Let's say your company or client has decided to allot advertising dollars to banner advertising and/or paid placement. You sign up with Google for the Adsense program and find yourself with quite a bill but very little useful traffic. Perhaps you're not advertising poorly — you may be a victim of click fraud.
According to ZDNet's article, Google has just filed the first civil case against alleged perpetrators of click fraud.
“The fraud is perpetrated in both automated and human ways. The most common method is the use of online robots, or “bots,” programmed to click on advertisers' links that are displayed on Web sites or listed in search queries. A growing alternative employs low-cost workers who are hired in China, India and other countries to click on text links and other ads. A third form of fraud takes place when employees of companies click on rivals' ads to deplete their marketing budgets and skew search results.”
It's about time. Making money by cheating others out of theirs is no different, in my opinion, than stealing it from their bank account. So what if it's on the web? It's still money… cold hard-earned cash. And it's wrong. Maybe people will think twice with litigation starting. Or not.
