WebProNews

There was a significant jump in click fraud traffic from botnets in the third quarter of 2009, according to the latest data from Click Forensics.

Click Forensics told WebProNews that the amount of click fraud traffic from botnets generally hovers around 33 percent, and it believes the sudden rise may be to due to the increasing sophistication and proliferation of botnets.

Botnets accounted for 42.6 percent of all click fraud in Q3 2009, more than doubling in the past two years and up from the 27.5 percent reported for the same quarter last year.

The overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.1 percent. That's up from 12.7 percent for Q2 2009 and down from the 16 percent rate reported for Q3 2008.

In Q3, the countries outside North America producing the greatest volume of click fraud were the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Germany, respectively.

"The significant rise in botnet-generated click fraud lines up with recent findings of several well-known malware and online fraud tracking experts," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics.

"Botnets perpetrating click fraud and other online schemes continue to grow in number and sophistication. Advertisers and ad providers need to be especially vigilant about such activity as we enter the competitive search marketing holiday season."