ET
CBC News
Google Inc. loses about $1 billion US a year to "click fraud" or other invalid click-throughs on its ad service, the company says.
Advertisers have been asking Google for a clearer picture of the reach and effectiveness of their ads.
Google's AdWords service brings together advertisers and websites willing to display their ads. Advertisers pay Google a fee based on the number of click-throughs, and site operators receive a commission for each time that a visitor clicks on an ad.
Special software that can click on an ad repeatedly can be used to inflate a rival company's advertising costs or boost a site operator's own revenue gained from displaying the ads.
"Our invalid clicks rate ? the activity rate ? has remained in the range of less than 10 per cent of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google's current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million [US per] year in potential revenue foregone," Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety, wrote in a post to the company's Inside AdWords blog late Thursday.
Google does not charge its advertisers for clicks it determines to be invalid. For example, if 10 out of 100 clicks were excluded Google would not charge its advertisers for the invalid clicks, cutting into the company's revenue.
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