Forum Moderators: martinibuster
"Any advertiser or publisher participating in invalid click activity or other related offense is subject to being banned from our system and subject to prosecution," Kamangar warns.
How many times are they going to miss the boat?
The majority of click fraud comes from neither advertisers nor publishers.
Why not
$$$
$$$
Presumably Google are smarter than the "here today, gone tomorrow" crowd who build made-for-AdSense sites or engage in click fraud.
Competitors. Never in the history of business has there been an easier way to drain money from your competitors marketing budget.
Unfortunately, G and O don't have very strict controls about charging for clicks....
How many times are they going to miss the boat?The majority of click fraud comes from neither advertisers nor publishers.
I think they also covered other click fraud areas in the quotes from the article. You only selected on sentence.
Competitors.
What's the evidence for that? And it seems likely that competitors would do any clicking on the search engines pages, not on AdSense pages. So an advertiser would see clicks from the same IP address from search engines. While this does happen, I suspect that multiple clicks from the same IP happens more from AdSense sites.
Competitors. What's the evidence for that?
You'd have to ask Google's chief financial officer, who talked about that issue recently.
Though I don't rat others out, I've noticed recently a number of irregularities occurring on the part of advertisers who also happen to run adsense. I've also had content stolen from my site BY ADVERTISERS WHOSE ADS APPEAR ON MY SITE.
One competitor clicking once per day on your $5 ad is $1500 + per year. Now do the math for twice per day, and with the help of a few friends and you'll see how big of a deal it is.
There is definitely adsense fraud in the same exact way.
It's not too much of a big deal if you are paying $.20 per click
Which is why most professional click fraudsters probably go for a million $0.05 terms rather than ten $1.00 terms.
You'd have to ask Google's chief financial officer, who talked about that issue recently.
Did the CFO say the fraud was from people clicking on competitors' ads? We all know there is a ton of fraud, but the question is where does it come from. Maybe I'm biased or naive but I can't believe businesspeople click on their competitors ads to any great extent. I doubt competition fraud is even 10% of the fraud from publishers looking to make money off of AdSense and other PPC programs.
Which is why most professional click fraudsters probably go for a million $0.05 terms rather than ten $1.00 terms.
Yes, professional click fraudsters are in it to make money directly from the program, not to harm competitors in other businesses.
I do not know any major retailer that does not have a sign
Stating " we prosecute any person found shoplifting "
it is possible a shoplifter may buy and pay for the accasional purchase but this does not mean retailers give mixed messages
G and O need to be strict in this or they are sending mixed messages to those who are or thinking of gaining the system
steve
Did the CFO say the fraud was from people clicking on competitors' ads?
Here's the CNN article:
[money.cnn.com...]
"The main perpetrators appear to be competitors of advertisers and also scam sites set up for the sole purpose of hosting ad links provided by Google, through its AdSense unit, or Yahoo!, through its Overture service...."
There are several things to keep in mind about click fraud:
1) Google has been quite aggressive in rooting out publishers who deliver "invalid clicks." (If you don't believe that, see the numerous threads about that topic on the AdSense forum.)
2) Even if you opt out of the content network, you're still vulnerable to clicks by competitors on your search ads. (In fact, you're more vulnerable than you'd be if your ads were more widely dispersed via the content network, because ads on SERPs are easier to find.)
3) In the end, it all comes down to conversion and ROI. Are you making money from your AdWords/AdSense ads? If you're an advertiser who also uses offline media, is your cost per lead less with AdWords/AdSense than it would be in, say, THE NEW YORKER or MODERN WIDGET or wherever you've been advertising? If the answer to either question is "yes," then click fraud may be an annoyance (like waste circulation in other media), but you're probably going to keep using PPC ads as long as invalid clicks represent only a small part of your ad-generated referrals.
yes and no, and depending on what you call "professional". Do some reading and you'll see how prevalent competitor click fraud is. Find someone paying $5 per click and I'll show you someone whose competitors are almost definitely clicking on their ads.
Click fraud is more like shoplifting than it is other types of "annoyances" - it is someone taking money from you plain and simple, not a misstated circulation of a magazine.
The consensus at these boards is fraud makes up a higher share of clicks at minor PPC services (e.g. Kanoodle, Enhance) than at Overture and AdWords search. Even though the cost per click is lower at those minor PPC services. If competitors were attacking with fraudulent clicks, they would more likely do them where the cost per click is higher, wouldn't they? At Yahoo or MSN for instance. That fact argues that the fraud isn't from competitors, but from affiliates of those PPC services.
My clients saw a big upswing in AdWords clicks when Google introduced AdSense for Search in 2004. These new clicks were coming from AdSense sites. (You can't opt out of these unless you opt out of the rest of the search network, including AOL, and we don't want to do that.) It is unlikely that this upsurge was due to competitors clicking on ads on AdSense sites.
In the end, it all comes down to conversion and ROI. Are you making money from your AdWords/AdSense ads?
People say that at Webmasterworld all the time, and I agree that this is the determining factor in whether to advertise in these programs. But some people take this to mean that a positive ROI means an advertiser should adopt a policy of "don't worry; be happy", and that's wrong. If you're making 15% ROI, but could move it up to 20% by doing things to curtail fraud, it's probably worth doing those things. That might mean looking at your logs for signs of fraud, and reporting offending sites to Google. (Google never refunds money, but they sometimes kick out the offending sites so you won't get more clicks.)
Google certainly does refund money if you can show them fraud. Overture does as well (and is more likely to do so than G).
