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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."
Why does Google care so much? They get more money when people abuse it. Just charge less per click if they're that concerned about it.
Lot's of domain names will be up for grabs on GoDaddy.
That way, Google will want to enforce it's ad (avoid ad blockers, make them more visible, etc) even more.
factor 966971: 966971
CPA is a good model for Google and a very good model for advertisers. Advertisers, in effect, can pay for only the advertising which results in a sale.
Small publishers, however, will likely suffer. The vast majority of click-throughs on text ads result in no sale. Yet publishers still get paid for it. The only way this would balance out would be for the payment to publishers per action to go up. That would be fair. But I think the small bloggers who like to use adsense will lose revenue from this model.
Developers: We can use your help.
Really. When I first read about web advertising 10 years ago, this was one of the models described. I think it was heavily used by some online bookstores where the website showing the ads would receive a percentage of that customers sale.
This approach may or may not solve click fraud, but it certainly doesn't solve the wider problem of proving that it's a human performing some action instead of a computer - and that one definitely needs to be nailed.
There seem to be at least two alternatives - you could use a chain-of-trust type model such as TCPA to be able to remotely prove that [a] this packet is coming from [b] this program that is [c] digitally signed by this party who [d] asserts that it only accepts input from humans when run on [e] an operating system that will ignore [f] debuggers and [g] un-approved input devices. But this seems unworkable and contrary to the spirit of open computing.
A better solution might be some kind of fingerprint reader that generates digitally signed "proof of life" which can be demanded by remote sites. For instance if you want to post a blog comment you have to touch your finger against the reader which is now 'charged' with 10 proofs - enough that a legit user probably won't be bothered again for some time, but not enough to make automatic spamming profitable.
I don't know of anybody developing such a thing though.
So your saying that Google wants to know about what visitors do on your site AFTER they leave the ad? First, are companies going to just give that away? Second, they could just fake it...oh, they completed the first part of the survey but not the "second" part of it.
I didn't RTFA, but just like everything the overall price of a good/service is going to be slightly inflated to cover the costs of fraud/defects/lawsuits/etc. If you are going to pay Google for ads, then you just have to accept that there is going to be somebody somewhere trying to make an easy buck at your expense. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to stop it, but I don't think this approach will work.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
I had one friend who wondered why she was suspended and it was simple, Google logs the IP of the address you check your account from and matches it up against the click throughs.
So if you're gonna commit click through fraud......
This will probably lose Google money in the long run. I tend to regard any website that asks me to complete a survey for no reason as a scam. If they base it on people buying things, they're going to find themselves forced into a payment processing business so they can ensure that they get paid when these websites get paid. While THAT might be an interesting concept for them, they'd probably just as soon buy Ebay to get paypal for that, otherwise they're going to be putting themselves in direct competition with PayPal.
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.
Google stock has hit a 52-week low
It's all good.
This could open up a big can of worms, precisely because it increases Google's stake in the actual buying process. The protests over ads for controversial stuff like religious or medical items, "adult" materials, political stuff, and so on simmer to a faint background hum when Google is just churning out automatic ads, but if Google can be shown to be taking part in the actual sales and transactions of this stuff their critics are likely to pounce on that. "OMG Google is selling evil pr0n/Satanism books/weaponry/GTA San Andreas/Online Gambling/etc..."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
::Old-fart Now while Google's advertising is generally pretty inoffensive what's with the idea of putting adverts on anything that stands still long enough for the paint to dry? There are blogs running on $2/month webhosts that use AdSense. Just because it is possible to make money doesn't mean that it's an appropriate thing to do. It reeks of the same kind of greed that causes people to put lengthy disclaimers on their naff short stories or trivial programmes (copyleft excepted) just because they can't stand the idea of missing out on 5 cents. ::End
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
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.
ClickMonkeys worked for Pets.com and MSN, certainly it can work for you!
Just charge for space just like the paper.
Just needless complexity in the current system.
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
Advertisers don't pay unless the customer performs a certain action: buys a product, fills out a survey, whatever.
I can't see that working with most ads. If I'm surfing the web and happen to see an ad for something interesting, I don't stop everything I'm doing while I dig up my credit card and place an order. I don't even stop everything I'm doing and fill out a contact form. I bookmark the main page (losing all the redirect info in the process) and come back to it after I've finished whatever I was doing.
The survey thing would make click-fraud easier. Fewer people are going to fill out surveys, so fraudsters could earn more ad money from each one. (Assuming that the advertiser has a fixed budget.) You could get away with having fewer unique IP addresses, which is a big win, and a lot of the random demographic information could be automated across surveys.
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?
It's fraud if you sit at the computer and repeatedly click on the ad or -- better yet -- write a computer program that repeatedly clicks on the ad.
Perl hackers! Forwaaaard!
It seems that cost-per-action fraud could be a bigger issue than the existing fraud unless google is very careful. I can see people creating sites that have an action of buying some product, but make their money off of advertisements. They only pay google if someone buys there product; however, these sights would also make money by plastering ads all over their site. This matters to me because these sites would have little incentive in making a good site to sell the product I searched for.
Hobby Robotics
Don't like google's approach? Think they should ignore the whole issue of "click fraud"? Slashdot the click-fraud advertisers! Here's how it works: 1. Search in google for "google click fraud site:slashdot.org" 2. Click on all the advertisers 3. ???? 4. The advertisers PROFIT and eventually realize that click fraud is GOOD!
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
No, you haven't committed fraud. Yes, there is a difference to the advertiser. An advertiser would much rather pay for a click that results in a sale than a click that results in only a page view. There's a reason many large potential advertisers ignore google.
Developers: We can use your help.
This isn't a good thing for Google. It turns the fraud situation on it's head. Having written software to try and do it, let me tell you it's hard to tie a sale back to an advertisement impression and/or click-through. Most of the ways involve either trusting the guy who'll be paying, depending on cookies to persist or maintaining a lot of server-side state to track an individual over the long term. The only case that's simple is where the viewer clicks on the ad and then performs the action in the same browsing session without ever leaving the site. Even if advertisers don't set out to defraud Google a lot of payments are going to drop through the cracks simply due to the normal things people do to avoid being tracked, or simply because the connection got lost because of the passage of time. If someone's setting out to defraud Google, it gets a lot worse really fast.
Bookstores, sure. But, as usual, the porn industry figured out that per click doesn't work many, mayn years ago, also. You really can't find any porn sites that pay per click any more. Based on the porn industry, Google may very well be fucked if they can't figure out a way to go "per signup" as the porn sites call it. Google's money stream is going to get turned off really quickly if they don't fix this. As is, they're not going to make as much as they make now because they're going to have to partner with advertisers and set up a "per sale" type of thing, instead of just letting anybody advertise as it is now.
It'll happen. As with the rest of the Net history, the porn industry always leads the way, and the porn industry dumped per click a long time ago. It's just a matter of how quickly Google can do it before they lose enough advertisers that they're in serious trouble.
You don't think click fraud is a problem? Check out http://www.clickmonkeys.com/
:)
They have a variety of interesting 'services', including one where you can "Google Bomb Your Competition!"
This sort of thing has successfully prevented me from even considering adwords or adsense. I get enough traffic from posting on blogs and slashdot
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To record an ad impression? Let me get this straight. You're honestly suggesting that users submit their fingerprint to verify they've seen your ad and you expect people to submit to this? Are you high?
I mean, it's inconvenient, and invasive! Now if you can just find a way to make it really uncomfortable for the user while they're at it and you'll have achieved the prostate-exam trifecta that everybody shoots for when they want to pitch a new product idea.
Help us build a better map!
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.
Advertising is not just about a sale that day, advertising is used sometimes to create awareness of a product or brand, that may lead to sales down the road, making up your mind for you without you even knowing it. Could you imagine if TV advertisers didn't get paid unless you purchased a product or did some survey with your remote after each commercial?
I guess I'm glad I am not a GOOG shareholder because this seems like folly to me.
So let me get this straight we've gone from the "please click on my links so I can make money" model to "i get free advertising if you're an indecisive consumer". The problem I see is that if I happen to see an ad for a product I'm interested in I may click the link, checkout the web site, check out a few more similar sites, mull it over for a night then possibly buy something. T
his all works properly as long as I use the same PC to make the actual purchase and don't have all cookies set to be session cookies. Otherwise if I do have cookies set to be session cookies or if I'm shopping at night and go in and end up making the purchase at work the advertiser has just gotten a free sale while the site that hosted the ad hasn't gotten a penny.
I hope Google can figure out a way to center the balance because if I can figure out this scheme I'm sure someone more devious can come up with one much much better.
1. Pursuade existing Google advertisers to use GooglePay so transactions can be monitored and click-fraud prevented.
2. ???
3. Profit!
No, you haven't committed fraud. However, if you write a script to automatically do that and send it to thousands of zombie PCs that you have pwned, then that would be fraud.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It's voluntary, and it's for the advertiser's benefit. But with cost-per-action advertising this is how Google could capture data relating to how visitors move through the advertiser's site.
Furthermore, if the advertiser is using Google Checkout then it's pretty clear-cut whether a purchase "action" has occurred.
Paid Q&A/Research
CPA only works when there's a trackable action... and in many cases, the trackable action is going to be impossible to define. For example, I launched a new site in July (geochecker.com), which is a free geocaching-related site, supported by Google Adsense ads, and doesn't sell anything. To get some initial traffic, I used my existing Adwords account to run ads on related search terms. Now, since my only monetizing product is advertising (from Google itself!), and the services the site offers are free, how on earth can there be any action? As a matter of fact, the very "action" that I'm trying to get IS a click - I want them to visit the site. I don't have anything to sell beyond that, other than possibly deciding they don't really want to be there and leaving thru a similar click on the Adsense links. I just need to build traffic above the breakeven critical mass. Beyond that, I don't care what happens to any "conversion".
(And given the economy of Google ads, I'm basically paying about 50% of the Adwords cost because I get about a 1% click-in, and about 1% click-out, and the Adsense click-out pays about half of what an Adwords click-in costs me. So obviously I can't use Adwords long-term, but it's okay for building initial traffic, and incidentally for making sure my site got quickly indexed - thanks to daily visits by the Adwords robot.)
Now, in that model, as with many other businesses who are not selling online, it becomes impossible to track CPA, and the CPC is really the only valid business model. And this is true of millions of link-farm sites (not that I'd mind most of THEM disappearing).
As others have mentioned above, advertising is about much more than simple action-tracking - if you put a favorable ad in front of a potential customer enough times, it will build brand awareness and eventually convert. But not in enough time to make CPA useful, and usually in ways that cannot be directly tracked anyway.
Sorry, but I think CPC is going to be around for quite some time. And I'm sure Google is well aware of these dynamics.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
This model will fail for impression ads. And impression ads are important for a large number of products and services. For many things, from mundane things like consumer goods, to advanced business services, the products and services are not purchased or acted upon immediately. Impression ads just keep the name, logo image, or musical jingle, in the minds of the readers. In TV they call them viewers. In radio they call them listeners.
Obviously, in media like TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines, impression ads are about the only thing they can do. But they do work, else such media would be failing.
The web, of course, gives a new opportunity because it is, or can be, interactive. And advertisers like that because it can give them direct feedback, at least in some cases. Unfortunately, too many of them think that all their potential customers will drop everything they are doing and "buy now". The reality is, almost no one ever does "buy now". So despite the fact that the web does have the means to support interactive advertising, the model really isn't viable.
There's another reason web advertising needs to be impression based rather than interactive based. Unlike much other media, on the web, people tend to be focused on a goal, such as to access some particular information, or send some important family email. With these goals up front, they don't just drop everything to buy the latest cool product simply because one advertisement for it shows up. The few people who would, tend to be all out of money, anyway.
Google's model of Adsense where advertising is (supposedly) selected based predictions of what the readers tend to be interested in is a good one. If I tend to be interested in remote control model cars, for example, I will be often visited sites related to it, or maybe talking about it through Gmail or Google Groups. Showing ads for makers and sellers of model cars and related products and services certainly would have a higher likelihood of advertising success. It is ad dollars better spent than in showing things like feminine hygiene products to men.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to buy the product or obtain the service right then. That may come later. But when the time comes, enough impressions of a particular product, or keeping the name of a great online hobby store in front of me regularly, will go a long way towards influencing where I might visit first when I am ready to buy.
A couple months ago I saw an ad by Google for wickedlasers. I was busy at the time and went on about what I was doing. But I was done about half an hour later and remembered seeing the web site for wickedlasers. So I went and checked the place out and surveyed the lasers they had all the way up to the really nasty ones that can light cigarettes (but please, don't start smoking just because you can light up with a wickedlaser). I don't really need one of these right now. But I might in the fall. And I might buy one for a gift for a relative this coming holiday season.
That's how impression ads work. But will the original site I saw the ad on get credit for it and get paid? Since the ad was gone a half hour later, that's very doubtful. I just visited the site directly. When I'm ready to buy, I'll go directly there again.
One huge problem that could crop up with Google's cost-per-action model is that advertisers of products which work by impression only will have a free ride. They will get to make the impressions, but won't have to pay (very much) for the advertising because there won't be (much, if any) direct sales (even though they can certainly set up a web page to pretend it's possible). Think about it, if you see an ad (many times) for a new flavor of soft drink that happens to be a flavor you think you would like, would you click on the ad and make a purchase for a 6-pack of bottles to be shipped to you, or would you check the soft drink aisle the next time you make a food run?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm not real familiar with how AdSense works, since I've never run it on any of my web servers, but I would expect that if a shady webmaster is engaging in click fraud then either:
In the first and third cases, the cap on clicks per unit of time from a single IP address will serve to reduce (but admittedly, not eliminate) click fraud. In the second case, dropping RFC-1918 addresses on the floor will prevent fraud, since *only* the webmaster's internal network could possibly have accessed the server from private IP space.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I'll theorise that Google Checkout isn't just a method of getting a piece of the on-line payment pie (such as Paypal), but a way to connect the ads to the sales in some way in the future as well. This could cut down on the click fraud which plagues Google.
This is of course not straightforward, but my guess is Google is working that angle too.
Muslims are shitballs that need to be flushed down the toilet. All of them.
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.
$$$$$$$$$$$$ $ 0 ...
Well it was going until it was over.
Here and click away on the advertisers. Costing them money is a poor substtute for clubbing them to death, but it's better than nothing..
On my old favorite forums (of which I now loathe), the site was supported completely by ads, it was the only way a game modding community website coudl afford to stay afloat! You can't SELL MODS, you can't make people pay you money to support the site, aside from merchendising! Click fraud, is clicking the ad just to generate some revenue for the site hosting the ad. I don't buy anything from ads, I don't trust ads, so why, would anyone else? I don't know anyone who would actually buy immediately from an ad! And when all the sites that host your ads go down, no longer able to pay for their advertising, what are you going to to oh mr.advertiser? Only a select few, major websites, will be able to be supported by these ads! Oh My Fucking God, what has the world come to these days? Just about everyday, I hear of a new scheme to limit the internet for poor people! Strange thing is, I thought about this one time I clicked an ad 70 times, for my favorite site, but that was years ago. I swear, the moment I think of something, I see it on the news, usually here, the next day.
As he said, fill out a survey or whatever. Add your own captchas, all up to you.
Here's the problem -- how can Google implement this in such a way that they retain enough control to know whether the item was bought, survey was filled out, or whatever? What's to stop someone from just setting up a paypal donation link and calling that their "purchase", but then having the rest of the site be a sales pitch for a sale which is actually handled somewhere else?
Google would have to take over the whole process of purchasing and collecting money from the consumer (or a survey, or whatever), and they'd still have to manually look at some of them, at least.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Isn't this simply fraud protection against cheaters? Other advertiser's value isn't affected, because those clicks/impressions are real. Only the scammers are getting fake clicks.
Relax... You're soaking in it." -Madge
I'm an AdSense advertiser (hawking my program to make bingo cards for teachers -- there is no other form of advertising which makes any sense for this niche at all) and I *clean up* on some of my keywords because I have a CTR of around 5-20% (for some words) and some advertisers who have inexpertly targetted their ad are offering twice as much but for a click through rate which is likely much lower. On the flip side, I also have some words which aren't well targetted but which are dirt cheap, and its a good day when I hit 1% on them. (My conversion rate to trial downloads is about 10% either way, ironically.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
and I suspect it could be a boon for Google. If I really knew what our ROIs were going to be, a predictable ad cost per verified lead (or an immediate sale for some type of products), I would look more deeply into the budgeting and margins and probably pay more for it. It tightens things up a bit, removes an element of the gamble in your game. I don't know that I've had any problems with click-fraud, but I do understand that most of it is for pricier products. Fewer sales garnered through expensive ad bids - It becomes worthwhile for lowlife competitors and jilted lovers.
Where in the article did you find they have cracked down? All it says is about a 2-3 week old news about Google moving to CPA. Moderators sleeping ?
rfc1918 addresses are by definition unroutable on the open internet -- most routers block them and in fact, there's no _route_ to them.
Any tcp connection would be dropped by the edge routers before it hits the other side of the connection (again, what connection?) -- indeed, try pinging an rfc1918 address that doesn't exist on your own lan -- yeah, it's not there, duh.
Your post makes no sense and you didn't think it through. I'm sorry, but the other responders apparently had no idea what rfc1918 was and I felt they must be believing you, so I had to respond.
...now I'll be making _less_ than my current $0.01 a day with Adsense.
I applaud google for trying out different systems in order to eliminate a weakness in their business model. This is the right way to do things.
More companies should take note of their approach. In particular, the recording and motion picture industry needs to pay attention to this. If you have a business model that just won't work anymore because of advances in technology, the ethical thing to do is to change your model rather than change the laws and using our society's police and courts to keep your profits flowing.
It is not just ethics either - it is good business sense. In the long term, business models that only continue to work through the suppression of new models that might one day replace it are doomed to failure.
Google will continue to be a major player precisely because they adopt this sort of approach, not despite it.
M
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
How advertising effect can be measured?
There are some ways:
1. Views of ads.
2. Clicks on ads.
3. Actions.
The first one still alive. Even if you do not click on the ads, you may read it and it may have effect of "reminder" or "positive opinion building".
Second: you will have visitor. Even if your visitor will not do any action, he may click on ads on YOUR site, tell somebody about your site or return later to do any action.
Third does not require explanations.
So, what will be most logical scheme for payment?
Payment = Vp * Vc + Cp * Cc + Ap * Ac
Vp - price of one viewing of ads (e.g. $0.0001)
Vc - count of ads viewing.
Cp - price of one click on ads (e.g. $0.1)
Cc - count of clicks.
Ap - price of one action (e.g. $5.0)
Ac - count of actions from ads.
Hide your files and folders from others!
into google's gcash thingie they've just wheeled out.
You'll click an advert, buy a product, go to the checkout and pay via the gcash (I've forgotten the name and can't be bothered looking). Google will know you clicked the advert and they'll know precisely how much you paid and can take their % off before the vendor even gets his money.
In fact it allows for a new model from google. The vendor doesn't pay for the adverts at all, they agree a percentage of the sale price they'll give to google. Google can then decide which adverts to place where entirely based on how much revenue they'll make - e.g. if you have a site that is reviewing a piece of hardware, google can work out if it's better for them to link the site that offers the lower price and pays a lower % or higher price with higher % (i.e. lower volume, higher margin)
that's umpossible!
This is very simple. Google will ask you to hook your online store to Google Checkout for payments. They will offer incentives for using adwords and googlec checkout. Critical mass will be reached. You can take advantage of Google's CPA model. Less fraud, only pay for ads that work, etc..etc..
However I can see from all of these responses that no one actually has a website that sells products. If you did you would see that this whole idea is predicated on the fact that you are allowing Google to store and track all of your sales/price data. Same for your competitors who use this system. Is that information that we REALLY want Google to have...basically for free...
Do you realize how valuable this type of info is. Google already knows what people search for and soon they will know how much they buy and for what cost...
It's a Google wet dream. It's any companys wet dream. People would kill for this type of info. And here we are just giving to Google so they can make even more billions...insane...