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In a recent experiment, security researcher Didier Stevens bought a Google ad to test user awareness of what they were clicking on. The ad was designed to be somewhat blatantly suspect and said "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!" and 409 people clicked on the ad.In the six month experiment, the ad was displayed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times -- a click-through-rate of 0.16%. The Google ad campaign cost €17 ($23), or succinctly put, €0.04 ($0.06) per click to potentially compromise a machine.
Had Stevens been a real-world hacker bent on installing malware on computers thru Google AdWords, instead of a security researcher -- then the results are pretty alarming.
Equally interesting however was the relationship of browser types when the click-thru rate is compared to the market share.
According to Net Applications, Firefox now holds 15.4 percent of the browser market, while Internet Explorer has 78 percent.
Having 80.5% of the click-thrus(335) in the experiment coming from IE users is very comparable to Net Applications market share estimates.
Firefox represented 12.5% (52 click-thrus). The difference in click-thrus vs. market share for Firefox tells me that for the normal public at large, discounting the large savvy base of geeks, designers and techies who use Firefox -- the stats are saying that people are just as oblivious regardless what browser they use.
Labels: adwords, Firefox, google, microsoft, security, spam
