March 11, 2008

Click Forensics Raises $10 Million B Round

Erick Schonfeld

10 comments »

Click fraud is a big business, and so is detecting it. Click-fraud auditing firm Click Forensics has raised a $10 million B round, led by Sierra Ventures. Also participating is Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures, who invested in the company’s $5 million A round last January.

Advertisers and Website can subscribe to the company’s service, which claims to be able to identify fraudulent clicks on ads, and even clicks from competitors. Of course, if Google were to ever defeat click fraud, Click Forensics would be out of business. But what is the chance of that happening?

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KillerStartups.com - ClickForensics.com - Preventing Click Fraud

March 12th, 2008 at 9:55 am

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JosefVirek

March 11th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

click-fraud detection is not the problem, prevention is.
Marzipan from Toledo

March 12th, 2008 at 12:32 am

on their home page it says that click fraud is costing ad networks millions. please explain that to me
Tim Madel

March 12th, 2008 at 5:29 am

I have yet to say any non-biased third-party assessment of click fraud. I can see it happening through content networks, but through search campaigns? I doubt it.

When the estimates of high click-fraud growth come from a firm standing to gain (in a very big way) from this growth, it makes you wonder.
Omar Bohsali

March 12th, 2008 at 5:42 am

@3 - I don’t think it’s right to discount them so easily. There are many failure points in where click fraud can be added into the equation.

Also, estimates help them grow, but they also have their credibility on the line. The minute someone says something about their estimates being too generous, they lose their credibility.

Best of luck to them.
Simon Ovidiu

March 12th, 2008 at 5:55 am

“Click fraud is a big business, and so is detecting it. Click-fraud auditing firm Click Forensics has raised a $10 million B round, led by Sierra Ventures”

great writeing:”click-fraud detection is not the problem, prevention is.”
ovysimon

March 12th, 2008 at 5:57 am

When the estimates of high click-fraud growth come from a firm, standing to gain (in a very big way) from this growth, it makes you wonder a lot.
ElephantInTheRoom

March 12th, 2008 at 7:50 am

What, and the search engines DON’T have anything to gain by saying there is no fraud? I dare say that Google does. If you are going to criticize then let’s talk about both sides of the story. As long as people get paid to click on ads, get paid to view pages, and get paid to read content, and the engines make profit from it too, there’s going to be fraud that will be under-emphasized by engines offering PPC programs - content network or not. Granted, the content networks are the primary issue, however, there’s so much more to invalid click activity than just the content networks.

The PPC model is somewhat unstable because there are people out there figuring out how to game the system. I’m thankful that there are companies who can audit what I’m buying to ensure maximum effectiveness.

IMHO, if you’re going to play you should consider the whole picture, not just what the engines tell you. Find out what’s in the Koolaid before you drink it.
Steve M

March 12th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

Fraudsters can’t click on ads they don’t see and can’t find.

Pending patent #11/250,908 shows how it works.

Target people. Not words.