Type one happens on search results page. In this scenario a childish competitor clicks your ads, ad infinitum, until they’ve run out your budget, effectively removing your presence. Type two happens on a publisher’s site. Here, someone builds a site, populates it with ads, then employs a bot net to click ads and raise a profit at the advertiser’s expense.

Contrary to popular belief, type one is much more rare. According to Marshall, rule one of click fraud inoculation is, “follow the money.” When that trail is blazed, surely we’ll corner our fraud but (in some scenarios) wouldn’t search engines stand to benefit? Google gets a portion of click pays in the same manner as the publisher. Is there an incentive in such cases for search engine’s to battle click fraud?

Marshall think so. “In the end, it irritates advertisers like you wouldn’t believe!” Thus, it stands to reason that (as their major source of income) search engines would like to keep them happy.

On the issue of progression within the battle on click fraud, Marshall points out our inequities and strengths, “There’s a fundamental problem… in that completely automated techniques to detect this are extremely difficult to develop. Since there’s a financial incentive on the part of click fraud perpetuator to make it happen. You have an arms race where any automated technique that you have ends up being defeated. It’s impossible for engines to completely rein in and detect this. There’s a certain amount that advertisers MUST do… (they) should be looking at the data.”

Even though it’s an unpopular theory, Marshall believes that no fully automated system will ever succeed… it’s the warning systems and human intervention which will make for a better solution to click fraud.