- Impact
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100936_pf.html
snip:
"
'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads
Google Faces Another Lawsuit by Businesses Claiming Overcharges
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 22, 2006; A01
From her home surrounded by cornfields in Dow City, Iowa, Jackie Park spends hours each day on her computer, earning half a penny every time she clicks on an Internet advertisement.
By the end of the day, she usually tallies a few hundred clicks, yielding about $300 a year. It's not much, but it adds up for the 35-year-old mother of five who became disabled three years ago.
"You don't make tons of money," Park said. "But once you start clicking and you get actual payments, it becomes an addiction."
Park is one of thousands of people around the world who receive e-mailed lists of Web sites every day to click on for cash. Operators of these fast-growing "pay to read" networks and similar "pay to click" rings say they provide a genuine audience for advertisers, but Internet fraud experts disagree. They say the networks fuel click fraud, which means using bogus clicks to pump up revenue artificially for search engines and their affiliated Web sites.
In the past year, industry analysts say, new forms of click fraud have emerged from the shadows of masked operations into plain view on the Internet. Dozens of Web sites offer to pay people to sit and click on ads, or to type certain words into search engines for hours at a time. Some sites have forums where people swap click-fraud tips.
Advertisers, who often pay for online ads only when someone clicks on them, have been crying foul and complaining to federal regulators. They've also sued the Internet's largest ad networks, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., which earlier this year settled class-action lawsuits by advertisers."
more at link.
-Allan :gl:
snip:
"
'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads
Google Faces Another Lawsuit by Businesses Claiming Overcharges
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 22, 2006; A01
From her home surrounded by cornfields in Dow City, Iowa, Jackie Park spends hours each day on her computer, earning half a penny every time she clicks on an Internet advertisement.
By the end of the day, she usually tallies a few hundred clicks, yielding about $300 a year. It's not much, but it adds up for the 35-year-old mother of five who became disabled three years ago.
"You don't make tons of money," Park said. "But once you start clicking and you get actual payments, it becomes an addiction."
Park is one of thousands of people around the world who receive e-mailed lists of Web sites every day to click on for cash. Operators of these fast-growing "pay to read" networks and similar "pay to click" rings say they provide a genuine audience for advertisers, but Internet fraud experts disagree. They say the networks fuel click fraud, which means using bogus clicks to pump up revenue artificially for search engines and their affiliated Web sites.
In the past year, industry analysts say, new forms of click fraud have emerged from the shadows of masked operations into plain view on the Internet. Dozens of Web sites offer to pay people to sit and click on ads, or to type certain words into search engines for hours at a time. Some sites have forums where people swap click-fraud tips.
Advertisers, who often pay for online ads only when someone clicks on them, have been crying foul and complaining to federal regulators. They've also sued the Internet's largest ad networks, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., which earlier this year settled class-action lawsuits by advertisers."
more at link.
-Allan :gl:
