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Traffic Fraud Inflates Video Site Popularity
Dotnaught writes "A new study by spyware researcher Ben Edelman finds that spyware-driven traffic inflation is common, particularly at video sites. The study identifies Bolt.com, GrindTV.com, Broadcaster.com, Away.com, RooTV.com, and Diet.com as the beneficiaries of spyware-driven traffic. 'Our measurement systems are inaccurate for the amount of trust we'd like to put into them,' Edelman said. 'So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?'"
Maybe we could create a simple way for people to report forced traffic from their browsers? I'm thinking of having a button on the toolbar and when a pop-up opens you click the button to report it as forced (and have the button simultaneously close the window naturally). If you recieve widespread reports for a certain site then there is a degree of certainty that this site is really getting forced traffic (and not just malicous people playing with the button). With this information you can compile a public list of sties that get forced traffic.
Use a different measurement system sure, but what measurement system? You can pay by the number of clickthroughs, but if these sites are willing to build up fraudulent page views, fraudulent clickthroughs wouldn't surprise me either. The best system I can think of is to do a revenue sharing plan--tell a site they get X% commission for each sale referred from their site. It is a lot harder, more expensive, and more clearly illegal to fake a credit card purchase--so I can see this being effective, even if sites don't like this model.
Anyone have any better ideas?
When an ad is annoying (like all those in-your-face popups), at best they serve to get the ire of the user, get him to install popup blockers and other means of not having to deal with an ad.
How about a way to "rate" ads. Was this ad helpful? Did it provide information you actually wanted (I know, I know, but those things DO exist. But then, I also believe in the yeti)? Was it intrusive? Or downright nasty and obnoxious?
I'm pretty sure the advertising industry (the industry doing advertising, that is, not necessarily the industry that makes the ads) would be very interested in that information.
And as a nice side effect you get an immediate feedback about popup-abuse. Because they would most certainly be tagged "obnoxious", no matter how good the ad itself may be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FYI we have the same problem in Italy for the number of TV programs viewers.
There is a corporation, Auditel, which is in teory indipendent but in practice is owned for the 66% by the two biggest TV networks (RAI, the crappy public TV, and Mediaset the crappier Berlusconi's TV).
Their numbers are used for the prices of the ads and the result is that they always greatly overestimate the number of watchers. An infamous case was when, due to a technical problem, the transmission of a big channel was interrupted for 30 minutes and according to Auditel millions of people (a big percentage of the Italian population) continued to watch it anyway, without any interruption and without changing channel!
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Many web sites will gladly sell you a place to put one of your banners. They will charge you a fee that is justified by the amount of visitors who will see your banner, further justified by estimating how many of those visitors would be likely to click on your banner and why.
For sites that depend on selling advertisement space to monetize, traffic scores calculated by third party sites like Amazon make or break your ability to get prime bucks for prime space on your web sites.
Comapnies who need to show an instant boom in traffic sometimes employ the use of spyware that can be signaled from a remote connection to begin "surfing" a given site from the visitor's IP address proporting to be the user's default browser type. Instantly, millions of people start surfing the target site completely unaware they're even doing it. Its a booming business, building and renting these networks.
You may not have heard of any of these sites, but I'm sure you'd pay top dollar to advertise there once you saw their traffic scores. Its a new cottage industry that thrives on Windows / IE users.
No, I've never heard of the sites either.
So, to play devils advocate with a term that was all the rage a few years ago, in order to create a "level playing field" advertising should either be socialised or outlawed?
(Yeah, I know about real 'level playing fields', opportunity, access, etc. I'm using the term in the same way it was presented to the public back then; the "let us do X because we don't think Y is fair!" sense...)
Yes, advertising does "create value". In theory, it does it by affording companies the opportunity to inform consumers of their worthy products.
In reality, it does it by distorting markets almost to breaking point, by convincing people without the time/inclination/wherewithal* to research every purchasing decision that Product A with a huge marketing budget is better than Product B with a slightly less huge marketing budget. Over and over, again, and again, and again, 5 or 6 times an hour even while you sit stationary in front of the television.
The fact is that modern advertising - since the 50's at least - is a gross and unhealthy economic aberration, which actually has a negative effect on the world as a whole...
And, frankly, I don't care for the "without advertising you would have wonderful things such as product/service/website Y!" argument. If I didn't know I needed it, I didn't need it; sure, new things are nice, but not at the expense of my time / money / mindscape - unless I so chose. It's the non-stop inescapable ubiquity of advertising, on everything everywhere - and the fact that it's not only becoming accepted as natural, but that attempts to reduce/remove/avoid it are starting to be seen as wrong and verging on the criminal - that is the problem.
(* And how can even the experienced and dedicated research choices properly anyway? Tried using Google to research any commercial or personal decision lately? Between the spam blogs, fake product "reviews", and out and and out advertising lies, it's impossible.)
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Let's make this clear; Yahoo lost me permanently as a user (rare email use aside) *specifically* because of the annoying popups; and ones mainly aimed at one advertiser at that. Now, I'm probably not enough of an ad-clicker (either at Yahoo or Google) that they'd shed any tears over the loss of people like me. However, I wonder how many profitable users Yahoo lost because of one annoying short-term ad-campaign on their site.
It's like a TV station showing obnoxious advertising (*) during peak/mealtimes. It makes me wonder about people changing the channel in the face of this and the subsequent loss to other advertisers- and potential loss of the audience altogether if something more interesting was on the other station.
(* One unpleasant example- skip if you're having your lunch- woman discussing the consistency of their "stools" in a cafeteria. No, not the ones they were sitting on. Yes, this is a real advert in the UK. Can't remember if they showed it at peak or mealtimes, probably because I don't watch the kind of programmes it would appear with very often).
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