gregbo - 11:02 pm on Mar 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

I think you're asking a lot of your average internet ad buyer. There are plenty of advertisers out there who either don't have innately trackable events (like a local plumber, for example), or lack the savvy to accurately and distinctly monitor their traffic by source.

Local plumbers are able to do ok advertising on neighborhood billboards, or papers, or cable systems, despite a lack of "trackable events." Why is that? How are they buying those media? (Hint: it isn't anything like CPC.)

If they're paying $50 a week for traffic that's only worth $30-40, they probably won't know, but they're nonetheless getting defrauded. I would wager that most internet advertisers could be defrauded in just this way.

How are they being defrauded if they knowningly spend money on something that has been (statistically) determined to be worth less than they're paying? Whose fault is that? Local plumbers who advertise on local media seem to know the value of what they're paying for.

In the credit card world, ignorant fraudsters - the ones who get caught - make elaborate charges which are easily noticed. Smart ones defraud individuals $2.78 or $4.18 at a time in order to fly within the noise.

This happens in the CPC world as well. As I've said before, you can't distinguish between a nonconverting clickstream that's the result of a disinterested buyer from one initiated on a compromised computer by a fraudster.