CFP: Special Issue on "Click Fraud" for International Journal of Electronic Com.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of 
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
 on
CLICK FRAUD


GUEST EDITORS
Mohammad Mahdian, Research Scientist, Yahoo Research Labs,  
mahdian-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]
Jan Pedersen, Chief Scientist, Search and Marketplace, Yahoo! Inc, 
jpederse-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]
Kerem Tomak, Principal Research Scientist, Search and Marketplace, 
Yahoo! Inc, Kerem-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]


OVERVIEW
One of the current and widely used revenue models for online 
advertising involves charging for each click based on the popularity 
of a particular keyword and the number of competing advertisers. This 
pay-per-click model leaves room for a number of individuals, 
organized groups or even rival companies to generate "false" clicks. 
They click on links on self-owned or competitor-owned web sites with 
no intention to "convert" - meaning following the click, make a 
purchase or sign up for services etc. - but still either get paid 
themselves or force others to pay since they generated traffic by 
doing so. This activity is called "click fraud." Yahoo defines click 
fraud as, "clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith 
intention of an Internet user to visit a Web site to purchase goods 
or services or to obtain information," while Google has a more 
specific definition "invalid clicks is defined as any method used to 
artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page 
impressions."  
As a recent cover story by Business Week suggests thatalthough it is 
not clear how significant a problem click fraud is, it still is 
shadowing the growth of the online advertising market. This is 
evident from the announcement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt who told the 
advertising community that click fraud is a Google AdWords reality 
and that advertisers should just plan on allocating 20-30% of their 
total spend to fraudulent click activity. 
Necessity to define click fraud,-forced the online advertising 
industry to establish Click Measurement Working Group as part of an 
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) with the participation of major 
search providers such as Google and Yahoo.  The purpose of this group 
is to "provide the detailed definition of a "click" and the standard 
against which clicks are measured and counted including the 
identification of invalid clicks and/or fraudulent clicks."  
Scientific work in this area on defining standards for click quality 
is minimal if not absent. 
Exploring fraud detection and related topics in order to open way for 
further development of Internet advertising market and technologies 
behind it is crucial for further development of this exciting market. 
A more sophisticated understanding of advertising network dynamics, 
new services and economic and social impact of click fraud is also 
essential.  In general, click quality and click fraud place new and 
challenging demands on online advertising technology and marketplace 
design in electronic commerce. The primary goal of the proposed 
special issue of International Journal of Electronic Commerce is to 
foster research on the interplay between economics, computer science, 
marketing, data mining and electronic commerce technology development 
in click quality and click fraud.
SCOPE
The International Journal of Electronic Commerce is the #1-ranked 
journal on Electronic Commerce globally. This Special Issue will 
provide a significant opportunity for authors to publish novel and 
original contributions in the area of Click Quality and Click Fraud. 
The guest editors seek papers and proposals that address various 
aspects of click fraud, including search relevance, economics of 
click fraud, e-business, formal and legal issues with the aim of 
providing a balanced mix of presentations from these different 
perspectives.  The subject of click quality is highly relevant to the 
investigation of click fraud.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
We invite scholars and professionals from a broad range of 
disciplines to submit to this Special Issue. Papers may encompass any 
or all of the following: theoretical analyses, modelling, simulation, 
and empirical studies. Authors may examine different aspects of 
sponsored search and online advertisement in any of a variety of 
possible contexts. Special topics of interest include, but are not 
limited to, the following:
•	Click Fraud
•	Impression Fraud
•	Click Quality
•	Design of mechanisms to increase click quality
•	Data mining and machine learning algorithms for detecting 
click fraud
•	Standards for click quality 
•	Use of algorithmic mechanism design in sponsored search 
•	Contextual online advertising 
•	Localized/geographic search
•	Search engine marketing and optimization
•	Alternative models for sponsored search 
•	Game theoretic modelling and analysis of fraud 
•	Evaluating fraud-resistance of ranking mechanisms 
•	Fraud in pay-per-conversion systems 
•	Click and impression quality in brand advertising 
•	Fraud detection for web ranking algorithms 
•	Other types of online fraud 
•	Legal aspects of click fraud

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Manuscripts submitted to the special issue should contain original 
material not published in nor submitted to other journals. Each 
manuscript has to have a cover page with the author information and 
another page with title and abstract but the author information 
omitted. The review process is double-blind and papers which do not 
meet publication quality standards will be rejected before the review 
process. Submissions should be sent via e-mail to Dr. Kerem Tomak 
<kerem-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]> in anonymized PDF format, and should not exceed 
40 pages.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline	1 May 2007
Revision notification:	1 September 2007
Revised manuscripts:	15 November 2007
Final manuscripts:	15 January 2008

GUEST EDITORS

Mohammad Mahdian, Ph.D.,
Yahoo! Labs
2811 Mission college Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
e-mail: mahdian-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]
Tel: (408) 349 5787
Fax: (408) 349 3301
	Jan Pedersen, Ph. D.,
Yahoo! Inc.
2811 Mission college Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
e-mail: jpederse-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]
Tel: (408) 349 5107
Fax: (408) 349 3301
	Kerem Tomak, Ph.D.
Yahoo! Inc.
2811 Mission college Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
e-mail: kerem-ZXvpkYn067l8UrSeD/[email protected]
Tel: (408) 349 6513
Fax: (408) 349 3301