Fair Isaac Pegs Click Fraud at 10-15%
I’ve updated this post with a few clarifications.
According to an AP report, Fair Isaac’s preliminary data shows that 10 to 15 percent of online advertising traffic is “pathological,” indicating a likelihood of click fraud, said Joseph Milana, the company’s chief scientist of research and development.
In a just-issued press release, Fair Isaac is saying this 10 to 15-percent figure is referring to billed clicks, which puts these estimates much, much higher than those coming from the search engines, or from third-party reports from Click Forensics and others.
Also from the release, Milana said, “These are early results based upon a limited view of the market. We’re looking for more advertisers to contribute to the study to help us arrive at a solid picture of the problem’s size and scope across the broader marketplace and different vertical markets.”
The click fraud was detected using a combination of Fair Isaac’s profiling technology, similar to the kind it uses to detect credit card fraud, and its “anomaly detection engine,” which it uses to detect medical insurance fraud.
Filed under: traffic