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Newsweek On Click Fraud, Search Engine Response
prostoalex writes "Newsweek magazine says click fraud is the bane of the search advertising industry. Google and Yahoo! are apparently working on the standardized definition of a "good-faith" click in order to weed out the fraudulent ones. Meanwhile, merchants like Assaf Nehoray are taking their money elsewhere, getting abundant clicks, but no real revenue on Internet advertising campaigns. Newsweek also mentions Google suing a Texas company for placing the AdSense code and then clicking on it in order to run up the revenue. John Battelle says that his friends in the search industry tell him the click fraud is growing and that changes are not too far away."
Google's Fraud Squad Battles Phantom Clicks
Everyone is affected, big or small "publisher".
But I assure you that it hurts when your 100$ Adword budget goes in a puff of probably fraudulents clicks, with nothing you can do about it. The guys at SEO Chat forum are not very happy about this, I assure you.
It's discouraging me of running small-scale Adwords campaigns, honestly.
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What exactly is this click fraud thing? I can't really see how it can be exactly defined. Maybe the owners of the website occasionally want to click on their own adverts because (*shock*) the product is actually relevant to their site, and thus to them. In fact, relevance is supposed to be the whole idea of Google's TextAds, isn't it?
Obviously someone genuinely wanting to click their own ads ten thousand times is rather unlikely, but where do you draw the line? Is this written in a contract anywhere? What about getting other people to click the ads for you?
This seems to be a very fuzzy legal matter. I'm as pro-Google as the next Slashdotter but I can't see how they have a water-tight case here. That said, I'm not an expert, so perhaps someone can correct me.
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Who ever thought Google AdWords were any more effective than a pop up ad? The reason so many porn sites use pop ups is that often times they get paid on a "per view" or "per click" basis. Hmmm...if every user has to click the fake 'X' in the top corner, thus sending them to the advertiser, then the referring porn site makes money on a click through.
Same idea with AdWords. Why would anyone think click through ads are any better? Everyone remember the days when they had the little clients that would monitor when you were online and give you money for every hour you surfed? Ha, how long did it take you to set up a macro to run the mouse while you slept?
The only advertising that makes you money, is advertising that sells your product. Tricking people into following a link or viewing a page they didn't want to doesn't do anyone any good in the long run. Pay per click can only last so long.
I wonder how much of getting away with this is done by using open proxies laid down on zombies by $WORM_OF_THE_MONTH.
Obviously the SEs know to watch for 100+ adwords clicks in 15 minutes from the same IP (though maybe this is harder due to decentralization of the data centers and another reason for them to get a dark fiber network - see the article from earlier today) but if the clicks appear to be coming from broadband users across the US, I could see worms playing a big part in this, relatively undetectably.
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For any affiliate program, as that community operates like the mos eisley cantina. In fact, it's expected, and has been dealt with over and over. Google should talk to the old guard on this one.
I'm sorry to admit that gfy is the authoritative source on this problem; no joke!
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For a complete write up see Overture Click Protection Paper
I am a Adsense publisher, which means I show thier ads on my site. I earn quite good money (more than two thousand US dollars a month) for doing next to nothing. What concerns me is that they say "oh poor advertisers" when publishers get just as hurt.
1) You can loose, a lot, of revenue because of advertisers switching off.
2) You can void all your earnings if Google detects fradulant clicks (say a compeditor clicks the hell out of your ads).
It does suck for publishers and advertisers, but as it is one of Google's (and others) major revenue sources then I would have thought they would take even more measures to make sure this kind of fraud didn't happen. Because at the end of the day they do rely on both publishers and advertisters. And if it turns to crap Google (etc) will no longer be the middle man.
So while YES, there is a lot of fraud in this area, be careful about saying everyone running Google Adsense is "bad"
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Why would anyone do such a thing? They could easily simulate it using software. That would be cheaper for many reasons. They don't have to hire all those people. They can do it all using one or a few computers instead of many. They need a lot less space and they have smaller energy bills.
To me, it's absolutely hilarious that much time and money is being spent to figure out how to improve a business model that's fundamentally idiotic.
Now it could be said that web advertising is more like direct mail. A firm pays an ad agency to create copy, the post office to send stuff out, and hopes for enough responses to the campaign to generate the profit. If the campaign fails, maybe the ad agency receives some flack. But the post office is not going to refund money because several hundred of the recipients happened to work for a competitor, or because a third of the envelopes were discarded unopened.
So where did this concept of one click one sale, or one click one payment. What happened to the concept of sponsoring good content in the hopes of generating a connection to potential customers. By all accounts TV and print ads are increasingly worthless. Can web ads be any worse? Could the problem be that the ad agencies or advertisers are not taking time to understand the medium? Are all web advertisers so fly by night that they need a sale today because tomorrow they will have run off to tahiti with the receipts?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'm not quite sure about the sweatshop type model, but I have read about a few places that have a lot of people just clicking on ads for a few hours a day. I guess it's similar to the "hit the monkey and win" type ad click racket, except people actually get paid a small amount for a lot more clicks.
Or it could even be something like free internet access if you just click on banners for X amount of time per day. I think the reason that they don't simulate it with software is that actual people clicking on the banners makes it a lot harder to track than some script.
This looks similar in some ways to pyramid scams. Someone loses out, except this time it might be the actual advertiser which _GETS_ the fraudulant clicks in the first place. I'm sure that the advertisers would eventually catch on and yank this out from under people's noses. Maybe even sue those who run the clickfraud for... well... fraud.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
>click fraud is the bane of the search advertising industry
Click fraud is the bane of the USELESS CLICK-THRU ADVERTISING industry. Use targetted banners, of both online and offline products. Get smarter, dammit.
If I see a coke ad on a hot sunny day, i'm more eager to buy it than to click a stupid "punch the monkey" ad.
How about this. In say, long scientific article, who the heck will pay attention to a banner on the top of the page, rather than in the middle?
Common sense, boys. You wanted instant revenue. There's no such thing.
Bill Gross's new startup Snap.com has a great new advertising model that solves the click fraud program.
They offer traditonal online advertising options such as charging for the number of times a listing is displayed, and a pay-per-click model (That Gross originally pioneered with Overture).
Snap's big contribution to online advertising is "Pay-Per-Action". They track a user's click-stream from their search engine, to the site, and track a user's movements there. So a bookseller can agree to pay 2% of sales for leads from Snap. Or Friendster could agree to pay $.25 per new subscriber.
This has two big advantages over PPC. It 100% eliminates click fraud. It also eliminates risk to the merchant, there's no more wondering what percentage of PPC visitors will convert to sales.
More on Snap.com at my blog IAmAdamSmith
Our team at online travel startup TripInvite.com plan to start a "Pay per Action" campaign after we launch later this month. Other travel sites signed with Snap are paying about 2 to 3% right now.
TripInvite.com: Group Travel Made Simple Evit
Ok some adverts can provide a moments amusement, but on the whole they are a pain. While the google ads are (at the moment) quite unobtrusive (especially with an adblocker!) they are still part of an industry which is crying out for a bloody good kicking.
Ads accross wireless medium:
The airwaves belong to everyone. This is a limited resource so there has to be some regulation but we sure as hell don't want to piss it away on people trying to get their bullshit imagery into your head for their sordid profit.
Ads accross wires:
I don't know about the States but in the places I have lived the telecommunications networks were set up with public funding. It seems that most places have now privatised their telecommunications networks, state assets, belonging to all, being sold for a fraction of their true value for the benefit of the rich. With the advent of VOIP and large scale public adhoc wireless networking the business model of the telecommunications companies is no longer viable and this basic resource should be brought back into the public domain.
Bill boards / train adverts:
These things are nauseating. Why as human beings should we suffer this indignity? I'd prefer the raw sewage people used to throw onto the streets in Victorian times to the demeaning bullshit the advertiser assaults us with.
To sum it up......adverts STEAL our SUNSHINE.
Those of you who disagree with me will be pleased to know that I had to move to a small island in the Pacific to escape from all this...the universe is beautiful and the sun bestows its wealth on all!
Unfortunatley it looks like the political forces of the West have decided to lay waste to the world. One way or another all this advertising must stop.
I've used google adwords for a couple small campaigns. I suspect that I've been a victim of "click fraud" on the content network -- that's where your ads appear on third party websites. However, on the Google search network, the only entity who directly benefits from clicks is Google themselves. I'm pretty comfortable with the traffic I get from the search clicks.
Maybe more weight should be given to advertising clicks that actually result in sales.
Phantom clicks > No Sales > Advertisers Decrease > Price Per Click Drops > Google goes bust > Phantom Clicks Stops...
The truth shall set you free!
I think you're on to something with the "hit the monkey" model. If you think about it, Google click fraud has a lot in common with crapflooding Slashdot. In both cases, you have a malicious user trying to do something (e.g. post a comment or click on an ad) far more times in a short period of time than any legitimate user ever would. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game. The difference is that with Google ads, the stakes are much higher, and the techniques used (both by the malicious users and the site trying to stop them) are more sophisticated.
An obvious thing to look for is lots of traffic coming from the same IP or subnet. That's why Slashdot has IP bans, makes you wait 2 minutes before posting another comment, etc. Google of course can look for similar patterns. Therefore malicious users need to make their traffic look like it's coming from all over the place instead of just one computer. The GNAA used to crapflood Slashdot by compiling lists of hundreds of open proxies and writing a script to have them post comments all at once (Slashdot no longer allows open proxies to post). We can assume Google filters out ad clicks from anonymous proxies. So now the malicious users need a way to recruit hundreds of computers, preferably from lots of different subnets, and without using open proxies. You can do this by paying people to click ads from their computers, and "hit the monkey" is probably the cheapest known way to do this. If you're making more money on clicks than what you're paying your army of clickers, you'll make a profit.
Now, I suppose you could also write an automated program to do the same thing, but that would be called a "virus" or a "worm," and these things tend to attract a lot of attention from various law enforcement agencies. Better to pay people a couple cents to hit the monkey than go to prison.
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One of the sites I'm involved with had AdSense for around 9 months and it brought in a reasonable, honest income stream of around $400 per month. Then, without warning, Google removed our publisher status - without giving us reason. They are infuriatingly unwilling to work with us to identify what went wrong; my suspicion is that we were targetted by some kind of competitor who 'over-clicked' and made it look like us - but Google won't tell us anything. IP addresses, times, dates, routes, whatever; just something that could help us understand what went wrong. In fact, their reluctance to talk to us makes me suspicious that Google the publicly traded corporation has turned to the use of underhand tactics to off-load some smaller publishers such as us; we published but did not advertise with Google in return, and I suspect they saw us as ultimately not profitable enough for their corporate greed. I like Google the search engine, but I think we were unfairly treated. If I felt that a court would rule in our favour to allow us access to the details of whatever 'crime' we have been deemed to have committed, I would seriously consider going down that route because: (a) If the undisclosed abuse was internal I could find out who and when, and take some sort of wrist-slapping action. This is doubtful, though; I basically ran the site and was the only one associated with the account and I *know* damn well that I played by the rules. (b) If the undisclosed abuse was external then we could fight our corner for re-instatement and possibly take action against the abuser, and seek back-payments (which were withheld) from Google plus some sort of compensation for their negligence in handling the matter properly. However, all that said and done, I think Google thinks it is above the law and in all probability it is (relative to my small outfit) as it will have immensely deeper pockets. The real shame is that the AdSense programme was working for us, and we were getting relevant ads which our site membership found useful. Google, you have soiled your image and tarnished my impression of you as a trustworthy, decent organisation. At least as far as your AdSense department is concerned. Your bully-boy approach reeks of a lack of ethics and I hope that you might learn something from my case and (I should imagine) the countless other sites who have been tarred unnecessarily and unfairly. I'm sure someone else will come on and sing Google AdSense's praises, but remember my words on the day that Google suddenly stops being your friend and starts to regard you as untrustworthy without giving you details of what they deem as your 'crime'. Mark my words... I post this as myself because I stand beside my words and my certainty that Google f**ked up but isn't decent enough to let us prove it. jtc
This problem is as old as the commercial Internet, and is very hard to solve. See for example this paper from the 8th World Wide Web Conference (1999). http://www.pinkas.net/PAPERS/v17.htm
Paying just to get people to click on your advert, regardless of whether or not they actually buy anything, is a broken business model.
As far as I am concerned -- and I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way -- every single advertisement anyone tries to show me is unwanted. In fact, I may well decide never to buy any product or service from that company just on general principle. After all, I know that company spends money on advertising which they could spend on making a better product. So if you have ever spent a single penny trying to show me an advertisement, then you have wasted that money. Harsh? Maybe, but that's the way you turn out when you were raised watching the BBC.
I won't be guilt-tripped with talk of how advertisers pay for this and pay for that. I never asked them to pay for it! I am the sole custodian of my destiny. I am not going to buy anything from anybody who advertises, period. I personally see no need to waste my bandwidth downloading an advertisement when I am only going to ignore it -- hence the Squid proxy and moderate-to-heavy use of Firefox's image blocking feature. Not just on the Internet either; I leave the room while adverts are on the TV.
If I was feeling really malicious, I might actually write a quick perl script to put in a few hundred bogus clicks against a really egregious advertiser. But on the whole, I most probably wouldn't be bothered; it's too much effort for too little return.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!