• by Shankar Gupta , August 3, 2006

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and leading search engines have formed a working group to create guidelines for click measurement--including a detailed definition of a click, and standards by which clicks are counted or invalidated.

So far, Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Microsoft, and LookSmart have confirmed their participation in this working group.

Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety, said that aside from the company's own efforts against click fraud, industry-wide effort was needed. "We also think there is more the industry as a whole can do to promote transparency on the issue, which is why we're participating in the Industry-wide Click Measurement Working Group," he wrote on the company's Inside AdWords blog.

Yahoo and Google have both recently agreed to settle click-fraud lawsuits. Last week, an Arkansas court approved Google's offer to settle a class-action suit for $90 million--$30 million in attorney's fees and up to $60 million in ad credits. Yahoo in June agreed to pay refunds to search marketers in a separate click-fraud lawsuit.

In addition to taking a look at the definition of clicking, the IAB's working group will also create accreditation processes for companies involved in pay-per-performance marketing--ad networks, SEMs, search engines, and third-party ad servers.

David Berkowitz, director of strategic planning at search engine marketing firm 360i, said that the move to create an auditing and accreditation process is a good step to unifying the various standards that other companies have already created. "There've been these little things from other groups, SEMPO had SEMPO Circle Members, which was just a membership level to buy into--Yahoo has its own certification; Google has its own," he says. "But there aren't any universal standards out there."

Peter Hershberg, managing partner at search engine marketing firm Reprise Media, added that it was a good sign that major players were working together on the issue. "It would be easy for the major search engines to view the elimination of click fraud as a competition, and that any engine to eliminate it would have a competitive advantage," Hershberg said. "To their credit, they seem to recognize that it hurts the credibility of search engine marketing no matter where it happens."

But, he added, he doesn't expect any movement on the matter for at least a year. "We don't expect this effort to make an impact any time soon, but we certainly applaud the effort."

The IAB did not return calls for comment.