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Google Sues Click Inflators
Rollie Hawk writes "As is the case with any pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service, Google AdSense is vulnerable to click inflation, where the per-click values of ads go down thanks to excessive clicking. What is different this time is that it is not greedy webmasters clicking ads on their own site but rather the advertisers themselves. In a lawsuit filed last year, Google alleges that Auctions Expert used hired hands and automation to generate high numbers of ad clicks that resulted in $50,000 in revenues. This was done with two goals in mind: forcing wasted advertising expenses on competitors and inflating their own click values, lowering advertising costs. Industry insiders claim that Google AdSense and other PPC advertising providers are undermanned and therefore don't catch many of the estimated 20% fraudulent clicks. It certainly seems that some heuristic software could help reign-in some of these activities, yet Google seems to do a large amount of this work by hand. Often criticized for its policies of non-disclosure for many of its online services, Google claims the secrecy is justified in the case of not giving advertisers details on fraudulent clicking. They say the last thing they want to do is provide a 'road map' to would-be frauders."
Can you imagine having the job of clicking on your companies' ads all day?
"Yes, I am up to 100 clicks a minute, time for a bonus!"
"In a lawsuit filed last year, Google alleges that Auctions Expert used hired hands and automation to generate high numbers of ad clicks that resulted in $50,000 in revenues."
A real con artist would use 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters instead of hiring people (professional ad clickers?). More effective that way.
Pay-per-click is worthless? I guess that's why Google is about to go bankrupt...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
You mean Google doesn't exist solely to satisfy Internet users?!
Of course not, Google exists primarily to be the subject of Slashdot articles. Just wait for Google to sue Apple, or the other way around, Slashdot will post it 71 times (narrowly beating the previous dupe record).
A guy I knew had one of those adbars, where it paid for you to keep the window open,as it was constantly showing you ads. If your screensaver went on, it stopped paying. So he put a piece of wood on an incline, put his mouse on it, and then tied the mouse cord to an oscillating fan. Bingo, instant "always on" surfing. ;)
I (and other advertisers) most certainly do. I'm paying X for a click, %0.5 of clicks result in a sale, with a profit of X. If cost per click > profit per sale * percentage of sales, I stop buying.
Q: what website do you work for?
A: a major one.
One could probably use a similiar approach to generate AdSense revenue as they would do a DDOS attack....
1.) send out trojan and infect 1000's of computers
2.) command zombies to goto your website and click on links
3.) profit!
But, then again, the average user doesn't have this capability
Whoa, that'll show them.