Pistols at dawn? Not quite, but Google threw a hissy fit at SES 2006, San Hose.When you put two search engine representatives, a law firm and two analytics companies in a room and give them the subject of click fraud you expect it to be entertaining, but Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety at Google took the gloves off and went on a full on assault of Click Fraud Analytics companies including Click Forensics.
He announced a new report available this morning 
here and then proceeded to publically debunk the basic counting of the analytics vendors as ”fundamentally flawed”.
Sparks flew, and who emerged as the voice of reason, let’s work together, share information, agree a standard for auditing and have data independently veried/audited? Non other than John Slade from Yahoo, who I had a chance to catch up with at the Panama lunch - more on that later.
John was open and willing to share more information about what Yahoo are doing in the light of settling a class action suit:
- A special fraud claims process
- Participation with the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) fraud panel
- Advertiser / Agency panel participation to combat
At least we all ended up as friends.
