Massive Money In Online Ad Fraud

A FEW DAYS AGO I wrote about the annoying trend of websites who force you to click from page to page to page just to get through to the end of the article, and about all of those ads that load on each page...

AND THE JUMPITY, SCROLLY THING in the programming of the website that seems to want to force an accidental click of one of those ads.

You can read that commentary here if you wish to.

Because those websites invariably get paid for any of those clicks. Part of my suggestion was that advertisers must be going beserk because of all of these shenanigans since ideally they are paying for advertising, and CLICKS because what they are hoping for are ACTUAL BUYERS OF THEIR GOODS AND SERVICES.

Makes sense, right? Why else would you want to pay someone to share your wares unless you SHARE THEIR DOUGH.

wanted those who are being shared the wares to have some interest in what they are sharing, and

When I wrote the commentary I had completely forgotten about another aspect of the Internet. Click bots. Even better than causing an accidental click, why not just let a bot do the work for you? And that's what a ton of websites apparently happen to be doing.

Again, the question of why is a no-brainer. THEY ARE MAKING A TON OF MONEY DOING IT.

But did you know that there is actually a number placed on HOW MUCH MONEY is actually lost by marketers from online ad fraud caused by these actions? There actually is a number, and the amount might surprise you. It certainly surprised me!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!

A marketing services company, WPP, did some study on this issue and found that the amount of money wasted on online fraud globally is somewhere around $16.4 billion. 

HW MUCH MONEY DOES $16.4 BILLION ADD UP TO? I thought I would do a fun little comparison since sometimes when you put a number into words, even with the word billion attached to end of it, it doesn't slam you in the gut quite as hard as if you put it into some kind of a comparison.

Stated well enough, at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, with $16.4 billion you could employ 1,087,533 workers for a year full time. Yep. Put into words that's a staggering 1.08 million workers.

Is the practice illegal? That I don't know for sure. I would assume that it may well be. But let's not forget one detail about the Internet that lets so many people get away with so much using it for nefarious purposes.

It is harder to track people, easier to mask locations, and a lot of this activity is even done overseas—sometimes even in third world countries where even if you knew who these people were, the likelihood you would catch up to them and put them into handcuffs is highly unlikely.

In SOME instances it is even suggested that rogue governments like North Korea may even be involved in these sorts of activities. Where there is money to be had, you can bet a lot of people are going to try to get away with whatever they can.