July 1st, 2006
Microsoft on Click Fraud: pay per percentage ads 'highly robust to fraud'
Microsoft Research is studying advertising methods that are “highly robust to fraud” and ways to eliminate “the incentives for click fraud in a system that sells clicks.”
In “Pay-Per Percentage of Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud,” Microsoft research says:
A simple method for selling advertising, pay-per-percentage of impressions, that is immune to both click fraud and impression fraud…ads must be shown in a truly random way, across the percentage of impressions purchased..Pre-fix match: a system that is similar to broad-match, but more compatible with pay-per-percentage…auction pay-per-percentage matches, including prefix matches in a revenue maximizing way…make it easier to sell to advertisers.
In “Click Fraud Resistant Methods for Learning Click-Through Rates," Microsoft research says:
A particular class of learning algorithms, called click-based algorithms…whose estimates are based upon the number of impressions between clicks…(and) satisfying additional technical assumptions are fraud-resistant in the sense that a devious user can not change the expected payment of the advertiser per impression.
Microsoft research also quotes George Reyes, Google CFO:
Click fraud is ‘the biggest threat to the Internet economy…Something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because potentially it threatens our business model.’
ALSO SEE: Yahoo trumps Google: Yahoo takes the lead in attacking the click fraud problem
