Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Click Forensics: Click Fraud Up In Q4

Austin-based Click Forensics, which provides pay-per-click auditing and other services for online advertisers, is reporting today that click fraud is up from Q4, to a rate of 17.1 percent. The firm said that its data--gathered from its click fraud reporting network--shows that the numbers are up from Q3, when it was at 16.0 percent, and also from Q4 last year, when it was at 16.6 percent. Click fraud is an issue for advertisers, who purchase Internet ads but are not seeing actual customers, due to deliberate fraud by publishers and others clicking on their ads to increase their advertising revenue. Click Forensics said that 31.4 percent of the click fraud it detected came from "botnets," networks of compromised PCs used by hackers and criminals. Click Forensics is venture backed by Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures.