Industry Click Fraud Rate Climbs to Year’s Highest Level at 14.2 Percent

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Click Forensics™, LLC today released industry Pay Per Click (PPC) fraud figures for the fourth quarter 2006 from the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index™ (www.ClickFraudIndex.com). This quarter figures include the first industry data about click fraud threat levels to online advertising campaigns running on search engine content networks.

The Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network™, which more than 3,000 online advertisers and their agencies have joined. The Network provides statistically significant Pay Per Click data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies. Key findings from data reported for Q4 2006 include:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.2 percent versus 13.8 percent for Q3, 14.1 percent for Q2 and 13.7 percent for Q1.
• The average click fraud rate of Pay Per Click advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 19.2 percent for Q4.
• The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms remained at 20.9 percent as it did in Q3 versus 20.2 percent in Q2. High-priced terms are defined as terms that cost over $2.00. These high-priced terms often make up the majority of an advertiser’s total spend.
• The average Pay Per Click term cost for the top key terms across the five biggest search advertising industries – Retail, Financial Services, Health & Fitness, Technology, and Entertainment – for Q4 was $3.50. This compares to $3.92 in Q3, $4.51 in Q2 and $4.75 in Q1.

“The most interesting data points from last quarter's data was that the industry average click fraud rate climbed to its highest level in 2006 and that the click fraud rate for affiliate sites was significantly higher than the overall industry average,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, LLC. “The data confirms what other recent independent investigations have uncovered about click fraud. Click fraud remains a concern for online advertisers and affiliate sites represent a large and growing source of click fraud traffic. These are areas we and advertisers will continue to monitor closely in 2007.”

The Click Fraud Index publishes data collected from the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), the industry’s first independent third-party click fraud detection service dedicated to helping companies more accurately monitor their online advertising campaigns for Pay Per Click fraud. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a monthly and quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends. The service is unique in that it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers' own web sites – providing the industry’s most accurate view of click fraud to date.

About Click Forensics, LLC

Click Forensics, LLC is the leading provider of third-party technology and services that help online advertisers, agencies and search providers to better identify pay per click fraud. The company runs the top independent click fraud detection service in the industry, the Click Fraud Network (www.ClickFraudNetwork.com), which monitors online advertising campaigns for click fraud free of charge. Click Forensics also provides an enterprise-class solution to help advertisers with campaigns of 100,000 clicks or more per month to track click fraud. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings are available at www.ClickForensics.com.

Click Forensics, Click Fraud Index and Click Fraud Network are trademarks of Click Forensics, LLC. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.