Earlier this week I posted about Andy Beal's attempt to break open the REAL numbers from Google in terms of undetected click fraud. Andy's post obviously sparked a great deal of conversation on the topic, including a piece by Gord Hotchkiss over at MediaPost Publications that includes some conversation with Ghosemajumder in an attempt to peg down a more accurate figure. (Andy based his 2% figure on a guess based on the relative sizes of charts in a Google presentation.)

From the MediaPost article:

The reality is that no matter what Google, Click Fraud companies or bloggers say, we'll likely never know the exact rate of click fraud. As time goes on though, I'm beginning to believe that we really don't NEED to know what that number is. Stick with me here...it's not that click fraud doesn't have the potential to destroy a very viable form of advertising, it's that good advertisers will not allow their own campaigns to fall into the red. Click fraud is becoming an accepted risk of doing business online and in many ways, it's forcing companies to be me accountable for the ROI of their campaigns.

I've noted before that bad campaigns are often mistaken for click fraud. Thankfully, both bad campaigns and click fraud can be rooted out via good analytics. Thus, click fraud concerns are forcing companies to be more vigilant about their ROI tracking, which in turn helps them to create better campaigns. That's obviously a good thing.

Will we ever know exact click-fraud rates? Doubtful...but if you aren't already tracking the ROI of your campaigns, now is as good a time to start as any.