Monday, June 23, 2014

Click Fraud in the Pay Per Click Model

After reading a few articles about click fraud and the increasing role it has in today's digital advertising world, I find the issue a bit two-sided.  While it is certainly unethical to set up simulated bots to click on a competitor's ad with the sole purpose of forcing your competitors to incur more costs, it all seems like part of the game.  To a certain extent, click fraud seems like it is inevitable.  For instance, not every person who clicks on an ad is intending on purchasing that product or service.  However, I understand that there is a significant difference between intentionally racking up clicks just to harm a competitor’s bottom line.  Additionally, this type of fraud seems fairly difficult to track, and even more difficult to pinpoint any intentional wrongdoing.

One article demands that it should be a federal offense and that the government should dedicate a body to monitoring all click fraud.  While it seems to be a significant issue in today's digital marketplace, I am not sure if having government oversight here is the best answer.  There appears to be a lot of grey area among the magnitude and occurrence of click fraud.  There should certainly be some penalty enforced when it is conducted in a large scale and in such an outright malicious way, however I believe this is an area that will be difficult to police.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

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