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Facebook Advertisers Hit by Click Fraud

A big chunk of the $550 million Facebook is expected to make this year comes from small self-service advertisers, a group that TechCrunch's Michael Arrington notes isn't too happy right now due to pervasive click fraud. Actual complaints can be found at WickedFire, where advertisers claim they're seeing click fraud of up to 100%. Says one poster: "Its clear the problem is getting worse daily ... Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that."

Click fraud occurs when bots rack up scores of fake clicks, thus depleting an advertisers' budget. In that case, advertisers can actually see the clicks as they're reported, but in the case of Facebook, the social net seems to be recording and charging for clicks that don't exist at all, even from bots (according to the aggrieved advertisers). Their tracking software is reporting numbers that are 20-100% lower than what Facebook is reporting.

In a response, Facebook said it was on the case and would have the controversy sorted out by the end of the day: "Over the past few days, we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement and expect will be completely rolled out by the end of today. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately."

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »

1 comment about "Facebook Advertisers Hit by Click Fraud ".
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  1. Jan Van den bergh from Holaba, June 23, 2009 at 1:55 a.m.

    We’re also one of these - still small - advertisers on Facebook who smell fire and see smoke allover. Over the last month we spent about $ 200 for Holaba China on Facebook China. 8 different ads, targeting different segments.
    We totalised 4,177 clicks according to FB but only 3,708 according to Google analytics. 409 less clicks. Roughly 10% lost. We wonder where.
    Another phenomenon was the CPC ballooning. In the beginning we had 1 ad on CPC and it scored very well. The max amount/day was almost always spent. Then on monday June 8th we changed the winning ad from CPC to CPM and the 2nd best to CPC. Guess what? This 1st one dropped from 0.28 CTR to 0.13. Now the 2nd best became the new winner (CTR raised from 0.09 to 0.14) and the daily budget was again spent almost entirely in that CPC-period. Now all of the ads are on CPM. We’ll see what will happen next.

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