Newest Feature in Adwords: Estimating Invalid Clicks to Fight Click Fraud

Starting Monday evening, Google’s hundreds of thousands of AdWords advertising clients could learn the number of times Google believes their ads were the subject of click fraud.

The goal is for Google advertisers to get their first, real look at the scope of the click fraud problem and how it directly impacts them. “These clicks are filtered in real-time by our systems before advertisers are charged for them. The resulting data will of course differ from one advertiser to the next. In addition, a much smaller number of invalid clicks may also be credited to advertisers’ accounts after-the-fact, as the result of a publisher being terminated from the AdSense program for invalid click activity. These will appear as account-level credits.”, says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’ business product manager, trust and safety.

The truth, or at least how Google sees it, could be a powerful weapon in Google’s favor, Ghosemajumder said. Internet search engines and their advertisers disagree about the amount of click fraud that occurs.

Consumer and business advocacy groups plus independent researchers maintain advertisers have been overcharged as much as $1.3 billion and that nearly 15% of all clicks are fraudulent.

 

Source: Adwords Official Blog