Report: IP Blacklisting doesn't stop click fraud

Anchor Intelligence researchers found that rather than to eliminate - or at the very least lessen - click fraud, marketers need to do more than blacklist an IP. According to a recent report click fraud increased to 16.2% (an increase of 0.4% from Q2 2007 to Q2 2008).

"Blacklists are a 1980s approach to a modern-day problem," said Ken Miller, Anchor Intelligence CEO. Miller went on to say that blacklisting wasn't the solution for many other online problems and it shouldn't be considered a cure-all for click fraud, either.

Why isn't blacklisting a solution? According to the Anchor Intelligence report, about 25% of users studied were tied to at least two distinct IP addresses or that a single IP address could be tied to several consumers. To figure out which user's are fraudulently clicking from that type of data is nearly impossible. Botnets are another reason blacklisting doesn't work; consumers whose computers are taken over by botnets may not even know that anything untoward is happening.

Instead, Anchor Intelligence is calling for a better solution involving reputation and behavioral characteristics to identify fraudulent clicks in real time.

Tags: click fraud, display advertising, IP blacklisting, paid search, search marketing