Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 11:49
The country's 200 000-odd Tupperware agents are angry about the counterfeit products being sold as the real McCoy.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
San Francisco - Online search giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are not doing enough to combat fraud that cost US advertisers $800m last year, a study released on Wednesday claimed.
"Google, Yahoo and MSN are stonewalling on click fraud, to their own and others' detriments," concluded Outsell Inc, an industry research firm.
"Pay-per-click" advertising is a core revenue source for search engines and has come under attack by those concerned about fraud.
Internet advertisers pay search engines or websites every time an advertising link is clicked, presumably by a potential customer.
Click fraud is when competitors arrange to have rivals' ads clicked on, sometimes by robot programs, to drive up their expenses.
Another form of fraud takes place when websites that get rewarded for sending traffic to advertising links orchestrate phoney clicks to increase pay-offs.
Major online search engines have adamantly maintained they vigilantly guard against click fraud and refund money to advertisers when chicanery is uncovered.
Nearly 15% of ad clicks are frauds, Outsell estimated based on a survey of 407 US advertisers in May.
With the US online advertising market pegged at $5.5bn in 2005, that meant $800m was paid for bogus clicks, according to Outsell.
The survey indicated that 27% of advertisers have reduced the amount of money they spend on pay-per-click advertising and that another 10% intend to do so, according to Outsell.