Click Forensics lastest figures from more than 1,300 online advertisers report that approx 14% of all clicks on pay per click adverts are fraudlent.

Click Forensics are an independent third-party click fraud detection and monitoring service for online advertisers. Their click fraud index at Join the Network aims to highlight the ‘threat’ of fraudulent or bogus clicks by week. (Like below!)

Threat By Week
Click Forensics statistics do not take into account the search engines themselves identifying fraudulent clicks, as seen often in Google service adjustments upon invoice for example. However their study corroborates findings of another in July by Outsell, a media research firm in Canada, which covered 407 online advertisers. Outsell’s report suggests around 14.6% of all online clicks in their study were found to be fraudulent, estimating click fraud cost advertisers $800 million last year.

Click Forensics study goes on to report that the two big players of online advertising have lower click fraud rates in comparison to the second and third ‘tier’ search engines. Google and Yahoo sitting at approx 12.8%, while 2nd and 3rd tiers sit at 20.3% and 27.1% respectively.

The report also found evidence that organisations paying for higher priced search terms are significantly more vulnerable to click fraud. The average pay per click search term cost was $4.51 (£2.48) across retail, financial services, health and fitness, technology and entertainment and click fraud was higher for terms costing over $2 (£1.10) per click at 20.2%.

Tom Cuthbert, chief executive of Click Forensics said “For the first time we have industry data that clearly show what many have expected – organisations purchasing higher priced search terms are significantly more vulnerable to click fraud.”

Both Google and Yahoo have already agreed to settle class action lawsuits to limit their potential liability for past click fraud. If the Google hearing scheduled to commence on July the 24th is approved, the settlement would address any click fraud that occurred for more than $22 billion of ad spending via pay per click.

Yahoo’s own proposed settlement isn’t scheduled to be reviewed until late this year.