Industry Click Fraud Rate Rises to 14.8 Percent in First Quarter 2007

April 19, 2007; 07:03 AM
Click Forensics™, Inc. today released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the first quarter 2007 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index™ (www.ClickFraudIndex.com).

Now in its second year, the Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network™, which more than 3,500 online advertisers and their agencies have joined. The Network provides statistically significant pay-per-click data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies. Key findings from data reported for Q1 2007 include:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.8 percent for Q1 2007 versus 13.7 percent for the same quarter in 2006 and 14.2 percent for Q4 of 2006, 13.8 percent for Q3 of 2006, 14.1 percent for Q2 of 2006, respectively.
• The average click fraud rate of pay-per-click advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 21.9 percent, versus 19.2 percent for Q4 of 2006.
• The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms was 22.2 percent compared to 20.9 percent in Q4 2006, 20.9 in Q3 2006 and 20.2 in Q2 2006. High-priced terms are defined as terms that cost over $2.00. These high-priced terms often make up the majority of an advertiser’s total spend.

“It appears that click fraud perpetrators are becoming more sophisticated even as search providers step up their efforts to fight click fraud,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “Click fraud seems to be following a similar path as other online fraud schemes such as spam and phishing - the problem is growing as fraudsters fine tune their methods.”

The Click Fraud Index publishes data collected from the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), the industry’s first independent third-party click fraud detection service dedicated to helping companies more accurately monitor their online advertising campaigns for pay-per-click fraud. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a monthly and quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends. The service is unique in that it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers’ own web sites – providing the industry’s most accurate view of click fraud to date.

About Click Forensics, Inc.

Click Forensics, Inc. is the leading provider of third-party technology and services that help online advertisers, agencies and search providers to better identify pay-per-click fraud. The company runs the top independent click fraud detection service in the industry, the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), which monitors online advertising campaigns for click fraud free of charge. Click Forensics also provides an enterprise-class solution to help advertisers with campaigns of 100,000 clicks or more per month to track click fraud. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.