Earlier this week, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch broke the story of rampant click fraud at Facebook. Today, he has details on how the fraudsters are doing it. On Google, you can simply sign up for an AdSense account and put the ads you want to target on parked domain names and simply run a program to keep clicking on those ads. "The search engines fight this via obvious and not so obvious means, and an arms race begins," Arrington says. Facebook is a little bit different, as there's no AdSense. Instead, fraudsters hire outside firms to create fake …

This sounds familiar: Kara Swisher reports that Yahoo is working on a massive overhaul to its brand in order to focus on "what defines Yahoo." The initiative is being spearheaded by new CMO Elisa Steele, who has hired brand consulting firm Landor Associates as well as another outside consultant to turn Yahoo's brand around. The Web giant had been using Ogilvy & Mather and Siegel+Gale to work on strategic branding issues. According to Swisher's sources, Yahoo's rebranding will be built around the latest redesign of its homepage, slated for this fall. Many themes have been considered, but most still center …

CBS may take part in the trials being conducted by Comcast and Time Warner for "OnDemand Online" and "TV Everywhere," PaidContent.org's Staci Kramer reports. In an interview with Kramer, Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, fell short of confirming that CBS will engage in the trials being conducted by the cable providers, though he did express serious interest: "I think you can make an assumption that to the extent that authentication represents an additional way for CBS as a broadcaster to get paid, I think that's very interesting." As Kramer points out, with the exception of Showtime, CBS …

YouTube video uploads from mobile phones have increased by 400% since last Friday, when the new iPhone 3GS went on sale, Music Ally reports. The new mobile device from Apple lets users shoot videos and upload them directly to Google's video sharing site. The increase is part of a wider industry trend, as mobile uploads to YouTube have grown by 1,700% in the past six months, according to Google. Music Ally attributes this growth to three things: new video-enabled smartphones, improvements that make it easier to post videos to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature that …

For the first time, TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "CSI" are commanding higher advertising rates at sites like Hulu.com and TV.com than they are on prime-time TV, Bloomberg reports. Marketers are willing to pay more at these sites because their audiences represent committed users who are actively seeking out shows. Also, because there are fewer commercials, consumers are twice as likely to recall Web ads, says David Poltrack, CBS's chief research officer. "The reason people are paying such a high premium for these ads on the Internet is they do have a captive audience," Poltrack says. …

The global advertising pie has been permanently "reset" to a lower level, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer proclaimed Wednesday at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. During his speech, Ballmer argued that traditional broadcast and print media outlets would have to plan for a smaller share of the advertising market, as revenues moved permanently to digital outlets. "I don't think we are in a recession, I think we have reset," Ballmer said. "A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don't think we will. We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow." Ballmer was …

During a keynote at an industry event, Les Hinton, CEO of News Corp.'s Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said newspapers for too long "fed Google's lust for newspaper blood", allowing the search giant to gobble up ad revenue at the industry's expense. "They gave Google's fangs a great place to bite," he said, adding that the company "will be the gorilla in our midst for a long time." But that doesn't mean that there aren't still opportunities for media firms to make money on the Web, Hinton said. He noted that …

Earlier today, media giant Time Warner and cable provider Comcast Corp. announced that they are teaming up for a trial of an "authentication" effort that has variously been called "TV Everywhere" by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and "OnDemand Online" by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. Whatever the companies decide to call it -- they may each use different names -- the goal here is to protect cable subscription revenues by giving pay TV customers Web access to all the shows they get on TV. Ahead of this morning's press conference, Peter Kafka was able to drum up …

WebProNews reports that Google is adding a new feature to Google News that makes it easier for users to find content from specific authors and journalists. Now, when users see Google News results that have a byline, they can click on that author's name and bring up other articles they've written. Google is also adding the feature to its advanced search section. The feature effectively creates an RSS feed for specific authors, just like with any Google News search, which is convenient if you have favorite authors who you want to "subscribe" to.