Fair Isaac shook up the online advertising world with its early determination of a much higher rate of click fraud affecting advertisers than has been previously determined. The initial research by Fair Isaac chief scientist Joseph Milana found rates of 10 to 15 percent of “pathological” traffic hitting advertisers.

The need for more data from a broader pool of advertisers became apparent when it was revealed Fair Isaac only had a sample of less than a dozen for its research. They may be on their way to broadening that pool now.

Boris contacted us to say AdWatcher and Fair Isaac were now working together. AdWatcher will contact large volume advertising clients about participating in Fair Isaac’s ongoing study of click fraud. Those clients would be anonymous in the reports Fair Isaac produces.

Google derided the small sample used by Fair Isaac when they first publicized their findings. If Fair Isaac can grow its pool and demonstrate click fraud rates run in the same range as their initial report, Google and others will be hard-pressed to discount such a discovery.

Boris Mordkovich, Co-Founder and Director of Operations at MordComm, the company that develops Adwatcher, kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions:

The Interview

Q: Boris, can you give us a small introduction to AdWatcher ?

Absolutely. The informal way to describe AdWatcher would be as a tool that helps advertisers who promote themselves via Pay-Per-Click, banners, emails, etc. get a better handle on their ad campaigns. Our typical clients are busy business owners or a marketing professionals that have a million of things to do every day. Not only they must make decisions about how to advertise and grow their business, but they also have to monitor and track their efforts to make sure their ads are working well. Our job is to empower the them and help him or her make the right decisions about their advertising dollars based on the data we collect and analyze.

Q: What