Click fraud
Facebook has a click fraud problem. This one is different from the kind of click fraud we’ve known about that happens on other portals such as Google or Yahoo and it is even more devious.
Google’s click-fraud is a money-making scheme. Scammers set up a Google Adsense account and then set up web sites that are nothing but pages of Google ads. You’ve probably seen one of these “link farms” if you typed in a misspelled URL. The page creator then sets up a system to go to his own pages and automatically clicks on the links. He then waits for his check from Google for the referrals.
Facebook’s clicd-fraud is different because it is not a referall program. People or businesses place the adds through Facebook directly (or through a bulk-buyer who gets paid for sales conversions). Because the businesses pay Facebook for every click of an ad but don’t bring in revenue unless a sale is made, they have no interest in artificially inflating number of clicks.
So who benefits from Facebook click-fraud? Competitors. A not-so-ethical business can inflate their competitors costs to the point that online advertising is harmful to the business. And that seems to be exactly what is happening according to Tech Crunch.
Facebook and Google and other cost per click advertising providers have problems. Both methods of click fraud discourage ad sales. The tools to perform click fraud are technology based. As Tech Crunch points out, the fight against click fraud is an arms race. When an ad provider figures how how to stop it, the scammers will find another way to do it. As long as web based advertising is based on cost per click, scammers have all the incentive they need to continue doing it.
Any business that buys cost per click advertising on social networks as part of its social media strategy must also figure into their costs the additional resources required to check the charges coming from the social networks compared to the actual traffic they get on their own web site.