The issue of fraudulent online companies taking in advertising dollars is growing. Some companies are enticing web users into visiting their sites via hidden links. The industry is being flooded with fake traffic, bogus publishers and invisible Web visitors,according to an investigation by Adweek. Some companies are willing participants and some are victims of the lack of gatekeepers. This is a very interesting article and touches on the dynamics of how advertising agencies are earning billions of dollars in revenue from online advertising. This is an insert from the article: During a recent interview, online ad veteran Wenda Millard, president of Medialink, made the bold claim that a quarter of the online ad market is fraudulent. “What we have found is the devaluation of digital media is causing us to lose about 25 percent of the roughly $30 billion that is being spent,” she reported. “It’s stolen [ad revenue].” In defining fraud, Millard lumped together piracy, nonviewable ads, ads stacked on top of one another, inappropriate content and, of course, deliberate malicious behavior, in her analysis. “In most people’s wildest dreams, they wouldn’t imagine how much [questionable traffic] there is,” she says. “People should be very, very worried.”
Introduction to Mass Communication 