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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, December 30th. Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, December 30th,

and this is your FT news briefing.

Fake clicks on online ads

could be costing companies tens of billions of dollars a year, way more than what industry officials claim.

New documents show we work will have to pay millions of dollars to some key executives if they were to leave the company,

and France is having a startup boom.

Plus, why Warren Buffett isn't buying into the idea that companies should force their views

on society.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Fake clicks have been a problem for the online ad industry for years. This is when advertisers think they're getting real

traffic on their ads, but in reality, computer programs are clicking through.

Industry representatives save fake clicks cost them about $6 billion each year.

But researchers are saying that the cost is actually way higher, closer to tens of billions of dollars.

One researcher even said that fraud can

account for 99% of all ads placed in a given campaign. One area of fraud

that's become particularly popular are clickable ads to download smartphone apps.

Criminals can claim the commission or referral fees that advertisers pay for each download.

An analysis of more than 150 million app downloads that were driven by

...