Outsell says click fraud accounts for 14 percent of per-per-click ads — others say more — costing marketers $800 million a year. The FT story is here; the CNET story is here.
One thing Google could do to at least stem the tide would be to wipe out spam blogs. It’s cynical of them to say they’re concerned about click fraud when splog fraud is operating right in their own backyard.
And I’ll say that this is one more reason why we need to get our act together in the networked/distributed/citizens media world and create higher value ad networks built on trust. See my Ad Age call for an open-source ad network here.
