Click Defense, a company that sells tools for online marketing, including tools to prevent click fraud, sued Google. Why? Because it just doesn’t do enough to prevent “click fraud”—the process of deliberately clicking Web ads to run up rival advertising costs (the advertiser has to pay Google for each click). Whether it does or doesn’t do enough is a question of fact and whether it has an obligation to do something, anything, or more than it is doing is also debatable. On one end of the spectrum, liability could attach if a search engine company actually knew (or should have known) someone was doing that and did nothing to stop or prevent it. At the other end is the fact that in today’s environment, it is often difficult for these providers to monitor or determine what constitutes improper or proper clicking. After all, isn’t the goal of advertising to induce you to click? This is a sticky problem that is likely not to go away and will find different paths through the courts—there is too much money at stake. How can we help you?
Insights at the intersection of digital and mobile technology, innovation and the law