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The click fraud issue first started to come to light around 2004. Click fraud can take many shapes, but is most egregious when unscrupulous types create programs to systematically click on paid listings in order to profit from the revenue created by participating in publisher programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo's YPN. While working at Overture/Yahoo! between 2002-2005, I was taught as salesperson to talk up the fact that O/Y! had elaborate systems in place to detect and prevent click fraud. The top brass at G and Y! publicly pooh-poohed click fraud as a small percentage of the traffic they delivered. In March of this year, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt dismissed click fraud as "not a material issue" then days later news broke of their offer to settle with a $90MM fund setup to payback aggrieved advertisers via advertising credits for past click fraud. Makes you wonder, if they are so quick to settle for $90MM, how bad is it really? One report recently published by Outsell estimates click fraud to advertisers at $800MM for 2005 alone. The rise of Click Fraud detection software and Adsense-ready templated websites, hint that the problem is more widespread than they are saying. Google's own foray into CPA ads, seems to say that they are hedging their bets in the event the public outcry against click fraud gets worse. Why do I mention all of this? Is it to say nyah nyah nyah, we're better? Far from it. It's encouraging that the online advertising community is recognizing the click fraud issue. Snap was founded on the premise that CPA was the evolution of CPC advertising. However, we'll never be a viable advertising option without traffic. As we continue to promote this model of visual searching and CPA advertising, we ask that our advertisers help us spread the word. I wrote in our last advertiser newsletter (link) that advertisers have a vested interest in promoting a strong Snap and I want to reiterate that point here. Please bookmark our site and tell your friends about Snap. I'll even be happy if you use your search engine of choice, but use us as your second option when you don't get good results. Put our search box on your website. If Snap gets big enough, maybe it will be a wakeup call for the industry as a whole and the big guys will adopt CPA too. |
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CNET News reports: Responding to concerns about click fraud in the online-ad industry, Google will be revealing to advertisers the number of invalid clicks on their ads.
Too little too late?
one idea could be maybe to further integrate google analytics and set the cpc/bidding rates according to the goals reached by adword-driven website traffic. for example, if a GA set goal was going to a contact us page (which is usually a good thing, particuarly for b2b) then you pay more than say a visitor that just went to one page.
….or thinking more about this, paying NOTHING if the refered visitor just looks at one page and increase the rate according to the time and number of pages visited. sure, this is going to tie more people into GA, but compared to the downside of click fraud, perhaps it a no-brainer.