Click Fraud

The Fake Traffic Schemes That Are Rotting the Internet

“I can think of nothing that has done more harm to the Internet than ad tech,” says Bob Hoffman, a veteran ad executive, industry critic, and author of the blog the Ad Contrarian. “It interferes with everything we try to do on the Web. It has cheapened and debased advertising and spawned criminal empires.” Most ridiculous of all, he adds, is that advertisers are further away than ever from solving the old which-part-of-my-budget-is-working problem. “Nobody knows the exact number,” Hoffman says, “but probably about 50 percent of what you’re spending online is being stolen from you.” [via Bloomberg]

Glad to see I'm not alone on this topic.

And as mentioned on Daring Fireball,

Throughout history, the ad industry craved data. TV didn’t supply data. Print didn’t supply data. But online — online they got data. Tons of data. More data than they know what to do with. The catch is that online traffic is easily spoofed by fraudulent bots. When you charge advertisers by the impression, and there’s no marginal cost to creating fraudulent impressions, large-scale fraud and click-bait content are inevitable consequences.

As I like to say, just because you can, doesn't always mean you should. I anticpiated with the release of iOS 9 that content blockers would become more mainstream, simply based on how mainstream the iPhone has become. Looks as if that trend is now growing. And if you're someone who thinks content blockers are wrong, look at it this way, content blockers wouldn't be as popular if people didn't see a need for them.