Click Fraud UNCOVERED – Spread The Word

This morning a client called me and sent me a news report that has uncovered the level of fraud that is currently being used in India.

If you are a site owner you may be being conned, so please take the time to read this and I look forward to hearing your comments.

With her baby on her lap, Maya Sharma (name changed) gets down to work every evening from her eighth-floor flat at Vasant Vihar. Maya’s job is to click on online advertisements. She doesn’t care about the ads, but diligently keeps count – it’s $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

“It’s boring, but it is extra money for a couple of hours of clicking weblinks every day,” says a resident of Delhi’s Patparganj, who has kept a $300-target for the summer.

Traffic to click overseas Internet ads – from home loans to insurance – is spreading fast in India. “I have no interest in what appears when clicking an ad. I care only whether to pause 60 seconds or 90 seconds, as money is credited if you stay online for a fixed time,” says another user.

So how are they doing this?: online advertisers in developed markets agree to pay hosting website each time an ad is clicked. With performance-based deals becoming dominant on the Internet, intermediaries have sprung up to “do the needful”.’ Why, type in ‘earn rupees clicking ads’ in Google — you get 25,000 results.

“I’m not surprised. As competition intensifies, people are using every trick to increase their revenues,” says Sam Balsara, CMD, Madison.

The trend is catching up in India. Says Goutam Rakshit, chairman, Advertising Council of India: “It’s a numbers game as far as media buying is concerned. And anybody who can manipulate numbers gets the edge. This is unethical, and needs to be curbed.”

So if you are paying to advertise your site on a pay per click/lead basis then you may be being conned.

How excited are you to sign up with Google adwords now?

Full source of the facts and quotes: Source