Click fraud has been called many things, from the scourge of the online ad industry to a marketing myth. But click fraud is real, and it could be far worse than ever expected, according to a new study.
The latest numbers from Radar Research claim that 95 percent of clicks and more than half of all ad impressions are fraudulent, MediaPost reports. Almost all of the fraudulent traffic was hidden behind layers of ad units called I-Frames, which pull ad content from other sources. A large amount of the impression fraud came as a result of URL padding in run-of-network buys.
Radar studied two types of campaigns: managed campaigns on reputable sites, and run-of-network campaigns. The study was based on more than 20 million impressions and ads from 53 advertisers.
While the report would seem to condemn ad networks because of the possible fraud associated with them, it actually suggests that ad networks could take precautions to block fraudulent traffic, but they choose not to, MediaPost reports.
