New click fraud hotspots identified

A new click fraud report is out indicating that fraudulent click traffic may be originating in new places, creating more trouble for marketers and publishers. The good news? Click fraud has declined by a small amount. The bad news? Fraudsters are becoming more adept at defrauding publishing networks and advertisers with the use of botnets.

by Kristina Knight

First, the results. According to the Q3 Anchor Intelligence Traffic Quality report the attempted click fraud rate fell from nearly 23% in Q2 to just over 18.5% in Q3.

Marketers and publishers using Anchor's ClearMark platform can filter poor quality traffic before fraudulent clicks can harm their campaigns.

"While network level attempted click fraud rates have declined, the methods used to perpetrate click fraud have grown in sophistication and variety," said Richard Sim, VP of Product Management and Marketing. "Advertisements have become an increasingly common infection vector for payloads like browser hijackers and other forms of malware. Ad networks and search engines should pay close attention to such threats as we enter the holiday season."

The real problem, however, is that fraudsters are still out there and many are going unnoticed because they've gotten smarter about their operations. Anchor's report indicates that the majority of fraudulent traffic is now arriving from 'coordinated click fraud rings' and botnets, making it harder for publishers to see the fraudulent traffic in time to save advertiser dollars.

In Q3, Vietnam (30% attempted click fraud rate), Egypt (29% attempted click fraud rate) and Indonesia (25.5% attempted click fraud rate) were found to have the highest rates of attempted click fraud. The US (21%) and Canada (20.8%) also remain hotbeds of fraudulent click activity.

A recent report from ClickForensics found that 42% of click fraud traffic is now coming from botnets.

Tags: Anchor Intelligence, botnet traffic, botnets, click fraud, ClickForensics, fraud rings, ppc campaign