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Google's Click-Fraud Crackdown
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that Google is making some effort to put a crack in the practice of click-fraud. Because of the pernicious abuse of the company's advertising business, it simply can't be sure that anyone is actually looking at the ads. Bruce Schneier talks about the problems of ensuring that people are really people, and Google's solution." From the article: "Google is testing a new advertising model to deal with click fraud: cost-per-action ads. Advertisers don't pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever. It's a hard model to make work — Google would become more of a partner in the final sale instead of an indifferent displayer of advertising — but it's the right security response to click fraud: Change the rules of the game so that click fraud doesn't matter."
This CPA model is already very common. See Commission Junction and other affiliate networks.
Developers: We can use your help.
Actually, Google has a better solution for that. If the transaction is online, you can embed a small piece of HTML/Javascript code in your 'thank you for purchasing' page that allows Google to check the value of a cookie they placed on a customer's computer when they clicked an ad.
The cookie links the click to the sale. And there is value to the advertiser as well: Google can then help you track which ad resulted in a sale, and which keywords it was linked to. (So you don't have to buy an expensive but poor-return keyword.)
(I may be mis-describing: Check Google's docs to be sure.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
For the past few years we have had ads running on adsense... 2 weeks ago, we decided we would rather lose the sales that adsense was bringing in than continue to pay google for ads that weren't generating enough revenue.
For comparison, our conversion rates:
Google Search: 3.5%
Google adsense: 0.25%
I don't know what other companies are doing.. but I wouldn't be surprised companies are considering dropping adsense. There is just to much fraud.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Unless I am reading your post wrong, I don't see where you consider "zombied" machines, except perhaps case number one. However, in the case of a zombie network, you have potentially tens of thousand of machines spread all over the internet, and none would have to click multiple times in a short time period to rack up the clicks - they would just have to click randomly (as in "at randomly spaced time periods) and constantly, whenever the machine it connected to the internet. If the majority of those 0wn3d boxes are on broadband connections, so much the better...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Cookies are used to remember you. You dont need to buy immediately.