Click Fraud Etymology

Well, manual and automated of course. To distinguish between human and bot clicks...

Don't leave out impression fraud, used to lower CTR

Well, I was specifically concentrating on click fraud, but impression fraud has similar issues. I think disbarment is much easier with click fraud than impression fraud, however, just because of the sheer volume of impressions needed to register as fraud in the first place.

Um, are you forgetting about the AdSense CPM program? Impression fraud is just as serious as click fraud. If the advertiser is paying high enough CPM, you don't need "sheer volume" to earn a a serious amount of fraudulent income, strictly through impression fraud. Impression fraud with CPM can hurt an advertiser just as bad as regular click fraud.

Impression fraud in AdSense can mean two things - either getting enough impressions to artificially lower the CTR (so a high CTR doesn't raise any flags) OR earning income from CPM advertisers targeting your site(s).

No, I'm not forgetting it, I still think it's easier to perpetrate click fraud than impression fraud, but I know both happen. And I think the original AdSense program's popularity has really focused the attention on click fraud.

>easier to perpetrate click fraud than impression fraud

Nah...

From a technical point of view, it's easier.

How do you figure it is easier to do a page impression AND an ad click, rather than just a page impression alone?

Other way around Jen

- terror, fun, games going wild or whatever form it takes. Most viruses and worms today are released by kids that take a joke to far. One day, one or more of them WILL FOR SURE build in a click bot. Imagine if that boy in Germany that got busted recently for Sasser had done that... (DAMN!) I believe Sasser infected over 200 million computers and I am sure a few million still have it. With a build in click bot clicking 100 times a day on each machine you'll have an instant bloody click nightmare - adding 20,000 million clicks A DAY to the pool, from all kinds of IPs and agents.

Now, what do you think advertisers will do the morning they wake up and read this news in the daily newspaper? Off course, they will pause all their campaigns - untill they know more about what is going on. Result: Instant loss of almost all income for (PPC) engines - and especially Google that rely so heavily on that revenue.

And how do you think the stock market will react to this? And what would the long term effects be?

Scarry: Yes!
Realistic: Definately!!

And all it takes is one 16 year old German boy who want to have a bit of fun ...

I'm getting a bit confused as to where this discussion's going, so perhaps I need to explain myself better. Impression fraud is harder to do undetected than click fraud, just because you need many more impressions than clicks to make a difference. Maybe I should have emphasized "undetected".

But it's not, it might take a little more time, but it's not harder - if you can get 1000 IP's, you can get 10,000

and yeah Mikkel, either one 16yr old having fun, or one evil son of a bitch with a gripe against Google...

Hey Nick, I was referring to the comment Eric made about it being "easier to perpetrate click fraud than impression fraud." I didn't see your comment until after I posted mine, so it might have looked like I was referring to yours.

It is far easier to do impression fraud than click fraud, was what I was saying :)

You had me worried their mate, i thought your brains had leaked out your ears hehe!

All become clear :)

suicidal click fraud (when an ad network cannot protect advertisers from click scammers.