The Interactive Advertising Bureau is lining up with the big search engines--Google, Yahoo, Microsoft--as well as the little guys--InterActive Corp.'s Ask.com and LookSmart--to find a better way to
fight click fraud. The group will conduct research and devise guidelines for advertisers and marketers. IAB Chief Greg Stuart says new guidelines could be available within the year. For major search
engines like Google and Yahoo, click fraud has been the biggest newsmaker of the year. The fact that Big Search is banding together to try and solve the problem underscores how important it is. These
are fierce competitors, which understand that click fraud threatens to undermine one of their most valuable revenue sources--or in Google's case, it's only revenue source. One click auditing firm
estimates that advertisers have been overcharged $1 billion in fraudulent clicks over the last four years. That sum represents a little less than Google's net income for the first two quarters of the
year.
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