The dirty secret that no one talks about is Fraud both clickfraud and other associated fraud.

Nearly a year ago, I was promoting a new website aimed at the US market.

*All* our traffic was coming from a Google AdWords campaign. Yet when we saw the Google billing reports. It was consistently higher by 20% than the traffic were actually getting (and we were using google analytics to measure). Google denied anything and refused to do anything about it. Inspite of several reminders and requests. The Google account manager refused to take calls. This is inspite of spending nearly USD 100,000 with Google in less than 3 months. Good thing we realised this early.

Whether our competitors were indulging in malicious clicks or there were clickfarms at work, is something we never found out.

We changed business models after this and knocked off all internet advertising. We are doing very well, without it. Thank you very much.

Large publishers are rumored to consistently deliver fraudulent inventory (CPM and CPC). Whether it is auto-refresh on stock/portfolio pages or wholesale fraud.

The really sad part is, all this can be checked and without much difficulty.

*NO* one has checked and no one will, for it is our dirty little secret to keep. (Perhaps when I'm client side, I will do it)

Since it is measureable, it doesnt matter, is the attitude.

Measureablity doesn't mean accountability. Whoever believes so, is fooling himself.