Last week, Click Forensics published a report claiming that the overall industry average click fraud rate for the fourth quarter of 2006 was 14.2% (see: Click Fraud Reportedly Up).
Shortly thereafter, IncreMental Advantage issued a report asserting that click fraud cost Internet advertisers $666 million in 2006.
Not surprisingly, Google disputes those numbers.
In his blog, Shurman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google, countered, saying that third-party click fraud estimates don't add up.
"On a basic level, these numbers are much higher than what we see at Google, and are not at all representative of the actual statistics of our network," wrote Mr. Ghosemajumder. "The point is that their data collection methods are inherently flawed and any resemblance their numbers could have to reality would be coincidental."
So whom should advertisers trust?
The assurances that click fraud rates are low, supplied by Google, a company that makes billions on pay-per-click advertising, or higher click fraud estimates supplied by companies that have a vested interest in seeing the "problem" grow?
As of now, the discrepancy in the numbers is far too wide, and advertisers simply do not have access to the information to make intelligent decisions.
Major search engine ad sellers — Google, Yahoo! and others — are making far too much to allow the click fraud debate to continue. They have the resources to settle the question — once and for all.
But so far, obviously, they haven't.