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Defining Clicks and Click Fraud
abb_road writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have banded together and created the Click Measurement Group, with the goal of creating a standard definition for a 'click'. The group will have some access to the three companies' click data, although the access won't be unlimited. The move comes in response to advertisers who claim that click fraud is costing them almost $1 billion dollars a year, and who have hit Google and Yahoo with lawsuits alleging negligence in fighting click fraud."
www.clickmonkeys.com
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have banded together and created the Click Measurement Group, with the goal of creating a standard definition for a 'click'.
Maybe afterwards they can put their noggins together and standardize what the definition for "is" is.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
In Firefox, right click on the link, click on `Open Link in New Tab'.
Do this to many links that appear like they're counted.
Wait for the page to load (don't view it!).
Right click on the tab. Click `Close Tab'.
Congratulations, you have just ``clicked'' according to their definition. You also have just cost a site some $$ (and made some $$ for Google/Yahoo/Microsoft).
Advertising rocks!
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I have no idea. Umm how did I get here?
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That's rich, advertisers are trying to sue for negligence and fraud. What's next, wives accusing their husbands of having a vagina?!
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
How grave a concern is click fraud for advertisers?
There's a host of stuff out there that concerns marketers that needs to be cleaned up. It includes impression measurement, it includes click measurement, standardized contracts, so you know for us it's all a big picture of stuff that in order for the maturing of the medium needs to be done. And how big a deal is click fraud? We don't like anything that would give marketers concern, especially if it's a solvable problem.
Translation: We've got a lot of stuff to sift through, which we haven't even started on yet. But it's ok, 'cause the results would only scare people unnecessarily. ANd we don't want that
Advertisers say the search engines haven't done enough to combat fraud.
Search produces results. End of story. It produces results. My guess is that these advertisers would like to see any concern that might seep into the view that their management has, or anybody else. Because they know in their heart of hearts that this really works. It's in everybody's interest to clean this one up.
Translation: We haven't actually asked. We just kinda assumed it's a problem.
What exactly have the search companies pledged to do?
We're going to go forward with developing click-measurement guidelines that will address at a public level all the sort of subsidiary issues of that, which includes fighting globally invalid clicks and also click fraud.
Translation: We had a few ideas scribbled out on a cocktail napkin... but we lost it when one of the associates spilt her apple-tini all over it.
Did Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and others involved promise to give you unlimited access to their click data?
They have committed the time, the energy, the resources to see this through to a final industry guideline--one that's accepted by not just themselves, but by agencies and by marketers and by the advertising industry overall. Does that mean that they would bring to bear some data and other insights? Absolutely. Could they still have proprietary solutions of their own? Yeah, stuff that might be protected by their own (intellectual property), but they have committed the resources to help.
Translation: First, the asked who we were, then they laughed at us, then said absolutely not. We're coming up with some sort of backup plan though. :(
Media need to operate with transparency. There's marketers and agencies who are paying money for things. They need to know, what are they paying for? What does that look like? What is the standardized way in which that's being counted? And also ultimately, is that audited? Can we validate that (using a third party)? And so, in an industry that is now going to be close to $16 billion this year, it should be relatively obvious that we need to operate with the principles that all media operate under.
Translation: Ok, we just came up with our contingency plan: if we keep asking, and some point they'll have to say "yes", right?
What's the timeframe for creating the click-measurement guidelines?
I've learned through experience with standards I never make a commitment to timelines. It took us 14 months to do the ad-impression guidelines, which is kind of the last big one that we did. We don't really know what we don't know at this point. We could come to a conclusion and say "Geez, we're pretty close. There aren't any outside data--let's get it done." Or we could say, "Hmm, I don't think we're comfortable with that issue, let's dig deeper."
Translation: We have no idea.
What bodies will be involved in auditing, using your definition?
That will be really up to the industry to define that, so in the process of developing measurement guidelines we'll also be developing audit guidelines. That's how we did it in the impression guidelines, so I fully expect to do the same thing.
Translation: We're waiting for
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All three companies involved do so because it is beneficial to their image to be seen fighting click fraud, even though they know that the recommendations for eliminating it will be useless - it's a technology battle, and it will escalate. No matter what the recommendations are, they won't do much to stop persistant abusers of the system. But, on the other side , it doesn't matter.
The real solution here, as usual, is the free market. Advertisers will decide where to spend their ad budget, and they either think this is a problem or not. The solution will boil down to convincing these (probably technologically savvy) ad people to buy ads. That's why having a standard is useful - it looks good. And judging by Google's profits, corporate wallets are voting yes to online ads. If click fraud was a real problem, they wouldn't.
I'm a concientious
I have the impression that right now, click fraud is fought using statistical criteria to identify real and fake clicks. If you publish a definition of what is a real click, the definition has to be very good and clever, so that fraudsters cannot simply write code that generates fake clicks that satisfy the definition.
This article is actually an interview with someone involved, and brings up substantially more issues than the previous post.
Not that Zonk, out wonderful poster, noticed this, as we can see from the fact that it isn't mentioned in the post.
I'm a concientious
If it's that much of a problem, work out on average how many (legitimate) clicks generate a sales lead and pay that much more for actual sales leads generated instead of per-click. Then the whole problem of click fraud goes away (And gets replaced by sales lead fraud.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?