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We have a small, but growing company with a relatively small amount of competitors, but no less ruthless than larger industries. They seek blood, and they find it most via PPCs. They will click and click and click... our stats show the same IP address come up about 20 times in a 4 minute period, 10-15 seconds apart, and they make up the bulk of our clicks. Our spending on Overture reflects it too. How good are their stats anyways?
Oh, Overture says that there's no sign of fraudulant clicks... how easy for them to say. We have asked for an audit to compare cost per click to IP addresses, and they politely give us the middle finger in a politically correct manner, and continue to take our money with no retribution. Sure they send us rates and percentages of cost to clicks... but that doesn't prove or disprove that a single IP was or was not charged for 20 clicks. That's a little too shady for my liking. I hear of asking Overture for refunds... but we have never seen a single red cent refunded from them, no matter how much we complain to them.... One would think that being a platinum member might mean at least a little to them.
I mean, if they're hurting that bad for business, wouldn't they want their customers happy and stop spam?
... I suppose in answering my own question there, as long as Overture can scam that much money from people willing to pay it...why should they?
How far has anyone gone to get answers from them? Or do we just have to abandon ship with Overture altogether? Google is a tad better in our eyes, but the difference is marginal... maybe enough to drop OV for Goo. Either way, the fraud clicks can't continue like this. We want to advertise, and get the customers in...but we don't want to pay for our competitor's madness.
I have to say that Overture, (which was still GoTo for a portion of those references), has improved their systems for catching fraud clicks. Of course, proxy IPs ala AOL makes it all worthless.
I've wished for a long time that Yahoo would drop them, because if they did, I'd immediately drop OV.
But now they are necessary, and will continue to stay that way. My OV bids are higher than any other PPC. My fraud click thru rate on OV is one of the highest. The customer service of OV is the worst of any PPC by far. It's the only PPC I can have a 25% CTR on a keyword with 6+ competitors and they remove the listing due to low click index (I still can't figure that out).
The bottom line is the company still makes plenty of money from OV advertising, so why I might dislike them, overall, they are an asset to the company.
I'm sure if you found out who it was and even just called and let them know it would probably put a stop to it. You could tell them that you would like to stay friendly with them but if the behaviour continues you will have to report them to Overture, and mention calling your attorney.
You don't have to be mean, actually if you are nice about it you could really make them feel like slugs.
Search their IP on SamSpade.org and see if you can determine who it is assigned to. If not you may be able to call their ISP and get more info.
Good luck, I'm glad my market hasn't found PPC. I don't have these problems.
tmi
Maybe there's something at SamSpade I'm not seeing, but the site seems like a GUI tracert platform, and a third of the different applications don't even work.
Nice ideas you provided though, TMI, if we could get far enough to follow through with them. Maybe I missed something on the site though.
*continues to grumble behind another roadblock*
I would Love to send these people an email, or call them up and politely ask them to cease.
?
It will still somehow make sense if you advice to suit Overture for negligence on their customer expenditures but
where on the world say that somebody can suit you (a surfer) for clicking on an internet link?
