Google Incorporated claims the company loses about $1 billion US a year to "click fraud" and similar scams on its ad service. Special software that can click on an ad repeatedly can be used to inflate a rival company's advertising costs or boost a site operator's own revenue gained from displaying the ads. Advertisers have been asking Google for a clearer picture of the reach and effectiveness of their ads. Google does not charge its advertisers for clicks it determines to be invalid, effectively cutting into the company's revenue. "Our invalid clicks rate has remained in the range of less than 10 per cent of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. Click fraud protection is something we take very seriously, and it requires a great deal of research and development to do effectively. [The] figures illustrate the significant level of proactive protection we provide, and how this has resulted in minimizing the actual impact of click fraud on advertisers," wrote Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety, on the company's Inside AdWords blog late Thursday. News source: CBC News
In fact, I believe they don't like click fraud, if they did, they would never ban thousands of suspicous website publishers, even if they could add millions to their revenue.
Google doesn't lose this money. The clicks get paid by their AdWords customers, so Google earns money. The only incentive Google has to fight click fraud is to keep a good reputation so that more customers use AdWords.
I don't get it how they "lose" the money. Clicks are made, determined to be invalid, advertisers are being refunded. They wouldn't have had the money in the first place had the INVALID clicks not been there. The only way for them to actually LOSE money is if they are overprotective and deem some clicks invalid when in fact they aren't.
In fact, if a publisher makes false clicks, it either costs the advertiser, or it costs no one. In the case of honest publishers, sometimes I get clicks that are probably honest clicks, but I don't get paid for every one of them, in fact I'd say I only get paid for about half of them. So how can Google say they are losing anything, they are ripping the advertisers and the publishers, they don't lose a thing, they only profit from undetected click fraud.
LOL , and im asking myself SO ?. Get that google is an empire , and they are like monopol on net. so believe me they will double it.
well, has someone wondered what percentage of money does google refund to advertisers when they ban a publisher account due to click fraud ? (or do they actually refund anything even if they claim to do so?)