A paper published by Oxford BioChronometrics SA, which is a company that sells click fraud protection to clients published a report last month concluding that:
“Our research found that at best, 88% of the ad-clicks were made by bots on the LinkedIn ad platform, while at worst, 98% were from bots on the Google ad platform”
The company said it set up pages as follows:
How the research was conducted
In order to limit the level of non ad-platform bot activity being recorded, individual web pages were created speci cally as the click target for the ad, one per ad platform.
HTTP GET logging software was enabled for each of these web pages, recording each HTTP GET request that was made to the web server.
Embedded on each of the target web pages was a JavaScript library, providing data collection functions to the web page.
“The advertising platforms used were Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Facebook.
“The ad-click budget allocated was around $100 (GBP) per platform, which was the maximum lifetime budget for the ad campaign and was used as fast as possible on each platform.”
You can read the details of exactly how the study was performed but the bottom line the company says is that “there were no instances where we were not charged for an ad-click that was made by any type of bot.
You can read the full report here
”
Cool topic. Say it isn’t so, right?
That would mean a large percentage of Google’s revenue is a house of cards!
After Google bought Spider.io and Adometry, who were calling Google out for profitting from fake clicks, it has recently added restrictions to 3rd party data platforms, who could keep Google in check.
Google Cracks Down on Marketers’ Access to Data
Third-party measurement firms fear being shut out
adweek.com/news/technology/google-cracks-down-marketers-access-data-160543
Way to go, Google!
Here is an excellent example of a PC infected with tdss:
Very Interesting and approch to detect bots, but it is not clear if the authors are talking about Google Search ads or Google Display Network ads.