It's a problem of information asymmetry in the online (display) advertising industry, not a problem with hackers. Because advertisers don't know how many pageviews/visitors a website has, advertising agencies often have to make purchasing decisions based on numbers from Comscore, Quantcast, Google Analytics etc. Clearly, if the website owner can spoof his analytic data, he can sell his inventory at higher rates.
Sure, that's why I wrote "online (display) advertising", which often has its cost measured in CPM, not in CPC, so CTR doesn't matter. This shows advantages of CPC ads over traditional display advertising and partially explains the success of Google.
I do not have technical ability to judge whether his solution can really solve this problem, however the problem does exist, though not widespread, and who can solve it will have a great chance to earn a lot of money. AFAIK advertising agencies pretty much trust the data from the like of Comsore. It's not that they don't know the data is not really accurate, it's that they don't have anything else. How much does Comscore sell its packages? I don't know, but I'm sure it's not cheap and online advertisers/marketers still have to buy them.
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It's a problem of information asymmetry in the online (display) advertising industry, not a problem with hackers. Because advertisers don't know how many pageviews/visitors a website has, advertising agencies often have to make purchasing decisions based on numbers from Comscore, Quantcast, Google Analytics etc. Clearly, if the website owner can spoof his analytic data, he can sell his inventory at higher rates.
...but not for long, because his CTR will be down on the floor.
This feels to me like a clever solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
Sure, that's why I wrote "online (display) advertising", which often has its cost measured in CPM, not in CPC, so CTR doesn't matter. This shows advantages of CPC ads over traditional display advertising and partially explains the success of Google.
I do not have technical ability to judge whether his solution can really solve this problem, however the problem does exist, though not widespread, and who can solve it will have a great chance to earn a lot of money. AFAIK advertising agencies pretty much trust the data from the like of Comsore. It's not that they don't know the data is not really accurate, it's that they don't have anything else. How much does Comscore sell its packages? I don't know, but I'm sure it's not cheap and online advertisers/marketers still have to buy them.