Study of Ad Campaigns on Top Social Networks Found Click Fraud Rate of 11.5 Percent in Q1 2010; Overall Industry Click Fraud Rate Rises to 17.4 Percent
AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics®, Inc. released advertising audience quality figures for the first quarter 2010 from the industry’s leading independent online advertising and click fraud data reporting service. Now in its fourth year, the Click Forensics reporting service provides statistically significant data collected from Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising campaigns for both large and small advertisers across all leading search engines as well as comparison shopping engines and social networks. Traffic across more than 300 ad networks is reflected in the data. Key findings for Q1 2010 include:
– A study of hundreds of online campaigns from a cross-section of advertisers and third-party ad networks showed traffic from leading social networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to have an average overall click fraud rate of 11.5 percent, significantly lower than the industry average.
– The overall industry average click fraud rate was 17.4 percent. That’s up from 15.3 percent for Q4 2009 and the 13.8 percent rate reported for Q1 2009.
– In Q1 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were the Philippines, Ukraine and China, respectively.
“While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it’s widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “The results of our new study corroborate this by tracking a lower overall click fraud rate on social networks than we’ve ever tracked on traditional PPC venues. Conversely, the overall industry rate seems to be creeping higher, so we recommend marketers continue to be watchful of their campaigns.”
Since 2006, Click Forensics has published online advertising industry data collected from the first independent third-party Cost Per Click (CPC) and online advertising fraud detection service. The service monitors online media traffic across over 300 ad networks as well as billions of clicks from top search engines, comparison shopping engines, social networks, leading publishers and advertiser web sites – providing the most accurate view of online advertising audience quality.
For more details and to read the full report “Click Fraud Rate Q1 2010,” visit http://www.clickforensics.com/resources/click-fraud-index.html.
About Click Forensics, Inc.
Click Forensics® is the industry leader in audience verification and traffic quality improvement for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides audience verification and traffic quality management solutions for leading online advertisers, publishers and ad networks, including companies such as Progressive Insurance, GenieKnows, Adknowledge, eZanga, Moxy Media, Turn, Traffic Engine, Vegas.com and many others. The company also regularly publishes industry data on online advertising audience quality. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at http://www.ClickForensics.com.
Click Forensics and Click Fraud Index are registered trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
