Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I investigated a bit on their sites. First of all, these guys are trying to hide everything - both their identity and their ad suppliers. Even more surprising, despite them being a real curse on the web, there is very very little discussion about them. I could find only one reference here at WW, and one on a critical blog. So, either they are not a problem, or they try to remove any reference to their name from the web. (Thus I won't name them here.)
Anyway, one of their sites forgot to hide the source of their ads: It's YPN. And then I suddenly realized why we are still seeing their ads on our sites.
Imagine a keyword - "elbonia travel" - that sells for, say, $0.60 on Yahoo! This is the cost the advertiser is going to pay for a lead. And let's assume the following money flow...
1) Yahoo! keeps $0.18 (30%) and pays $0.42 to the crap publisher
2) The crap publisher has only one problem: his internal conversion rate! At what rate do people hit the back button instead of clicking through to the advertiser? Let's assume the crap publisher manages to convert 50% of the visitors into exiting his page through a YPN link, i.e. for each click on a YPN advertisement he needs to buy two clicks from Google. So he buys two cheap clicks from Google on the content network at, say, $0.12, totaling $0.24 - he keeps $0.18
3) Of these two clicks Google keeps $0.18 because they are aware of the landing page (all domains run under the same domain, so it should be easy to apply a manual fix for this, er, problem)
4) Google pays $0.06 to the Adsense partners for two clicks, i.e. $0.03 per click (25%, and yes, I know that this is not the average payout of 75% across all publishers) :-)
So the original revenue split is
- Yahoo! $0.18 = 30%
- Crap Publisher $0.18 = 30%
- Google $0.18 = 30%
- Adsense Publishers 2 x $0.03 = $0.06 = 10%
Does this system have advantages for Google?
Oh yes!
1) A low conversion rate at the advertiser landing page is directly attributed to Yahoo! (not to Google) as the crap publisher does not reveal the original source of the traffic. Yahoo! is actually being HURT by allowing this behaviour. That should be fine with Google. :-)
2) However, Google still earns the same as Yahoo from this advertiser!
3) From Google's pov, there is no money flow back to the advertiser, i.e. there is no obvious arbitrage and no inflated revenues.
4) Their ad system can place zillions of cheapo ads across the content network, populating even obscure niches.
5) Google can announce a steady growth of online advertising.
There are disadvantages as well:
1) Google is losing 60% of the potential revenue to Yahoo! and the crap publisher
2) They do not have a direct billing relationship with the advertiser (something they are probably looking for)
3) They are depending on the revenues of crap publisher
4) End consumers might not like the "Ads by Google" in the long run because the perceived quality is low.
Now, for the crap publisher things must be looking very bright:
Imagine 100,000 domains with one hit (!) each per day - that is 100,000 x $0.18 = $18,000 per day or $540,000 per month or $6,480,000 per year. No wonder they are buying real estate like mad.
Your thoughts?
Because its a way for people with no skills or knowledge about anything to suck up some advertising dollars at both the real webmasters and the advertisers cost.
I did some research on MFA tactics, wondering why Google apparently does not want to get rid of them, depite of the introduction of a "Quality Score" for advertisers. I am still plagued by one specific advertiser that everyone of us has probably seen on site. You know, the guys with roughly 100,000 domains on one server with nothing but ads (keyword stuffed domain name, and always the same blue template consisting of keywords and sponsored links).
It is quite strange how this large MFA advertiser can go on seemingly unaffected by every adjustment of the Quality Score or by complaints. With so many domains, this advertiser can never be totally blocked (unless Google greatly increases the filter limit or institutes blocking by advertiser), which is very frustrating!
A lot of "quality" (my word) advertisers are not aware of where their ads are running right now. As it becomes easier for them to monitor this, they may start blocking a lot of MFAs.
Then again, a lot of advertisers want traffic, period.
If you have an MFA site about a certain widget, and a maker of that widget advertises through AdWords, and their ad shows up on your MFA, and they get traffic from the MFA, well, they are going to accept the traffic if it's targeted.
Now of course, if the widget makers/sellers were ranked higher than the MFAs, then they wouldn't need to put much into advertising...
Still, The advertisers are the ones putting the money into Google's pockets. Until it reaches a point where they start holding money back, I don't think there will be a change.
You know, the guys with roughly 100,000 domains on one server with nothing but ads (keyword stuffed domain name, and always the same blue template consisting of keywords and sponsored links).
I really despise these guys. Ugh. How I wish we could just block them instead of each domains! But I think these crap publishers have actually adapted to the Google Adwords quality score, by adding just enough automatic content to pass their filters.
He'll go down in smoke as soon as G offers banning accounts instead of single domains. Let's watch him try and get 100,000 Adsense accounts, lol!
If you want to put the argument to Google a little more simply, give it a list of over 200 domains used by a single account. Then ask it why it has a 200-domain limit in its Competitive Ad Filter.
(I'd like to know if the schemer is violating the AdWords TOS.)
Or ask Google if it can imagine any reasonable explanation for one account holder to use 1,000 similar domains/websites unless it's to abuse the system and prevent his ads from being blocked.
Back in the day, when Network Solutions had its monopoly of domain registrations, you could get the "key" used by a registrant and then look up all his domains.
I wish we had that to take care of the lesser evil MFAs with fewer than 200 domains. I don't have time to find and ban each domain one at a time.
Actually, there's a reverse lookup technology where you can find all the domains on a single server, which this scammer probably uses. I think it would show you the list of all his domains; then you can show it to Google, ask them if they notice something's odd, lol!
Some tech news reporter should do an article on this. Google might actually pay attention. So far it seems they only report on the difficulties of AdWords users, e.g., click fraud, not the problems for Adsensers.
p/g
They will only pay attention if enough advertisers start holding money back. If advertisers are happy, Google is happy. That's not a jab at Google, it's the honest truth - advertisers dictate how things work, because it's about the money.
As the next few years go by and advertisers get more access to how their money is working and how visitors are using their sites, it could very well turn out that your site is sending better vistors to them, and they might just start targeting your site for their ads and blocking the MFAs.
Because its a way for people with no skills or knowledge about anything to suck up some advertising dollars at both the real webmasters and the advertisers cost.
I do not think that these guys do not have skills or knowledge. To run a business like this needs a lot of skills. Just the acquisition/management of roughly 100,000 domain names alone is a huge task. Writing good ad copy that lures customers into a click also requires certain skills. And buying cheap clicks as well. So, while I am far from saying these are geniuses, I do not think they can be compared to the odd kid down the block doing some arbitrage.
blocking by advertiser
This is indeed the only solution. If Google still won't give that to the publishers, then they should at least provide some IP-blocking tools, i.e. if an ad would lead to a certain IP-Address or IP-Range, then we could easily block this scam.
The question is - is it in Googles best interest to provide such tools to us? So far, apparently they like the big monthly cheque they are receiving from this advertiser better. And I can even understand them. There are enough MFA sites on Google network that could supply the cheap traffic these guys are looking for. But why do have legit publishers be pestered with these advertisements?
I think this will change over time, as advertisers get more control over their advertising.
Interesting comment, and I agree. Advertisers taking matters into their own hands (so to speak) is a good thing and will improve things without doubt.
However, in this very case this does not apply, because the advertiser is seen as legit by Google. Clicks on the ads leave the Google network, enter the crap site, and exit through a YPN link. An advertiser will go to YPN and complain for lack of ROI. (In fact, the single comment I found on WW made on this particular scheme, was along the lines of [paraphrased] I had a lot of clicks without conversions coming from this network of sites through my ads on Yahoo!, so when I had enough of this, I finally cancelled my account with them [/paraphrased].
As we are talking serious money here ($0.50+ per click) I understand you can easily burn huge amounts using this approach.
Then again, a lot of advertisers want traffic, period.
I agree. But the statement above lets me conclude that the majority of advertisers want quality clicks for quality money. But in fact, they just get a less valuable visitor because so many guys have to be paid along the way (Yahoo!, Crap Publisher, Google, and you/me).
If you have an MFA site about a certain widget, and a maker of that widget advertises through AdWords, and their ad shows up on your MFA, and they get traffic from the MFA, well, they are going to accept the traffic if it's targeted.
In principle I agree with you. But the problem is getting more complex by the introduction of a 2nd ad network (YPN). The guys buy cheap traffic from Adsense (and surely enough they get cheap traffic, because Google has an interest to keep premium visitors on their own network) and sell the traffic to Yahoo! as quality traffic. Google looks away when it comes to the question of landing page quality (it's not an MFA site to them), and Yahoo! do not know where the traffic come from (or do not care). All this leads to the advertiser buying quality at quality price, but getting in fact just 5% of the value he's paid for (5% because of the low value of the single click that was successful on Google Adsense).
The advertisers are the ones putting the money into Google's pockets.
In this specific case, the advertiser is the MFA and buys legit clicks. He won't bark. To Google, he is apparently not an MFA as he does not do arbitrage business with Adsense (but with YPN).
But I think these crap publishers have actually adapted to the Google Adwords quality score, by adding just enough automatic content to pass their filters.
There is no content whatsoever on the site. The lack of content is so obvious, and the sites are so absolute identical and easy to spot (most sit on the same IP address anyway), that Google must have actively made the decision to look away.
Can we sue the schemer?!
Certainly not.
He's doing a legit arbitrage business. It's not fraudulent IMO. It's expensive for advertisers, yes. It's hurting both Yahoo! (advertisers cancel their accounts), Google (they lose 60% of revenue to Yahoo! and the crap publisher), and the Adsense publisher (who receive in total $0.06 clicks instead of $0.42 clicks), yes. But it is fully legal IMO.
The only winner is the crap publisher running the scheme (and YPN and Google, to a certain degree). However, I can not see any illegal or fraudulent activity per se in this. Individual advertisers might feel that this is fraudulent, because they buy clicks at $0.60 and get quality for a tiny fraction of this. But from a legal pov, this should be fine.
He'll go down in smoke as soon as G offers banning accounts instead of single domains.
Honestly, this is my personal favorite feature request to Google. I would like to see this introduced asap. Along with IP-range blocking. That would put an end to this scheme.
If you want to put the argument to Google a little more simply, give it a list of over 200 domains used by a single account. Then ask it why it has a 200-domain limit in its Competitive Ad Filter.
I wonder whether this has any effect on Google. There is no way they can not be aware of the scheme. They must receive huge payments from this advertiser to make the scheme work. If I were Google, I would at least have a look at the sites these guys arerunning. I guess they did and decided to just look away as they have some earnings expectations to fulfil. This quarter. Next quarter. And so on and so on.
They will only pay attention if enough advertisers start holding money back. If advertisers are happy, Google is happy. That's not a jab at Google, it's the honest truth - advertisers dictate how things work, because it's about the money.
Exactly. But this advertiser is just buying cheap traffic from Google, and he won't complain. He's happy. He won't bark. The advertisers with YPN, that get the bogus traffic, they will bark at Yahoo! (And in fact, as the previously mentioned statement shows, they do.)
* * *
So the key take-aways for Google are:
1) If you are serious about your quality score, please have your engineers look at this specific scheme. Should be easy enough to do.
2) In order to have the advertisers spend their money directly with Google (and us!), you should look into providing strong and efficient filters, enabling publishers to block IP ranges and Adwords accounts instead of single domains.
There is no content whatsoever on the site. The lack of content is so obvious, and the sites are so absolute identical and easy to spot (most sit on the same IP address anyway), that Google must have actively made the decision to look away.
It's amazing that this advertiser's content-free sites haven't been Quality Scored out of arbitraging profitability by now, and it makes me wonder if large advertiser size is a positive factor in the Quality Score or even if a Quality Score exemption of some sort exists.
[google.com...]
Apparently yahoo also have something like this.
[edited by: encyclo at 7:22 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2007]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]
Why we are still seeing so many MFAs advertised?
Supply and demand, a.k.a. too many publishers chasing a finite number of legitimate advertisers.
Over the long run, it may make sense for Google to eliminate or reduce the number of junk ads, but that won't necessarily help publishers who are getting a lot of junk ads. In fact, it may hurt them.
Those aren't MFA's they're google's adsense for domains...
Please.
If you re-read my post, you will notice that I said that the advertisers are buying clicks from Google (through the Adsense program). And the traffic is being monetized through the YAHOO PUBLISHER NETWORK. Google does see just a fraction of the overall revenue. It has nothing to do with Google's domain park.
supply and demand
In general I agree with you. But I think we should not stretch this argument too much. Almost EVERY price on this planet is based on supply and demand. Energy prices, taxi prices, prices for trips to the Mutafuka Hotel in Elbonia, the daily newspaper, an evening at the cinema, the computer I am using to write this post. Basically everything.
In this case, I suspect that Google has made the decision to look away because they benefit from this Adsense-to-Overture arbitrage. They made the decision to send users to content-free pages that obviously add no value whatsoever to the web experience. And funnily enough, I do even understand Google! Yes, it does make sense to profit from this scheme FOR LOW QUALITY PUBLISHERS. Google has so many low quality publishers that they could display ads for low quality sites on low quality Adsense sites. Heck, why not?
But for any quality publisher, this is a curse.
I have now 40+ slots in my filter attributed to this single advertiser. That's 20%+ of my filter list just to filter out sites from one advertiser!
If Google wants to continue making profit from this kind of arbitrage business without alienating their quality publishers, I suggest that they provide better tools to publishers so that these are at least "on par" with the increasing number of low quality advertisers. The network I am talking about in my OP is growing at breathtaking speed. I checked today, and they bypassed the 100,000 mark already.
Personally, I do not want to send a single visitor their way. I do not want to support this scheme. But even if I had 10,000 slots in my filter list, I probably could not take up the fight with them. I do not know which domains they are going to register tommorrow, and I do not know which domains are being advertised actively tommorrow.
What I do know, however, is the IP address where the landing pages resides. Thus a quick fix would be blocking the IP address (range) of the landing page(s). That would help A LOT.
Your problem may be solved, at least in part, by a couple of things:
1) Yahoo is likely to introduce something akin to smart pricing at some point, just to stay competitive with AdSense. When that happens, it will be harder for arbitrageurs to buy cheap from AdSense and sell high on YPN.
2) In a few months, when AdSense advertisers get the ability to choose where their contextual ads run, quality sites that deliver quality traffic to advertisers may attract higher bids than they do now, making it harder for bottom-feeders to do their feeding anywhere but at the bottom.
Of course, it's always possible that MFAs and other questionable advertisers will go on polluting high-quality sites in certain topic areas. I took AdSense off a freelance-writing site several years ago because nearly all ads aimed at writers are promoting vanity presses, phony poetry contests, and other schemes that prey on aspiring writers. Some topics just don't work well with AdSense (at least if the publisher has any self-respect), and that topic was one of them.
