I stopped using content networks after a very short time when I realised I was paying three times as much for a tiny fraction of the sales.

Yeah, I tried using AdWords for a while, it was never worth it to me, I decided it was worth it to just work on getting a good high natural search position and that seems to be much better.

This is quite sad to hear.

I make my living as an honest AdSense publisher and it really fills me with despair when I hear about click fraud. I like to think that a reasonable portion of the traffic I drive to advertiser websites does convert, and that the content network does work. I guess it does for some as I have several advertisers that place their ads directly with me and they renew month after month, in fact some have been advertising with me for years now.

What can we do to fix this?

Makes sense, users are clicking less on ads due to the economic conditions so publishers resort to more deceptive methods of getting clicks.

28% or 17%?

[webmasterworld.com...]

Either way, one has to be skeptical of figures that are bandied about by people who have a vested interest in arousing fears of click fraud. Click Forensics, the firm cited by Mr. Sachoff and in the existing Webmaster World thread, markets "click tracking reconciliation" and related services, and it releases alarming press releases about click fraud on a regular basis. The claimed numbers don't change much (they're usually in the 16-17% range), but each press release suggests that the number being claimed is big news.

Fortunately for CPC networks like AdSense (and for AdWords/AdSEnse advertisers and AdSense publishers), ROI is easy for advertisers to measure.

By the way, if you want an objective analysis of Google's approach to detecting and compensating for click fraud, you might want to read the Lane's Gifts v. Google report that was prepared by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin of the Stern School of Business at NYU. (This report is old news, but it may not be familiar to those who haven't read previous threads on this topic at Webmaster World.) The report is in PDF format:

[googleblog.blogspot.com...]

ADDENDUM:

Avoiding the content network won't protect an advertiser against "competitor click fraud," which has the potential to be more expensive than publisher click fraud for two reasons:

1) Search clicks tend to cost more than content-network clicks do (due to separate bidding and a lack of "smart pricing" discoounts for search clicks)

2) It's easier for a corrupt advertiser to find a competitor's ads on SERPs than on the content network.

Again, smart CPC advertisers track ROI instead of basing their advertising strategies on what they've read in other companies' press releases.

Can anyone provide a link to an official Google statement indicating their click fraud rate?

FarmBoy

I doubt that they'd share that information, but in any event, fraudulent clicks are only one type of invalid click. As Dr. Tuzhilin's report makes clear, Google's multilevel filters and auditing procedures are designed to remove obvious accidental clicks as well as fraudulent clicks. (After all, advertisers would pay just as much for three unfiltered clicks by a confused or impatient user as they would for three fraudulent clicks.)

[webmasterworld.com...]