Forum Moderators: goodroi
Reuters [today.reuters.com]
...it had agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit over advertising fraud by outside parties on its site, in a bid to put the controversy behind it.The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts earlier this year in an Arkansas state court and is designed to settle all outstanding claims against Google for fraud committed using its pay-per-click ad system back to 2002, it said.
The $90 million would involve legal fees and credits -- rather than any cash payments -- to all advertisers who apply to be part of the class settlement, once the judge certifies the agreement, Google spokesman Steve Langdon said.
How does this work? Suppose John Doe was overcharged but was not part of this lawsuit, will he be able to sue separately, or did he give the right to do so when he didn't join in this time? any lawyers out there?
Google currently allows advertisers to apply for reimbursement for clicks they believe are invalid. They can do this for clicks that happen during the 60 days prior to notifying Google. Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred.
Does this mean for all advertisers, or all plaintif advertisers? I read it as all advertisers, full stop.
Frankly, we've been very aggressive about fraud detection and developed several proprietary tools for that purpose in addition to working, both with our data and our expertise, with a number of Tier 1 fraud specialists around the country (USA), and we've seen very little click fraud coming from Google in the past year or so.
99% of our detected fraud comes from Yahoo.
When was the last time you saw a credit in your account with them?
We see credits every couple of months with Google.
They must be doing something right ...
to all advertisers who apply to be part of the class settlement
I see a flood of class action applications on the horizon.
once the judge certifies the agreement
Not quite a done deal though.
I see this settlement as opening the door for more similar suits. Does this mean a change to PPC?
As low as possible
If that;s the case then Yahoo should pay $900m
If Google agree to pay that much so how big of a problem is it? must be much bigger
Wonder how many billions of dollars google made as a result of fraudulent clicks? Sweetheart deal for Google.
Sure you stipulate what you are willing to pay, but you never know what you actually paid. The next day they give you the average, but not the exact details of each purchase. I think their algorithm is challengeable in a court of law.
With Overture you know exactly what you will pay, your competitor prices are advertised up the second basically so there really aren't any 'hidden' variables.
I can't think of anything you purchase where the price is a mystery. Here is an analogy of what they are doing: Say you go to the store and buy a smoke detector (there is no price on it), when you get up to the check out counter the cashier swipes your credit card and gives you no indication of what the price was. If you ask the cashier he'll tell you, check your credit card tomorrow and you will see what we charged you.
I'm sure there is a law against selling something without advertising the price - I'm going to research this matter further.
In addition, consider that because you set a maximum price, in your dubious analogy, you are really approaching the checkout knowing the price, and then you get some level of discount against that price. I'm sure if you asked Google nicely, they would offer to charge you your maximum CPC regardless of whether it was necessary or not.
<I had filed a complaint with the FTC 3 years ago when we analyzed our stats and noticed 70% of visitors from Google remained less then 3 seconds on our home page.>
How can you tell? If I visit your home page, I could sit there and read it for 10 minutes and leave, or I could sit there for three seconds and leave. Sure, if I leave after three seconds by clicking on one of the links on your site, then you can tell how long I was there.. but if I simply type in another URL, hit the back button, or close the browser; you have no way of knowing because my browser doesn't contact your server to tell you that I've left.
Am I missing something?
You can track when a visitor leaves using the onunload() function in the BODY tag, so yes, you can know.
I think Google does a faily good job of filtering out the latter. Now, the former I wish they'd spend more time on...
This saga has a long way to run yet.
$90 million?Wonder how many billions of dollars google made as a result of fraudulent clicks? Sweetheart deal for Google.
From the Yahoo AP story on it:
"Google executives have repeatedly said the level of click fraud on its ad network is minuscule — a contention that the proposed settlement amount seems to support.
The $90 million translates into less than 1 percent of Google's $11.2 billion in revenue during the past four years."
Also of note, Yahoo was named in the suit also. They didn't settle and are going to fight it.
Isn't this click fraud?
[edited by: jatar_k at 5:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2006]
Google is scared because they will be forced to produce their own internal documents and research that shows the real amount of click fraud, which nobody outside of google knows.
The lawyers out there all smell blood and are going to move in like wolves now that they know google is afraid to defend itself.
IMHO, Google is saying 'ok' because they are confident that the credits will be less than $90M. Yahoo is saying 'no way' because they are confident that they'll be on the hook for a lot more than that ...
From the Yahoo AP story on it:
"Google executives have repeatedly said the level of click fraud on its ad network is minuscule — a contention that the proposed settlement amount seems to support.
If click fraud is SO small, then why is Google so fast to jump the gun and kick out anyone they "think" was clicking their own ads? I got kicked off Adsense and it was because they think I was clicking my own ads, what if it was click fraud? Do I get re-instated then?
My point is this, it's hard to tell it's click fraud, they have the TOS in place, but just what if and if click fraud is small and minuscule why be so quick to kick every one out of the program and keep the money they earned them? Sending me a brief explanation about why they think I am clicking my own ads isn't going to cut it then. I want proof that it was done by me. They expect us to just sit back and take the blame for something that it may not have been.
Maybe I am missing something, but it all sounds cheesy to me. I liked Adsense and saw income from it, why would I mess that up?
Google executives have repeatedly said the level of click fraud on its ad network is minuscule — a contention that the proposed settlement amount seems to support.The $90 million translates into less than 1 percent of Google's $11.2 billion in revenue during the past four years."
With all do respect...I beg to differ with this premise.
For starters the word "miniscule" is a very subjective term. Based on authoritative reports and studies I have read click fraud ranges from 10% to as high as 25%...even this is somewhat subjective (only google knows, but reveals the problem in vague generalities such as "miniscule"). The is no objective conclusion as to the real percentage, but certainly 1% is a figure pulled out of the hat. Let's assume the low figure given by independent sources peg it at 10%...that comes to more like a billion in revenue for Google derived from worthless clicks for the advertisers.
With that said, I am a huge fan of adwords and very thankful for the growth it has precipitated for my business. At this point click fraud is just another cost of doing business and advertisers simply have to adjust bids downward to offset unproductive clicks.
Based on authoritative reports and studies
Such a thing does not exist for click fraud. It is completely impossible to get an accurate figure, what you're reading are educated guesses.
Even Google doesn't know for sure.
