Q3 Click-Fraud Rate Dilute Advertiser ROI; Botnet Activity Rises

Q3 Click-Fraud Rate Holds Steady at 16%; Botnet Activity Rises

The  average click-fraud rate for Q3 2008 held steady overall at 16%, but a 10% rise in botnet activity - and a 28% overall click-fraud rate from botnets - is potentially undermining ad-industry efforts to combat click fraud, according to figures from Click Forensics‘ Click Fraud Index.

Key Q3 findings:

• The overall industry average click-fraud rate was 16% for Q3 2008, down only slightly from the 16.2% rate reported for both Q2 2008 and Q3 2007.
• Traffic from botnets was responsible for 27.6% of all click fraud traffic in Q3 2008, up from 25.2% for Q2 2008.
• The average click-fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search-engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 27.1%. This is down from 27.6% reported for Q2 2008 and 28.1% reported for Q3 2007.

• In Q3 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from Russia (4.9%), France (4.8%) and the UK (3.5%).