Yahoo gains from Adware Click fraud, claim

YAHOO has been tied to a click fraud scam which causes advertisers to waste their advertising budgets, a Harvard boffin has alleged.

Click fraud is a cunning plan that overcharge advertisers who pay each time a Web site visitor clicks on their ads. It is usually done by a rival who wants to kill off a company's ad budget by clicking its ads.

In a report with the title "The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection --and Yahoo's Role Revisited" Ben Edelman traces what appears to be a trail of click fraud that starts with the adware vendor and eventually leads to Yahoo.

Yahoo displays ads through syndication agreements with partners. According to Edelman, Yahoo partners sell the portal's ads to other marketing outfits, who in turn sell them to someone else until eventually they appear on adware.

A spokesYahoo said that it was looking into the matter and if Edelman is right, then it could be cancelling some of the contracts it has with some marketing companies.

Edelman's research shows that pop-up screens containing Yahoo ads automatically register a click with Yahoo's marketing arm Overture as soon as the ad appears. If this is the case then Yahoo also shares revenue with its advertising partner and benefits from the click fraud.

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