Click fraud is bad for advertisers and potential customers alike. It wastes a lot of money and time and can significantly increase the cost of a product or service. But click fraud is here to stay and doesn’t plan on going anywhere. It’s a permanent roommate for online advertising and it doesn’t plan on paying rent, doing housework, or picking up after itself.
The time has come to start speaking reality and stop spending so much time trying to blow beams of sunshine up each other’s behinds or pointing fingers [insert thoughts of recent articles about Facebook here]. The online advertising industry will not “win” the battle against click fraud if “winning” is defined as eradicating click fraud. When there’s a lot of money changing hands, fraudulent behavior will almost always stop by for a visit and will continue stopping by unannounced no matter how many times you’ve slammed the door in its face. This happens in every line of work, not just online advertising. Our job as an industry is to smoke click fraud out from its hiding place, minimize it as much as possible, and keep one step ahead in order to limit the damage caused and the money wasted.
