A study of advertising campaigns on top social networks by ClickForensics found a click fraud rate of 11.5 percent in Q1 2010 as the overall industry click fraud rate rose to 17.4 percent.
ClickForensics studied online campaigns from a cross-section of advertisers and ad networks and found that click-fraud volume from the leading social networking sites (Facebook, TWitter, MySpace, LinkedIn) was significantly lower than the industry average. In Q1 2010, the countries outside North America with significant CPC traffic producing the greatest volume of click fraud were the Philippines, Ukraine and China, respectively.
"While a handful of suspected click fraud schemes on social networking sites have been alleged by individual advertisers, it's widely assumed that these sites are less vulnerable to click fraud schemes," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. "The results of our new study corroborate this by tracking a lower overall click fraud rate on social networks than we've ever tracked on traditional PPC venues. Conversely, the overall industry rate seems to be creeping higher, so we recommend marketers continue to be watchful of their campaigns."
