Beginning this week, if you add domains to Afternic, you’ll be subject to an anti-click fraud agreement, as seen below:
Many providers have similar agreements in their general TOS; however, this one is very succinct, and also requires user input.
So what happened, and why risk click fraud anyway in the days of IP and cookie databases, and clawbacks.
Click fraud isn’t new. In the old days, you could set your own keywords, and reap the benefits. Have a high traffic gaming domain? Why earn 0.05c per click when you could manually set the keyword to “cellphone” and earn $1.00 per click!
From there, fraudsters moved onto paying click farms to add even more revenue. Providers didn’t watch as closely, and by the time the fraudster was identified they probably already had a second account, at the same provider, with different credentials.
Those days are gone, but PPC fraud still exists. In these hard times, Afternic, or their providers, is probably seeing an uptick in fraud, and hence the new agreement.
Story kudos: Dale G.
