More things need to be published like this article mentioned over at SEL.

Perhaps this will lead advertisers to review their accounts and might help lower some of the insane bids we've been seeing lately.

Probably won't matter, but it's only a matter of time before some well known company is caught paying some no-name to click on competitors ads. PPC is due for a really good knock-down brawl of a scandal - I say click fraud will be at the base of it.

[ Message was edited by: SportsGuy 01/31/2007 06:04 am ]

When you click from that article to the additional information you something I suspected and that is key to understanding these statistics.

The sub-title of the next page is Click Fraud for Campaigns run on CONTENT NETWORKS hits 19.2 percent.

Note that I bolded CONTENT NETWORKS as this is key. If you don't run content ads you can eliminate most, but not all, click fraud.

Very true, I tried testing Content Network for some of my adult business clients, and they exausted their daily budget in 1 hour. It ridiculous!

I always opt-out any search engines content network and partner search networks like Googles, and ever since I did that, my conversions got MUCH better and have been stable ever since!

Click fraud is definitely a problem in a lot of markets.

However, something to keep in mind when it comes to these kinds of articles is that the anti click fraud services that publish them have a vested interest in larger click fraud numbers.

And since they provide the numbers...

Opting out of Google's search partner network can greatly reduce traffic, clicks and sales. Google provides the default search function on many large ISPs including AOL, Earthlink, and AT&T.

I have not seen a reason to opt out of that network but I do sometimes exclude specific sites. That function is found within each Campaign just below the Edit Campaign Settings function.