This is fantastic news for those advertisers who filed a timely claim. To have been eligible for the monetary reward provided for in Yahoo settlement, advertisers needed to have taken the following steps:

(1) Completed the Assertion of Rights claim form by November 20, 2006
(2) After that date, you would have received a Claim Form in the mail. Which had to be completed in order to receive compensation.
(3) Your submitted Claim Form will then have gone to Yahoo for review and decision on whether your campaigns were victims of click fraud. If the Yahoo determines ‘Yes’, then a refund check should be arriving shortly. If Yahoo determines ‘No’, then you are not eligbile for a refund.

The other alternative was to opt-out of the settlement and bring a case against Yahoo on your own. To take that road, you had to have directly opted out by filing yet a different form by October 14, 2006.
(this information with instructions can be found at http://www.checkmatesettlement.com )

Seems like alot of work, for little chance of payout. However, when you compare it to your settlement value from the Google class action claim, Yahoo will make a tycoon out of you. In the Google class action settlement, you’d be lucky to receive $3.50 for every $1,000 in claimed click fraud. Whereas, in the Yahoo settlement, you will get 100% of your money back for click fraud.

The bottom line: both settlements are unfair to the advertiser. Neither provides a fair and balanced method of evaluating questionably billed clicks. A more equitable solution would have been to assign a third party auditor with the task of evaluating claims, with the promise to recieve 100% money back for improperly billed clicks. Instead, advertisers are still being burdened with the complete job of auditing their own campaigns, without the power to do anything about their findings.

What happened to customer rights?

Good Luck.

That is weird Frank…