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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."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1731167,00.as p
Inflated clicks are not the only problem PPC concepts have lately. It's a pretty challenging problem to prevent click-fraud; open-proxies/botnets and so on make this even harder.
A bunch of interesting links:
I had a conversation with a VP of marketing at a former employer.
"Clickthrough rates are typically (insert some number under 10) per thousand views."
He got very angry when I told him that sounded like people accidentally clicking on the banner, and said I had no idea what I was talking about.
I countered that the only time I had ever clicked a banner ad while surfing the web was completely by accident. Stuff like my mouse falling off the desk, or my hand slipping.
Please help metamoderate.
Most retailers can track you across visits. Tracking your click-through history (which Google ads you've clicked on before making a purchase) is incredibly valuable information to the retailer. Just because you didn't buy something today doesn't mean your click wasn't tracked and can't be linked back to that click.
rooooar
We are living in a capitalist society - it depends on greed to function properly.
Oh well, what the hell...
Its violation of a contract. Websites who host google adsense have agreed not to inflate clicks. If the guy wasn't greedy and instead just hired people to click adwords on the google search engine, google would have no case. Since there is no contract between using google search and the user.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?