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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."
How hard is it to track purchases that are due to a particular click? That would solve the problem in a hurry. Wouldn't work for more "image" type advertising, but it would be an interesting challenge for a purchasing framework.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
During the early days of the "Pay 2 Surf" fad, some friends of mine in college devised some of the original scams (including bots that have led Yahoo and others to include image verification to determine if a real person is making an account). They were monumentally succesful, one claimed he paid for nearly a whole year's worth of tuition from scamming these guys.
None of them ever had the slightest bit of legal woes as a result of it, and none of them even got complaints from the companies. As far as the companies organizing Pay 2 Surf programs were concerned the more the merrier as it meant more ad revenue for them.
I wonder why Google has decided, against their own interests, to go after fraudsters like this.
Google got to the top of the game by providing an excellent service efficiently. But like anything else, people have no problems ruining it to make a little more money.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
Google sets up a way of doing advertising business with them. You sign a contract that most likely links your rate with your clicks, provided they aren't fraudulent. Now somebody got caught and they're gonna get sued. What's the problem? Its not like its a right to have an advertisement on their site. Google can tell you to shove it if they want. Reading the summary makes me think the issue is that Google isn't disclosing how they caught this advertiser because its done by hand. Again, why should Google disclose more than necessary to prove to the court in their case? I'm not seeing the issue.
Anybody else notice the rapid crapification of Google since the IPO? There's a difference between "crapification" and "legitimization."
Google needs to protect themselves and their legitimate clients. Why would a company allow practices that were essentially stealing money from them, and for that matter, why would someone invest in a company that allowed people to do such things?
This sounds like a good outsourcing candidate. I would hate to click all day but I imainge someone overseas wouldn't mind making a buck doing it and best yet I bet that it wouldn't be illegal there nor even any recourse that a company could seek.
The slashdot blurb gives the impression that Auctions Expert was clicking on other ads to drive up competitors advertising costs. But while that is mentioned in the article by another guy, what Auctions Experts was doing was standard "put google ads on our page, and keep clicking the links so we get paid"
From the article:
Auctions Expert allegedly recruited as many as 50 people to click on online advertising, generating about $50,000 in ad revenue. The self-clicking was "worthless to advertisers, but generated significant and unjust revenue for defendants," the Google lawsuit said. Auctions Expert, Google claims, appeared to be created solely to profit from manipulating the Internet ad process
I have blog like everyone else
Hello YourName,
We've noticed that you're displaying AdWords ads on a site
(YourSiteURL) that violates our program policies.
Our program specialists regularly review AdSense websites for various
criteria, including, but not limited to, site content, clear navigation,
and the site's potential value to the AdSense program and the user
experience.
We've found that many of the ads that would appear on your site would not
be relevant to your site's content. Because these ads wouldn't provide a
valuable experience for your site's users or our advertisers, we believe
AdSense isn't currently appropriate for the website listed above. As a
result, we've disabled this URL.
Google has certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the
effectiveness of AdWords ads for our publishers as well as our
advertisers. We believe strongly in freedom of expression and therefore
offer broad access to content across the web without censoring results. At
the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when
it comes to the ads we display in our AdWords program and the sites on
which we choose to display them in our AdSense program, as noted in our
respective terms and conditions.
Please feel to reply to this email with any questions. If you manage or
own another site on which you'd like to display AdWords ads, you may reply
to this email and include the URL in the message. We'll be happy to review
this site and consider it for Google AdSense. If the new site complies
with our program policies, we'll approve your application and allow you to
serve ads on that specific site.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
fuvoo: watch something
"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.
Its the "pay-per-click" method which is broken,
because its too simplistic. The advertisers and
search engines need to come up with better
technology to make sure that payment only follows
purchases.
Clicking your mouse on a search engine results
page, as many times as you want, should be
considered a First Amendment protected form of
Freedom of Expression. Clicking your mouse on your
stock broker's BUY button, for instance, is
obviously quite different, because you and the
broker have a contract where your clicks are
treated as orders.
But there is no contract between the users of a
search engine and the search engine's advertisers.
If companies want to transfer money between
themselves based on those clicks, they had better
think long and hard about the conditions where
that actually makes sense.
The expense of detecting and suing over click-fraud could be greatly reduced by adding terms such as this to the ad contract:
1. The advertizer agrees not to [define prohibited conduct here]
2. Google may offer a bounty for truthful testimony by any person hired by advertizer to perform [prohibited conduct], and advertizer agrees to permit such truthful testimony on the subject of [prohibited conduct] notwithstanding any other agreement with any party.
Drones paid sub-minimum-wage for click-fraud would jump at a reasonable bounty, especially if advertizer has already agreed to allow it.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Hello Tim Garrison,
It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the ads on your web pages.
As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks is strictly
prohibited. Invalid clicks include but are not limited to any clicks
that are generated through the use of robots, automated clicking tools,
manual clicks by a publisher on the publisher's own web pages, or a
publisher encouraging others to click on his ads.
Publishers may not provide incentives of any kind to encourage or
require users to click on the ads, due to the potential for inflation
of advertiser costs. If we find your account to be in violation again,
action may be taken against your account and payment may be withheld.
Please be sure to review and remain in compliance with our Terms and
Conditions and program policies:
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl
Sincerely,
The Google Team
I'm one of the little guys, too. I have only ever clicked my own ads maybe twice. I never had more than 1 click per day, so they can't really bitch. What's worse, they refused to prove to me that there were actually invalid clicks. My solution: I removed the ads from all my sites and replaced them with "Get Firefox" ads.
Sorry, "No security through obscurity!" is just something Slashbots repeat to sound smart...