Click Fraud Concern Mounts

The latest eMarketer discusses the concerns that are mounting as click fraud grows along with the success of online advertising.

Search engine advertising has become too big a business for major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, to ignore the damage — real or imagined — click fraud is doing.

An article in The New York Times, "Marketers Demand Better Count of the Clicks," reports how a group of large companies that includes Kimberly-Clarke, Colgate-Palmolive and Ford Motors is demanding that online publishers hire auditors to check ad and viewer counts and that they do so no later than the middle of next year.

According to the "Search Marketing: Successfully Combating Click Fraud and Other Concerns" report from JupiterResearch, while click fraud worries only 17% of small marketers and 21% of mid-size marketers, 39% of large marketers view it as a problem.