It's been a few years, now, that AIT has been a Web hosting provider crusading against click fraud. The matter has been a bit of a personal quest for CEO Clarence Briggs, who in 2005 led a class action lawsuit against Google itself, attempting to lay responsibility for fraud in Internet advertising at the search giant's doorstep.
At the time, we ran an interview with Briggs. And, while the lawsuit, the accusations and their target all at least hint at the possibility of some kind of publicity stunt, there's really no mistaking his sincerity.
More importantly, his point is valid. In 2005, he didn't want Google's money. He wanted his money back. And he wanted to know that pay-per-click advertising was a viable vehicle for online marketing.
Without a strict, and transparent, method for vetting clicks, how could advertisers know they were getting what they paid for?
The Google suit was settled almost a year ago, a deal that required Google to refund a part of the money spent by advertisers during the previous four years. However, a CNN article excerpted on AIT's anti click fraud site IGeryon.com (though no longer available on CNN's site), says "independent studies assert that anywhere from $100 to $400 of every $1,000 stems from click fraud." IGeryon is encouraging readers to opt out of the settlement.
This week AIT accused a customer, the Fayetteville Publishing Company, of click fraud. At the same time, the company announced that it had uncovered a new form of click fraud it calls "bang box." AIT described the tactic in a press release:
"A search engine affiliate hosts it web servers in a data center with an ISP. The affiliate then gets fed advertiser ads from the search engines, syndicates and other IAB members to its web site. Then the affiliates hire a third party to rent a web server inside the ISP's data center in order to "Bang" or click on their affiliate site driving impressions or clicking on the ads themselves using an internal IP address without generating suspicious external traffic. They are paid for the clicks by the search engines who in this case, probably don't know what is happening."
In addition to raising concerns about the legitimacy, in general, of some advertising practices, AIT's ongoing interest in click fraud raises some questions, specifically, about the pay-per-click advertising you may be doing, and just what you're actually paying for the legitimate clicks you receive.
If you aren't already, there are apparently quite a few tools designed to defend your advertising dollars against click fraud. There are a few listed here.
TAGS: 
ait, 
click fraud
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