Now that click fraud suits have mostly come and gone, the next big wave of riches that class action lawyers will extract from the search engines is for false advertising.

Scenario / Pop-quiz:

• A ringtone affiliate buys an ad on Google with the headline: "Coldplay Ringtones".
• The click thru goes through AzoogleAds to DadaMobile.
• User clicks, but when they land, they can't find any ringtones by ColdPlay.
• Instead they are told they get free ringtones if they put their mobile number in.
• User puts number in, doesn't read fine print and phone bill charges add up.

So the $64M question: Who gets sued?

Answer: Everyone!

That's my early prediction for 2007 - a ton of false advertising suits against Google, the CPA / affiliate networks, the merchants, the affiliates and anyone who ever ran such an ad on their page.

Get in early while the gettin' is good...

¶ 8/28/2006