Most of the time, when a mainstream media publication writes a story about click fraud, it’s filled with sensational attempts to instill FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) into the hearts of advertisers. That’s not the case in a new story from Andy Greenberg at Forbes.com, “Counting Clicks.”
Greenberg interviews Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust & safety, and manages to tell Google’s side of things and striking a reasonable tone to the story. Some will say the article leans toward Google propaganda, but it’s not often that mass media take that tone instead of the “big, bad Google” tone.
I’m not saying click fraud isn’t a problem, or that Google doesn’t need to do more work on it, especially in areas of openness with advertisers. It’s just nice to read about it in a general business publication and not come away shaking my head at the misrepresentations and errors.