Mission Creek

from wired.com

Here is an excellent summary of the difficulties Google faces, and insight into some actions. As the internet marketing model moves more mainstream, the technics will become increasingly complex, and most likely, Google will continue to expend an increasing amount of resources to counter their effects. If there ever is the perception that the click advertising model is ripe with fraud, then Google and its revenue stream could come crashing down very quickly. Their reputation, effectiveness, and future promise are the basis for the share value, loose any of those items and the perceived value in the market place will drop like a stone.

Google’s $6 billion-a-year advertising business is at risk because it can’t be sure that anyone is looking at its ads. The problem is called click fraud, and it comes in two basic flavors.

With network click fraud, you host Google AdSense advertisements on your own website. Google pays you every time someone clicks on its ad on your site. It’s fraud if you sit at the computer and repeatedly click on the ad or — better yet — write a computer program that repeatedly clicks on the ad. That kind of fraud is easy for Google to spot, so the clever network click fraudsters simulate different IP addresses, or install Trojan horses on other people’s computers to generate the fake clicks.

full story here