Click Fraud Click Fraud Click Fraud

Clickity click click click...

In the past few days there have been a great number of articles, posts, and threads about click fraud. Today I woke up with an inbox that had a few emails about click fraud.

[update: Fantomaster found a blog about ClickFraud]

eMarketer says Click Fraud Is Starting to Scare Marketers

Advertisers should be able to opt in or out of advertising on specific sites.

Joe Holcomb, SVP at BlowSearch, recently wrote these articles:

• The Middle Market Search Engines Need To Grow Up - talks about some of the errors with smaller PPC search engines.

• Pay Per Click Advertising Fraud - The Inside Story - paints click fraud as a massive problem of scale.
• Pay Per Click Advertising Fraud - The Inside Story - Part II - more of a promotional piece about BlowSearch technologies.

Scott Blum, of Buy.com also has some type of click fraud patent.

News Losing Ad Revenue:
Despite the claims of PPC fraud Wall Street Journal was hit by lower ad spend, and yet financial ads account for 20% of online ads.

[update 2: Gary Stein found this 15 minute real audio file about the death of mass media advertising.]

This Wall Street Journal article (sub req) talks about Yahoo's small and nimble new search service which is outpacing most of the giants. Even Rupert Murdock knows he is behind the curve.

Other PPC News:
Yahoo! Buys Brazilian PPC Search Network

Google is testing placing a third ad in the premium position. BAD CALL. Andrew Goodman also feels their bid optimizer is a bad call.

ThreadWatch finds sites about cheap clicks and expensive clicks.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is down 4% in the last 3 days. Yahoo! will be announcing quarterly results Tuesday & Google will be announcing their Q1 2005 results Thursday.