Fight Against Click Fraud Actually Moving Forward
Posted on March 22, 2007 by
Adie 
PPC (Pay Per Click) 
10 Comments
I’ve never had much faith in Google’s ability (or willingness) to actively pursue and snuff out “click fraud”. I put “click fraud” in quotes because I’m using this term with a somewhat unordinary definition. Google, YPN, and others have typically viewed click fraud as when a publisher clicks his or her own ads or if ads are clicked excessively in an attempt to boost revenue. An alternative definition of click fraud, and one that I definitely agree with, is using ad placement to trick or confuse visitors in order to receive more ad clicks. These clicks generate revenue for the site owner but absolutely no value to the advertiser.
I’m not talking about well blended ads, in-line ads, or anything like that. What I’m talking about is people who use, for instance, a text ad string and put it off as navigation. That to me is click fraud.
Recently Google has taken measures to alleviate this form of click fraud. We saw a month or so ago how they put their foot down on the problem of images being placed next to ad blocks. Publishers were placing images next to their ad blocks to not only simply draw attention to the ads but to confuse visitors into thinking that the images were related to the link - thus increasing their CTR but adding no real value to the advertiser’s conversions.
Arrington has a very nice write-up about Google’s new PPA (pay-per-action) advertising system that is currently in testing.
PPA advertising is meant to mitigate the risks of click fraud. Now the advertiser pays only if a customer has been delivered to a website and takes a further action, such as buying a product or filling out a web form.
This is definitely a sign that Google may finally be doing something about the serious problem of click fraud. Will they continue with this method as they slowly realize that worthless clicks account for a large part of their revenue? Who knows? The point is, however, that this is at least a step in the right direction. When advertisers buy space on a site they should at least have some sort of guarantee that their ads not only target the right demographic but are only engaged when the user is interested, not when they were trying to click a link and clicked an ad instead due to shady placement.
I’ve also just read news on CNN Money that Yahoo! is now taking measures to combat click fraud more directly:
Yahoo Inc. has named a senior executive to lead the company’s efforts to combat click fraud in its Web search advertising business, the company said, in a bid to reassure advertisers.
Yahoo, the No. 2 provider of pay-per-click ads behind rival Google Inc., said Wednesday that attorney Reggie Davis, a seven-year veteran of the company, will take on the newly created post of vice president of marketplace quality.
The article also claims that the amount of fraudulent clicks in the Yahoo! Publisher Network is somewhere between 12 and 15 percent. I doubt this number was deduced using the broad definition of click fraud, but perhaps that will also be something addressed by the new “marketplace quality” executive.
I also believe this position is a good sign that YPN! will be coming out of beta before too long. With more and more questions being raised about Google’s marketplace quality, hopefully YPN! will make that one of their biggest concerns (and ultimate selling points over Google) when they take their service public. At the end of the day, however, these are both good steps for contextual advertising. Click fraud is a serious issue that few really seem to actually be taking seriously.
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I actually heard about Google’s new PPA system on NPR’s Marketplace show. Sounds interesting, but isn’t PPA also pretty expensive? The action is something like buying a magazine subscription, etc.
Still a good idea, but it isn’t like PPC ads are going to disappear either.
PPA is very good to the advertiser, but is horrible to publishers. Small publishers (there are thousands if not millions in adsense) will loose their small adsense income.
Google lives because of most of this small publishers, not only because of the big publishers.
It will only hurt the small publishers that are producing fraudulent (or worthless) clicks. Sure there we be less actions than clicks, but PPA will certainly pay more because the advertiser DEFINITELY has made money (or gotten the desired result) so he will be more willing to pay the publisher a good fee - rather than .05-.15 per click.
But yes those people running arcade sites, myspace sites, and other such sites that produce worthless clicks will suffer as a result of this.
Not only that sites matt. Is allways a question of time.
You are a experienced person in this business, so you know what i mean, and i don’t talk about spammy sites, arcade, myspace, etc..
A simple small site, let’s image about fishing. The traffic of a site like that is not too high. With PPC, the webmaster could earn $100 in one month, from 300 clicks (let’s say 10-20 daily). If you pick the same site and put PPA with 300 clicks in one month, how much of that clicks will convert (let’s suppose that the action is buy a product with 10% return) ? Probably none.
Small publishers, will ALLWAYS suffer with PPA, and please small publishers is not spammy or arcade or myspace sites. That kind of sites like arcade or myspace, many times have hundreds of thousands of pageviews month, i consider them BIG publishers.
I believe a small publisher with quality traffic can generate enough income, if not more, with CPA than CPC anyday. Not to say CPC is worthless (hell I have Adsense on my site) but if you are running a worthwhile site then you should be able to make just as much with CPA.
Sorry matt, but i don’t agree. In theory yes, but in reality no. I know many small good sites, very good sites, that are doing ok with cpc (well $100 for them is ok). Some of them tried cpa, and the results are horrible. People continue to click, but then they don’t convert. CPA only works in certain niches. One thing is a site about fishing, other thing is a site about buy fishing add-ons (where CPA could result). i mantain my opinion, your site could be awesome, but if the niche is not the right one for actions (and remember that most of the actions is buy a product), cpa will totally fail. cpc even in the mostr strange niche allways give some bucks.
Of course that his for big traffic sites is different, very different indeed, and with cpa, they can win much more money, has time passes.
I also agree with you people are often let down when the find they have to buy something from the site they got through an ad..Also theyll be reluctant to use a credit card there
Did anyone noticed that mybloglog is very very slow today, and auctionads is down?
[...] Coddington over at NetBusinessBlog informs us about Google’s attempt to alleviate click fraud with Pay-Per-Action advertising, in which a consumer must take further action after clicking, such [...]
Google hss started a CPA based ad system lately now in BETA version..Its on My Blog ..I think this will give advertisers a little return..for the lost money (by frauds.)
It is true that Click fraud is wide spread..But there are still the old school method of Click Groups..Then comes th advanced methods like those specified in -
http://simplewaystoearnthroughadsense.blogspot.com/
BTW I dont think Google is going to catch all these frauds