SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- John Thys still hasn't figured out how much his company has paid Google Inc. for bogus sales referrals caused by "click fraud" -- a sham aimed at a perceived weakness in the Internet search leader's lucrative advertising network. http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/05/08/google.click.fraud.ap/index.html
I don't get it. Advertisers know that there is a small percentage of clicks that are fraudulent and that Google tries their best to detect them and offers refunds for any detected click fraud. Despite being informed about the risks, they continue to advertise, but then whinge about click fraud. What's with that?!
That is a great point. Advertisers know that they are going to have a certain success rate on clicks. This is factored into their ad budget. Some will be "fradulent." In other words, clicks by people who are either malicious or clicks by affiliates who are trying to boost their income. Some are "legitimate" for example, competitors clicking to see what the competition is up to. Or, since the ads are designed to attract clicks, people that are curious but aren't interested in buying. The line between fraudulent and legit is very fuzzy. Google can detect someone who is clicking multiple times from the same address and not charge you for them, and I am sure they have even more sophisticated ways to detect fraud. It seems to me that the advertisers don't have much of a case here. Of course the lawyers have already been offered $30 million, so their motivation is obvious. But obviously John Thys was making money or he wouldn't have bought $20,000 worth of ads. If he had a competitor that was trying to deplete his ad budget, then clearly he could sue the competitor. And then there is the question of "how can you prove the monetary loss?" If the fraud was provable then Google would have already automatically not charged you. best regards wiz
and for what reason do you think they not showing up the click log / impression to any of us, both advertiser and publisher?? do they really have the technology as said ?? Offering adlink / mass placement of ads by publisher / spreading about ad blindness news is the most big mistake Google has made.
Didnt they article state that about 35% of the clicks were fraudulent in his case and that they estimate anywhere from 10% to 50% are fraudulent when it comes to adWords?
I'm working on some code, let see if Google accept my proposal or not, if they do, i wish it can reduce clickfraud up to 50% overall, since publisher will never see their adsense id again and wondering, whose ad is that ??
Hi, Many of the currently available click fraud prevention solutions dont have the capabilty to integrate with the tier-1 search platform such as adwords. Enter ClickIdentify ( clickidentify.com ) Through it's propriatery TAAFP engine it does sophisticated traffic analysis to determine how genuine the clicks are. The leader in this field indeed. They are offering free trial right now as the product is in beta stage. I am running it myself on two sites since yesterday, which recieve traffic from both adwords and yahoo search marketing. So far it has detected quite a few anomalies and identified possible botnet, which I was suspicous of in the last few days.