The click fraud menace
After Google settled a law suit pertaining to click fraud few months back, Yahoo has also settled a law suit related to the same issue, albeit at significantly lower terms. The problem with click fraud seriously undermines the value of paid search advertising, and I believe that some of the recent moves by search engines to consider a CPA (cost per action) model could be a result of, at least to some extent, the click fraud problem.
In fact, there are signs that advertisers are beginning to think more closely if PPC is indeed the best way to spend their advertising dollar. A ClickZ article talks about the estimated losses to advertisers on account of click fraud, based on research by Outsell Inc. Jimmy Daniels has also blogged about it on Revenews.
While the message is clear that online advertising is well and thriving, and that advertisers are willing to budget more for it. At the same time, paid search advertising could lose out on getting a bigger share of the pie. Most likely, the increased advertising spend would go for display (CPM-based) advertising (probably, rich media). Question is, how much are the big advertisers willing to bet on affiliate marketing?
