Click Fraud Higher Than Ever Reaching 17.1% in Q4 2008

According to the latest Click Forensics report, industry click fraud reached new heights in Q4 2008 with the average rate growing to 17.1%, up from 16% from Q3 2008.

The company’s reporting service – the Click Fraud Index – monitors and reports on statistically significant industry PPC data collected from online advertising campaigns across all the leading search engines. Some of the key Q4 findings included:

Overall industry average click fraud reached a record high 17.1%.
The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisments appearing on search engine content networks – including Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network – was 28.2%.
Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic.
Aside from the US, the countries with the greatest percentage of click fraud included Canada (7.4%), Germany (3%), and China (2.3%).

“Based on the data we tracked in Q4 2008, it seems that the online advertising industry is not immune to the growing tide of cybercrime during this recessionary period,” said Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics. “Both the overall click fraud rate and the rate of click fraud originating from botnets were the highest ever in Q4 2008. In addition, we’ve started to see old schemes like click farms reemerge. Advertisers should pay close attention to these types of threats in their online campaigns throughout the year.”

Click fraud occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program clicks on an advertisement for the purpose of artificially increasing the click-through-rate.