April 16, 2007: Staff Update from AIT (Fayetteville, NC) In November of 2005, Hosting Company AIT (www.AIT.com), home to over 210,000 websites to include Fortune 500 Companies, accused the Fayetteville Observer Newspaper owned by Fayetteville Publishing Company (FPC) of Click...

April 16, 2007: Staff Update from AIT

(Fayetteville, NC) In November of 2005, Hosting Company AIT (www.AIT.com), home to over 210,000 websites to include Fortune 500 Companies, accused the Fayetteville Observer Newspaper owned by Fayetteville Publishing Company (FPC) of Click Fraud, Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices and Breach of Contract. The Fayetteville Observer sells online advertising for its websites, www.fayettevillenc.com and www.fayobserver.com which, until recently, it hosted with AIT. The Observer is also a click affiliate allowing the syndication of ads to its website from the search engines. The Observer charges advertisers or is paid as an affiliate for the number of viewers who see or click on the online advertising at their web site. After AIT complained, FPC sued AIT demanding that its servers hosted by AIT be returned. AIT filed a lawsuit against FPC to protect its rights and the rights of other advertisers and also filed a criminal complaint with the FBI. AIT is also the company that charged Google with click fraud and led the class action lawsuit against the search engine last year.

AIT, like many other local and national advertisers, had placed a significant amount of online advertising on the Fayetteville Observer’s web site, either directly with FPC or through search engine syndicates. AIT is also the technology company which provided co-location for the Observer’s web servers in the AIT data center. When AIT grew suspicious that it was being over-billed for advertising, AIT as a web-host was able to monitor web traffic to and from the Observer’s web site asserted Michael Roberts, the CIO of AIT.

According to Roberts, AIT determined that up to 50% or more of the online impressions and ad “clicks” for which the Observer charges AIT and other advertisers were artificially “manufactured or inflated.” AIT also claimed it was able to gauge traffic to and from the newspaper’s website which fell far below the statistics the Observer uses to attract advertisers in its online policies and agreements. Recently, AIT certified its network as “clean” of crimeware and malware with Panda Software’s Malware Radar. Panda Software www.pandasoftware.com discovered the malicious “Clickbot.A” and is a pioneer in the industry combating malware, Trojans and viruses. “Many ISPs inadvertently allow malware to be used by their networks to commit illegal or unethical acts”, says Ryan Sherstobitoff, Product Technology Officer for Panda in the U.S. “Malware Radar is a product we developed to assist ISPs to combat the problems and prevent their network resources from being abused.

“The rate card and other representations made by the Observer claimed they got 17,000 visitors a day to their website”, said AIT CEO Clarence Briggs, a former U.S. Army Infantry Officer. “This is simply not true. We recorded and documented a few genuine visits a day but the majority of visits were manufactured and fake. We wanted to open the Observer’s web servers up in front of everyone and the court to get at the truth and prove the fraud but they did not want to do so.” Briggs thinks that the only reason FPC did not want to examine the servers in public is because they did not want the truth to get out. “I find it ironic that the newspaper is full of “Fayetteville Wrongdoing” but when it comes to reporting themselves, they cover up the truth.”

Briggs says that AIT has compiled a list of both national and local advertisers who could be victims of the FPC click fraud. He indicates that they will contact the possible victims to let them know that they have hard evidence of the wrongdoing committed against them. Briggs also says he will contact the search engine syndicates and send them the evidence he has regarding FPC. “It just may be possible that this sort of thing is widespread - publishers inflating traffic without the search engines knowing about it.” Briggs will be the keynote speaker at ISPCON this year www.ispcon.com/conference/keynotes.php . ISPCON is the capstone event for the Internet industry and Briggs says he intends to use the FPC experience to expose the anatomy of click fraud from the search engines and syndicates down to local publishers. “We are going to put the entire lawsuit and discovery online,” said Briggs. “Folks have a right to know the truth.”

Briggs claims that AIT and other advertisers did not receive the services as promised by the Observer per its online contracts and policies. Instead advertisers received and paid for fraudulent impressions and clicks. Recently, a local judge ruled that AIT had not been responsive in discovery even though AIT produced over 60,000 pages of proof and the Observer produced nothing. “We intend to appeal”, said Briggs. “A procedural glitch should not be allowed to overshadow the facts of the case which clearly show that the newspaper cheated advertisers out of their money. We need to get this in front of a jury and expose it. I think the other side misled the judge and did not present the all the facts to him.”

Charles Broadwell, the Publisher of FPC, could not be reached for comment. Briggs asserts AIT was transitioning the case between two law firms due to scheduling issues when they hit a procedural glitch and mixed up some dates. “We were then barred from bringing our claims after a year long legal battle to bring the truth to light so now we will appeal. If nothing else, we can use all the data and evidence from this lawsuit to educate the public about click fraud. We actually have film footage in real time that we can release.” Briggs says that based on the circumstances of this Click Fraud case, no one has ever had this level of evidence.