A Netherlands Web analytics company this week debuted a product that aims to sniff out online click fraud in which a person or programmed script incurs a pay-per-click charge for an advertiser by making it appear that a legitimate visitor has clicked on their Web site.
OneStat.com, based in Amsterdam, released its click-fraud detection reports, which it says will present evidence of potential click fraud such as technical details of data collection and analysis that will help to negotiate a refund.
The company in an announcement cited research that has shown click fraud can account for up to 20 percent of the average pay-per-click advertising budget. Pay-per-click advertising includes programs through sites like Google and Yahoo in which advertisers buy keywords that when entered in a search query will display their Web site in a text ad — usually along the top or side of the search-results page.
OneStat’s click-fraud detection is based on a number of measurements and a comparison of data, including number of sessions and duration of sessions, number of clicks from a specific IP address, total cost of a campaign, number of pages viewed, and others.
“More and more customers are asking for reliable click-fraud detection reports of a third party as we are. Although some advertising networks and search engines provide some minor details about click fraud, these reports are most of the time not objective because they might see a decrease of advertising revenue if they provide more details or change their business model to for example pay per visit,” said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.
