Facebook advertisers are accusing the social networking company of click fraud rates of between 15% and 100% - charging them for non-existent clicks. The move follows a Microsoft civil lawsuit against alleged click-fraudsters filed last week.Click fraud is defined as “A type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.”
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports that Facebook is seeking to nearly double revenues from last year of $US280 million to $550 million this year.
Small, self-serve advertisers make up a big part of that revenue, and they’ve been reporting skyrocketing click fraud rates over the last few weeks Facebook has been gradually relaxing the rules on what advertisers could promote since the beginning of this year, in a bid to increase its share of affiliate marketers’ (advertising middlemen) cash.
But many advertisers are checking the clicks reported by Facebook against their own figures, only to find large discrepancies - different to standard click fraud complaints where ‘bots’ ratchet up fake clicks – there are no clicks at all.
The brouhaha follows hot on the heels of Microsoft filing a civil lawsuit alleging a massive click fraud scheme this time last week.
Microsoft Associate General Counsel Tim Cranton said the company had gathered “substantial evidence that a handful of individuals were likely responsible for these click fraud attacks, which affected online advertisements related to auto insurance and the online role playing game, World of Warcraft.”So far there’s been no official word from Facebook even acknowledging there is a problem.
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