Click fraud on the rise: a threat to measurability of ads?

Interesting and worrying figures from a recent study on click fraud showing deterioration of the situation on the front of click fraud. I wonder whether fraud can be curtailed and if not whether it can derail the project of genuinely measurable advertising and marketing communications...

clipped from www.marketingcharts.com

Botnets, Click Farms Propel Click Fraud to Record High 17%

The internet click fraud rate hit a record level of 17.1% in Q408 and click fraud traffic from botnets surged to an all-time high of 31.4%, according to Click Forensics, Inc., which today released its quarterly pay-per-click (PPC) Click Fraud Index figures, writes MarketingVOX.

Specifically, click fraud traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic in Q408. This is up from 27.6% in Q308 and 22.0% in Q407.

The average click fraud rate of PPC ads appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. This is an increase from the 27.1% rate reported for Q308 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate for Q407.

In Q408, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the US came from Canada (7.4%), Germany (3.0%) and China (2.3%).