Gurminder Singh filed a suit against google for breach of contract, breach of faith and failing to prevent click fraud. This suit is being brought to Federal Court. While Google is no stranger to lawsuits, this one may have them quite nervous if the data available so far is true. Singh has conducted detailed research over the course of eight years, and claims that it provides that depending on the type of ads and which Google ad networks are used, fraud accounts for between 40 and 48% of all the clicks.
While Google acknowledges that some ad fraud is possible, they have made claims that their ongoing prevention efforts keep fraud below an average of 10%. Singh stated, “Google promises to protect consumers from fraudulent clicks, including clicks originating from click bots, click farms, and other improper click methods.”
He claims to prove that Google is not fulfilling their promises based on experiments that he has done over the course of eight years on the Google Display Network.
He says the experiment shows, “the large-scale impact of click bots, click farms, and other improper click methods employed by third-party publishers and website owners on AdWords and AdSense.”
The experiments he performed looked at a wide range of keywords, including both common keywords and ‘jibberish’ keywords to evaluate just how big of a problem click fraud was.
Since most marketers turn to Google ad networks because they are presumed to be among the safest from ad fraud, this suit may have many people concerned.
In the suit he is seeking class certification (seeking to become a class-action lawsuit), disgorgement of unjust profits, restitution, damages and the costs of the suit.
This type of case will often go on for years so we won’t see the results any time soon. If it does achieve class status, however, it could be very costly for Google.
