Over the last 10 years one of the main topics I have covered is advertising fraud. Over and over again fraud keeps on popping up in the industry both from small players to major players. It seems that no matter how much the industry matures, how much technology is created; fraud is a significant issue that siphons both money and confidence away from the industry. I’ve written about banner farms, click-fraud, lead-faking, IP spoofing… you name it. My friend Ben Edelman, famed attorney and Harvard researcher has made it his life to cover issues in interactive advertising and has exposed complex schemes that boggle the mind. Advertising fraud seems to be everywhere in all forms and needs to be exposed, talked about and changed. However, as much as there are obvious kinds of fraud, there are sometimes more nefarious methods of fraud that are not always classified by fraud but still affect the industry significantly and need to be talked about.

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I recently read an article on ImediaConnect by Jay Friedman, regarding a bill of rights for Ad Network verification. Although I personally think Jay Friedman is a pretty smart guy, I have to really wonder what went through his mind while writing this article – and more importantly how many agencies are going to do business after he wrote this article.

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   I received quite a few emails today from people agreeing that my view point in regards to the FTC’s new rules regarding bloggers was correct. A few people felt that I advocated that there be no compliance in regards to marketing, and that people should be able to sell unsafe items, scam people, rip people off and similar. I clearly stated in the article that was not the case, that the FTC should be focusing on obvious criminals – not small businesses that are promoting their product. As someone who has been intimately involved in law enforcement and exposed more than one obvious scam, I am not an advocate for any sort of anarchy when it comes to business – I believe that the industry, the IAB, the businesses do need to sit down, talk out with everyone, including the FTC, about these issues and create best practices.

  My statement was clearly that I do not believe it is the duty of the government to regulate free speech in any form, whether it be political, religious or business. Restricting business growth, especially during this economic depression is not in anyone's best interest.

  Anyone who has read my writing over the last 10 years know I believe in ethics in advertising, period.

I have uploaded on Youtube the most amazing example of fraud that I have ever seen in 10 years. It consists of impressions fraud, attempts to hijack the computer (note the norton warning), loads of popup ads, and then at the end hundreds of forced cpc search clicks in the way of pops.

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