14 DAY TRIAL // Pay-per-click commercials have earned Yahoo 9.1 billion dollars from January 2004 until March this year. But now the company will have to refund a percentage of this revenue as it has decided to settle out of court a class-actions lawsuit dating back to June 2005. U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles has preliminarily approved an agreement that aims to resolve the "click-fraud" lawsuit. Yahoo is considered directly liable for not offering advertiser protection against fraudulent actions that ultimately artificially increased the amounts paid for publicity.
According to the settlement, Yahoo will have to pay an estimated 5 million dollars only in attorney fees, the actual sum that will be refunded to the advertisers remaining undisclosed and opened to negotiations. Recent studies on the advertisement market have shown that no less that 12 percent of the clicks on ads running on Yahoo are fraudulent, this percentage grows to 30% in other studies, but Yahoo has strongly contested that such a number is a true representation of the facts.
Yahoo representatives have submitted to the pay-off arguing that the customers must be kept happy, and as advertisers are one of Yahoo's main sources of income, the online giant also provides them with billions of free clicks in an effort to counteract the margin of error that separates fraudulent clicks from actual user interested in acquiring the advertised products.