Survey: Firms Wasted $800 Million in Net Ads

U.S. companies wasted $800 million last year buying ads on Internet search engines owned by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that had no chance of generating sales, according to a report. The survey of 407 advertisers, conducted by market researcher Outsell Inc. of Burlingame, Calif., found that almost 15% of clicks on ads were fraudulent.

The report follows settlements of click-fraud lawsuits by Google and Yahoo, the two most-used Internet search engines.