Save $11.6B With These Click Fraud Safety Nets
As malware and other cyberfraud technologies become more insidious, marketers stand to lose not just money but consumer trust as well. ClickFacts’ CEO explains what’s hurting the PPC industry and how to fight back.
Imagine every time you launch a browser to conduct a search you receive the following message: “Warning: searching online may result in the loss of personal information and even your identity. Proceed at your own risk.”
While this isn’t our reality yet, these flags might become commonplace if a growing crowd of sophisticated, unscrupulous fraudsters get their way.
The future of online commerce continues to get brighter, but is also being threatened. Research firm comScore recently released its ecommerce update for the first 51 days of the 2007 holiday season (November 1 – December 21) and marked a 19 percent increase over 2006 numbers for the same period — from $22 to $26.29 billion. Clearly, people are flocking to the web to do their business. The online channel’s fast growth is a tremendous validation for online advertising, but also an opportunity for fraudsters to exploit audiences built through paid search campaigns — the primary method by which consumers find what they need online. By 2010 — just two short years from now — paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC), will be a $60 billion industry (IAB/PWC 2006). But fraud losses in the same period are predicted to surge to $11.6 billion (Trend Micro). So it should come as no surprise to see click fraud keeping pace by evolving beyond robbing marketing budgets to robbing consumers of their identities as well.
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