Between 12% and 15% of clicks through Yahoo! search marketing ads are identified as erroneous and discarded from advertiser bills, the company has said.
Announcing a stepping up of its fight against click fraud, Yahoo! announced the appointment of veteran company lawyer Reggie Davis to a new vice-president of marketplace quality position.
In a role mimicking a similar senior position at rival Google, he will need a new team as well as cross-departmental efforts to improve reliability and eliminate the possibility of fraud-related legal action.
His team, according to Search Engine Watch:
“Will focus on click fraud, traffic quality, network placement and other marketplace quality issues, including working closely with advertisers and publishers on quality-related matters.”
With search marketing services coming in for close scrutiny and even some lawsuits over the thorny problem of click fraud, Google attempted to up its game earlier this month when it announced it would roll-out new IP filtering tools with AdWords and released new traffic data in a move to transparency.
Davis’ Google counterpart, business product manager for trust and safety Shuman Ghosemajumder, said fraudulent clicks detected accounted for 10% of all ad clicks, while 0.2% slip through the net.
That suggests Yahoo! is uncovering a greater proportion of erroneous ad clicks.