StupidScript - 9:59 pm on Apr 6, 2005 (gmt 0)

With all of the analogies spinning through this thread, you'd think somebody would post one that's in tune with the appropriate timeframe. Cars, Wendy's, potholes ... these are all parts of infrastructures which are far too mature to compare to the Internet.

How about this development-sensitive perspective:

How many of our country's pioneers sued the U.S. Government as a result of death, starvation, disease and lost property as a result of the pioneers and their families taking advantage of the Homesteading Act?

None. All of the pioneers realized that this was an endeavor fraught with peril, and all accepted the reality that they were becoming involved in a new enterprise, one for which they could be rewarded and at the same time one which had no guarantee of success and, in fact, was unlikely to succeed.

We AdWords advertisers are, in spirit, similar to those pioneers when America was new. We are taking advantage of a new advertising mechanism in the belief that the risk:reward ratio is sufficiently tilted in our favor that we will reap some reward from our involvement. There are no paved roads ... cars haven't even been invented yet ... and "Wendy" is that old lady that came in with the last wagon train.

If you buy a magazine ad, and then you find a copy of that issue in a street corner trash can, do you sue the magazine because your ad dollars went to waste, or do you simply recognize that some ad dollars ALWAYS go to waste, and it's not the magazine's fault.

Click fraud is one of the risks we run when we take advantage of this modern day Homesteading Act. As pioneers (and remember where we are in the development of this fantastic infrastructure ... near the very beginning, long-term-wise), we accept that the road is not paved and the food is all carbs and fat. We work together to put in place the systems and methods that will allow us to move smoothly into the future.

Any business owner who does their due diligence in investigating potential advertising media KNOWS that click fraud is (a) one of the verifiable risks of using AdWords or any PPC program and (b) being worked on by all of the major PPC engines AND (c) that by developing their own backchecking system to be used in tandem with the infant solutions being developed by the PPC engines they can significantly reduce the risks posed by click fraud.

Once you know the pothole is there ... drive around it.

Any advertiser who signs up for a PPC program who does not know about click fraud and efforts to combat it deserves to become a victim of click fraud, just as any pioneer who was not aware of the risks involved in grabbing a big piece of free land in the wild west and gets scalped as a result ... deserved it. Bring your own weapons to the table and stop complaining about the government's duty to protect you from the barbarians.

And don't talk about how even the most simple, non-technical person should be able to use PPC risk-free. If one is a simple, non-technical person, then one is at the mercy of the fates, and maybe advertising on the Internet isn't where one should be, right now. Wait a decade or so until these problems are closer to being solved, THEN push your stroller onto the Information Superhighway and gaze at the pretty pictures through innocent eyes. At the current time, we simply cannot protect you. You must take action.