Click fraud botnet defrauds advertisers up to $6 million
An advertising analytics company said it has discovered a botnet that generates upwards of US$6 million per month by generating bogus clicks on display advertisements.
Spider.io, based in the U.K., wrote that the botnet code, called Chameleon, has infected about 120,000 residential computers in the U.S. and perpetrates click fraud on 202 websites that collectively deliver 14 billion ad impressions. Chameleon is responsible for 9 billion of those impressions, Spider.io said.
Click fraud cheats Web advertisers by making them pay for clicks on ads that are not legitimate, depriving them of customers and revenue. Spider.io said advertisers pay an average of $0.69 per one thousand impressions. Spider.io did not identify the publishers of the websites that the botnet targets. But online media buyers have been noticing inconsistencies for some time on websites showing display ads for large companies.
