第二十九天：《经济学家》文章讲解之二

除了假报告之外，奥运、环保方面的词汇也要准备一些。它们也是作文部分出题的重点方向。如奥运会（the Olympic Games）、奥运口号（Higher, faster, stronger）等都需要牢记。相关词汇只需上google搜索就可以找到。

今天的结束语是：Writing makes one exact（写作使人精确）。

Truth in advertising（网络广告点击数的虚假不实可能影响广告业）

What makes Google so valuable? This week the search engine's share price rose above $500, valuing the company at more than $150 billion. Investors' optimism stems in large part from Google's dominance in the booming field of internet advertising, which is currently worth around $27 billion a year and is expected to grow to $61 billion by 2010. In the longer term the internet is expected to account for at least 20% of global advertising spending--around four times its share now. So there are years of growth still to come. But that rosy future could be in jeopardy unless the big internet companies, including Google, do more to clamp down on some dodgy practices on the web. Concern has been growing in recent months that "click fraud" might undermine the industry.

The problem is that many of the clicks on internet advertisements are bogus. The ability to aim such advertisements so that they pop up, for example, when a user searches for a particular word, is what makes them so valuable--and makes fraud so lucrative. American law firms, for instance, are prepared to pay as much as $30 each time someone clicks on an advertisement after searching for "mesothelioma"--the name of an obscure asbestos-related disease. It is, after all, quite an efficient way to find sufferers who might be interested in launching a money-spinning compensation lawsuit.

Sadly, cheating the system is easy. It is done in two main ways. The first exploits the fact that Google, Yahoo! and other firms place ads on the websites of their affiliates, who receive a small cut of the advertising revenue generated by each resulting click. Unscrupulous affiliates can generate a stream of bogus commissions by repeatedly clicking advertisements on their own websites (or getting other people or machines to do so on their behalf). The second form of click fraud is aimed at the competition: click on a rival company's advertisements, displayed on websites or alongside the results of an internet search, and its advertising budget will swiftly be exhausted.

Estimates of the extent of click fraud vary, but it is generally thought to account for around 10% of clicks on advertisements, though some estimates range as high as 50%. Disgruntled advertisers have launched class-action lawsuits against Google and Yahoo!, and big companies are threatening to hold back spending on internet advertising unless the industry generally becomes more transparent and accountable.

To some extent, these are the ordinary growing pains of a new industry. A similar problem arose with television. After t

责任编辑:gaoyan