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The company's association with Oemji.com, a firm labeled by several security companies as one that may be enabling click fraud through its software tools, has been called into question due to its advertising relationship with Yahoo.

In April 2006, spyware researcher Ben Edelman implicated Yahoo in click fraud problems stemming from the company's arrangements with a trio of third parties delivering phantom clicks on ads. Those clicks cost legitimate advertisers money, while Yahoo and the company enabling that click profit each time.

BusinessWeek's recent expos of click fraud provided more ammunition for critics of search advertising companies like Yahoo and Google. Greater calls for transparency of how those businesses protect against fake clicks will be a hot topic this fall.

Part of the BusinessWeek report focused on the saga of advertiser MostChoice.com. That website's CEO, Martin Fleischmann, claimed click fraud cost his firm a significant sum, and blamed Oemji for this:

(I)n the past year, Yahoo charged the online financial-information provider an estimated $10,300 for 2,690 clicks from visitors to Oemji. Ninety percent of the clicks came from such places as Mongolia, Vietnam, and Honduras, where MostChoice does no business. Only eight clicks, less than 0.3%, turned into sales, compared with 30% or more from clicks on ads on Yahoo's own Web site.
Oemji's parent firm, Oemtec, may be receiving more scrutiny from Yahoo. The article cited Yahoo's Joshua Meyers, a senior director of the search engine's publisher network group, in noting the company would review its connection to Oemji.

Oemtec contested accusations of illicit activity that would be counter to its partnership agreement with Yahoo:

Oemtec calls the negative ratings of its products "patently and demonstrably false." Oemji Bar is similar to toolbars distributed by major online companies, and SpySpotter "is a legitimate and effective anti-spyware application," Craig Marcus, an attorney for the company, said in a Sept. 8 letter to BusinessWeek. Denying any involvement in click fraud, Marcus wrote: "Every single Oemji-generated click to MostChoice.com, and every other Web site, was and remains legitimate and genuine."
As of this month, the report noted Yahoo still has its partnership with Oemtec in force, and delivers advertising to the Oemji product.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.