About The Arbitrage Desk

The Arbitrage Desk covers one subject, search arbitrage, for everyone it touches: the person who just heard the term, the media buyer running campaigns, the advertiser wondering why a click came from a site they have never heard of, and the investor reading a feed provider’s results. The name comes from the trading desk, because the business is a trade: a click bought at one price and sold at another. The two bars in our logo are those two prices, and the yellow corner between them is the spread.

Who is behind it

The Arbitrage Desk is published by ClearTrust, a company that measures traffic quality and prevents ad fraud and invalid traffic, including through the Traffic Quality Index (TQI) Score™. That is why this site spends as much time on fraud and policy as on profit. ClearTrust sponsors the site and its house ads appear in ad slots when no other advertiser has bought them. Its products are listed in the players directory alongside competitors, with the same format and no ranking advantage in the news.

How we gather information

The desk reads 28 sources continuously: search-marketing and domain trade publications, Google’s own product blogs, and Google News searches for search arbitrage, search feeds, parked domains, click fraud, the feed providers, and the traffic sources they buy from, worldwide. Anything that is not about search arbitrage or its direct machinery is filtered out. It has gathered 80 stories so far. Stock quotes come from Nasdaq and Yahoo Finance and are delayed. Company filings, earnings releases and quarterly figures come directly from the SEC’s EDGAR system.

How we write

• Every story is summarised in our own words, with a “why it matters” line for non-experts, and always links to the original report. We never republish articles.
• Summaries are drafted by a language model from the outlet’s headline and excerpt, under strict rules: no facts, numbers or quotes that are not in the source. When no model is available, we show the outlet’s own short summary and say so.
• Earnings explainers use only figures in the company’s SEC-filed press release.
• Lessons, glossary entries, fraud pages and answers are written and checked against primary sources: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo policy pages, company filings, MRC guidelines, regulators and court documents. Worked examples use made-up numbers and say so. Revenue shares are private contracts, so any split we show is an illustration.

What we will not publish

We explain how fraud works so that it can be recognised and stopped. We do not publish instructions for committing it, for hiding traffic sources, or for getting around a platform’s review. Nothing here is financial advice, and nobody should expect a particular income from this business.

Corrections

Found a mistake? Tell us at hello@cleartrust.cc. We fix errors quickly and do not silently rewrite history.

For AI agents

Everything here is available to AI assistants through our MCP server and JSON API, and summarised in llms.txt.

Sources we read

AdExchanger · Digiday · DomainInvesting.com · Domain Name Wire · Google Ads & Commerce Blog · Google AdSense Blog · Google News · AFS & RSOC · Google News · AI search & ads · Google News · APAC · Google News · Click fraud & invalid traffic · Google News · Deals · Google News · Domain parking · Google News · Earnings · Google News · Europe · Google News · Feed providers · Google News · India · Google News · Made-for-arbitrage · Google News · Meta & TikTok ad policy · Google News · Native traffic sources · Google News · Search ad prices · Google News · Search ads in court · Google News · Search arbitrage · Google News · Search feeds & syndication · Google News · Search hijackers & malvertising · PPC Land · Search Engine Journal · Search Engine Land · Search Engine Roundtable