| The Evidence Mounts on Click Fraud |
|
|
 published in LED Digest 2253: Click Fraud - The Evidence Mounts From: David Yancey Subject: Click Fraud I've been reading the follow-up posts to Adam's original two-part posting of my long post re: our experience with and analysis of click fraud [see issues 2232 and 2233]. It turns out that, apart from the outstanding research in this and related scam areas by Ben Edelman of the Harvard Law School, other main-stream business publishers and organizations are finally waking up to the apparent breadth and viciousness of this problem. Now, we can be sure that some Google or SEM apologist will wail something like "Business Week? The NY Times? What do *they* know about tech issues like click fraud?!" Well, not a lot, actually -- which is why, as very high standards news publishers, they *have* to talk to the real experts, to get the story right. Think about it: if these major publishers are delving this deeply into the click fraud problem, we can be sure they have already determined that it is an issue threatening to seriously impact their *millions* of business and professional readers. In spite of such professional coverage and investigations, some seem to think that the click fraud issue just isn't that important [see issue 2251]. The justification for this view by those who think CF isn't a major obstacle and promotional strategy problem for smaller and local businesses seems to be based on a mixture of: 1 Trust -- Some die-hard Google lovers would have us believe that Google would never knowingly allow CF to be a really serious problem. They are just "too smart", some think, and besides, they "do no evil". Anyone who accepts this kind of naive argument must have spent the last 15 years in a closet, and missed Enron, BP, WorldCom, and a dozen other cases where large companies knowingly engaged all too willingly in fraud. There is nothing especially saintly about the founders and the extremely sophisticated money people who control Google that would make them any less suspect. 2 "Real" cost -- Some argue that, even if CF is a real problem, adding as much as 20% or 30% or even more to the average per-click fees charged by Google, that is just a cost of doing business online. That is a non-argument, since it avoids the fact that, so far as Google (and the other PPC providers) condone or ignore or minimize estimates of fraud, they are violating basic ethical and business principles. Beyond this basic legal and ethical issue, I wonder if folks like Mr. Motherwell have a clue what it means to millions of smaller online and local businesses when they must pay perhaps 25% more per online visitor than they should be paying. It's fine to keep beating the drum for PPC, but it's totally beside the point: PPC fees inflated by CF are unwarranted, period. 3 Technical Disbelief -- I have experienced first-hand the challenges from those who simply cannot imagine how an automated click-fraud network can be operated at a cost per false click low enough to warrant the campaign. This is understandable, given the level of technical knowledge most have. But it's happening, folks, believe it or not. Read the above BW and NYT articles for starters, then go online and dig for the rest of the published evidence. 4 Presumed Paranoia -- Some think that those asking questions re: CF, and specifically of Google, are simply imagining baddie competitors out to get them. Well, that may or may not be the case with some who feel they have been victimized. But we are in a very competitive niche, and have seen how PPC campaigns are manipulated to drive smaller or less-sophisticated sellers down or even off the paid search link column. To know-nothings who allege that this sort of competitive gang warfare doesn't happen, do as we did: get several experts together (including in advertising economics and other forms of search) and then spend hundreds of hours and several months running your own controlled test of the "effectiveness" of PPC using Google. 5 Fear of An End to the AdSense Golden Era -- As a significant web publisher, I can understand that many thousands of online publishers tremble at the thought that keyword-based lead generation ads might decline as, and if, the click fraud problem is fully exposed -- these mostly small sites survive solely on the fruits of contextual advertising. But, like it or not, a smallish number, perhaps less than a thousand or two, so-called "publishers" have created millions of content-less, completely phony, useless pages crammed with AdSense and similar ads, then arranged for these to be spuriously clicked. This will, sooner or later, kill the contextual golden goose for all the rest of us. Burying one's head in the sand to avoid facing the reality isn't going to help. 6 Fear of a Securities Scandal -- Some fear that digging too deeply into the CF issue might lead to a situation where Google and others face potential exposure to a truly massive penalty or class action suit, going forward. This could result in a restatement of earnings, on such a scale as to seriously impact the Google share price. Indeed, fear that the CF problem is quickly getting out of hand seems to already be a brake on the share price. Whether Google and the other PPC providers are truly ignorant of the scope and implications of click fraud as they would seemingly have us believe is a huge ethical issue, but the truth or absence of it is not material to the rest of us. Whether some, possibly the majority, of the major SEM consulting firms are turning a blind eye to click fraud, in order to keep their fees as high as possible, isn't relevant to the typical smaller businessperson, who cannot hire these big-time experts. Put the debating aside: what counts right now is the vital necessity of tracking your ROI closely for this ever-more-costly PPC alternative, versus the many other visitor and prospect acquisition alternative programs and strategies now available. If you have a total promotional and advertising budget of, say, US$25,000 per year, and it turns out that, say, $5000 of that is being wasted on fraudulent visitors, you'll want to start learning more about CF soon. David Yancey www.tootoographic.com Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
