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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."
It is also a great model for extending one's monopoly in one area (search and per click advertising) into another (payment processing).
I'm an AdWords advertiser and click-fraud means zero to me -- in fact, I don't care either way. All AdWords-advertised sites make a better profit from AdWords than one can believe -- it works. If even 10% of the clicks are fraud (I _highly_ doubt it), I don't care -- the profit is still better than most advertising campaigns.
I also get a ton of impressions -- most of my ads have a click through rate of under 5%. Considering that 95% of the unclicked ads still form a brand impression, I'm even more satisfied (free advertising, basically).
AdWords advertisers who complain are just idiots. I've run TV, radio, magazine and newspaper ads for years and never had this kind of ROI.
I'm also an AdSense publisher, and I don't see what people bother with fraud. For the few bucks you make an hour trying to defraud the system, you can do a better job selling something online and using AdWords to drive business to you.
Driving direct sales is only a small part of what advertising is really for, though. Advertising is also about creating mindshare for your brand. Just because I don't immediately go and buy something from you when I see your ad doesn't mean I won't eventually buy from you as a resuly of seeing that ad. In this case, seeing the ad has convinced me to choose your brand when I am ready to buy, even if I don't buy right when I see the ad. This is effective advertising.
By ignoring this type of advertising, Google is basically giving it away for free. Sure, it's good for advertisers, but I'm not so sure it's good for Google.
TFA talks a lot about fraud, but what do you call it if I finish reading the article, and I click the nice linkies at the bottom with no intention of buying anything? What if I don't need a "Trojan remover download", credit report restoration, a work-from-home scheme, or (my favorite) to "Make Money With Adsense" with help from some outfit called cash-sense dot com.
So if I do four shift-ctl-clicks (open in a new window, keeping current window active, I love Opera), am I a bored 'net surfer, or have I just committed Click Fraud? For the advertiser, is there really any difference?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The biggest problem is tracking the click through to the action verifiably. Once a user clicks and ad and goes to WidgetsForSale.Com, the WidgetsForSale folks would need to track their activity and determine whether a sale results (q: within how long?), and report those sales results to Google so they can pay for the ads. That doesn't sound like a very tenable model - it relies on the WidgetsForSale folks tracking data and reporting to Google how much they should pay, rather than Google billing them.
The only way I could see that working is with mandated use of the Google payment system perhaps, so they could generate some link between ad clicks and purchasing activity. That seems a mighty steep hill to climb, however...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I would like to have the ability to see which IPs are clicking my ads and then be able to block them - i.e. my competitors and other random fraudsters.
This is headed in the wrong direction. The traditional role of the ad is to attract the eye, and get the consumer to consider and then remember the product when they want/need it in the future. Even if the ad isn't clicked on, the company advertising is getting itself noted and noticed, for free. That's the entire value of traditional print, radio, TV and billboard ads, just given away by web content providers. It's unreal, and is stifling the growth of online media. I suppose it's OK for enormous middlemen like Google, but it sucks for those making and maintaining websites. Advertisers have gotten too much of a free ride, and the models used to support this free ride... banner ads, popunders, flash ads, etc... have been largely self defeating.
Making the burden on the content creator heavier and more onerous before they get their dollar is not the way to go. The middlemen and the ad buyers are getting too much for too little in return. New models need to be developed. I'm in favor of the old fashioned sponsorship: flat fee so it's a predictable expense for the ad buyer, and predictable income for the content provider. I'm sure there are other ways to charge advertisers what their advertisements are worth, and increase their effectiveness at the same time.
This new Google approach doesn't deliver.
SoupIsGood Food
Are you kidding? My company has about 2MM in sales annually, and we spend almost $500,000 a year on Google Adwords. Over 90% of our sales come from Google. We're getting a conversion rate that is less then one percent and it's gotten worse over time. If it continues to drop we'll have no choice but reduce our adwords cost-per-click limit and take our advertising dollars elsewhere. No matter how you spell it, that means problems for the GOOG.
On two occassions, I've had my google account cancelled and funds withdrawn because Google accused me of click-fraud. Of course I had nothing to do with it and when I pleaded my case to Google I got no reply. I was willing to provide click logs and etc. But they just ignored me. I guess it's cheaper to just cancel accounts who are suspected of click-fraud then actually investigate. But if all it takes is a few malicious users with some scripting knowledge and open proxies to ruin my revenue why should I as a publisher use Google Adsense?
Who cares whether it's actually a human? What you really care is that they purchased your product. If the payment is tied to that, it becomes irrelevent who clicked or how they clicked. They spent money because of your ad. So you can afford to pay for the ad. And if an AI was the one who spent the money, great. As long as their credit card works.
This works now... but what happens when that scheme is broken?
ie:
Step 1: Script buys product from ad link.
Step 2: One minute later, script cancels said order before it is processed.
Its a cat and mouse game.
Google really needs to fix their fraud-detection systems, and this idea isn't going to fly with most people. Either put up with a certain percentage of fraud, or risk banning those who don't deserve it ... Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
What monopoly in search? Google has less than 50% of the market for search, and they have a significant competitor in Yahoo search marketing (used to be called Overture) not to mention the banner ad people such as doubleclick, although I couldn't find any comparison of the services relative market share.
Google has not attempted to artificially raise the barrier to entry of the search market, unless they are involved in something i am unaware of, you can get some clever people together, some big hardware and a gigantic pipe and make your own search engine or pay per click advertising. Same for payment processing; Google are not engaging in dumping of Google Checkout, it is infact more expensive than it's biggest rival Paypal.
(Full disclosure: I have used paypal to pay for things, google & yahoo to search, and I block all adverts with adblock plus and filterset.g)
ah, mod points
Driving direct sales is only a small part of what advertising is really for, though.
I once saw an interview with A-B's NASCAR liason. He was asked how much beer he thought they sold as a direct result of the $40 million a year they pour into stock car racing.
He responded that as far as the company knew their sports sponsorship did not have a direct impact on selling a single can of beer, but that wasn't the point, because advertising in expectation of driving sales is only a subdivision of marketing (and in point of fact most sponsorship isn't even aimed at the consumer, it's aimed at the distributors). All they want out of sponsoring sports is that when people think "beer" they also think "Budweiser" in a positive light, even though the beer itself obviously comes from an over hydrated horse with sugar (ok, I added that last bit myself).
Nonetheless, they do sell an awful lot of watered down horse urine, so they must have some idea of what they're doing spending money that returns "nothing."
Google ads are in a peculiar position, not entirely unlike sports sponsorship, because it is most obviously directed at a sort of "targeted impulse" buying. A-B obviously has beer stands at NASCAR races as well, despite the claim that they don't actually use sponsorship to directly sell beer.
But the real purpose of Google ads is to direct people to your website where the real marketing goes on. It's an ad for the ad, not the ad itself. Thus legitimate clicks are the legitimate metric for determining the effectivness of Google Ads. If people who click through fail to buy that's a measure of the effectiveness of your website, but bearing in mind that if they do not buy at the time of click through that does not imply that your marketing is faulty.
The effectiveness of marketing cannot be tallied like beans (or beer) in a one to one relationship with orders. It requires a human intelligence to assess that, not a computer.
KFG
So the problem now becomes truthful advertisers? If they lie to Google ("no, that sale didn't come tru your ad"), what can Google do?
Since Google has no control over the advertisers... Google just must believe what they tell Google.
True, but most of google's ads are NOT about mindshare.
Semi-true, but definitely arguable. A strong support in your favor is that most google ads are text based instead of image based. Going to a site 50 times and seeing the word "Ford" will not produce the same effect as seeing the Ford logo 50 times. Google's ads don't really create brand recognition, so I agree with your point.
This is where online advertising has deviated significantly from *most* other forms of advertising. Other ads are in place primarily for the sake of brand recognition. When you drive down the highway and see a billboard for a new Ford, most people don't rush to the nearest dealer and buy a new car. However, they remember (sometimes just subconsciously) that they saw an ad for a new Ford and that it looked good or whatever, and that may play a role the next time they decide to buy a new car.
It seems to me that there should be more online advertising based on page loads (or ad loads) instead of just clicks. This should only apply to banner ads, IMO, and shouldn't be worth as much as a a PPC or CPA ad. It seems obvious that publishers wouldn't want a Ford CPA ad because it wouldn't generate any revenue but does promote brand recognition.
Steal a credit card number, click on a Google CPA advert, and buy lots of expensive things.
The profit is in the percentage the advertising website gets, not in the goods.
I administer multiple e-commerce sites, and the majority of our customers don't make a purchase until at least 30 days after first visiting our sites. Google should know this, and I have no idea why they're even considering CPA as an option.
This is correct. In our case a bit more. And 95% goes to adwords. When you sell a service, the only cost is development, infrastructure, customer acqisition, and, of course, payroll and administrative expenses. And we're profitable.