Pay-Per-Click Fraud Rate Hits 16.2 Percent in Q3

Click Forensics released (pdf) industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the third quarter of 2007, saying its Click Fraud Index found that the average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent - but significantly higher among content networks - reports MarketingCharts.

Key findings from data reported for Q3:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate (see chart) was 16.2 percent for 3Q07 - an increase from 13.8 percent for the same quarter in 2006 and from 15.8 percent in the second quarter of 2007.
• The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks (see chart), including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, as well as many smaller ones, was 28.1 percent in Q3.
  • That’s up from 25.6 percent in the second quarter and 21.9 percent for the first quarter.
  • That’s also up from 19.2 percent in the 4Q06.
• Over 60 percent of traffic from parked domains and made-for-ad sites was click fraud.
• The greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from France (4.2 percent) China (4.1 percent) and Germany (3.7 percent) - see fraud-threat heat chart.

“Click fraud activity continues to grow especially on made-for-ad sites, parked domains and on the content networks,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics. “Advertisers, publishers and search engines need to take notice because content networks are becoming the fastest growing source of click fraud. Ensuring their quality is essential for the pay-per-click advertising market to continue its growth.”