Google sued over click fraud in web ads
Google sued over ‘click fraud’ in Web ads - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com
So Click Defense Inc., a maker of software that helps protect users from click fraud, is filing a lawsuit in San Jose.
In the internet marketing world, click fraud has had more than its fair share of marketing. When I tell people that I work in internet marketing for an etailer (see Sewell Direct), the first thing that everybody asks is how much click fraud affects us. First of all, let me say, we have had no clear indication that click fraud has caused a significant impact on our online marketing campaigns.
The key is to have really good tracking software that will allow you to validate the clicks that you are being charged by Google vs. the traffic that you are receiving on your site. This is where it gets sticky - if I am looking for a new hard drive, I will typically do a google search and search for a few products. I will click on an ad, then look at the site. If I don’t like their price or the product I’m looking at, I’ll go somewhere else.
So was that click fraud? No - I went to the page with the intent of investigating a potential purchase. Now, if I am a competitor of an online store that has a larger advertising budget than I do, so I hire a few guys in India to click on my competitor’s ads all day (these are known as click farms), obviously, this is click fraud.
So how do you avoid click fraud? Use a good metric software to keep an eye on your marketing expenses, especially as they relate to profitability. There are a few good products on the market right now that help with campaign optimizing - check out Omniture’s Search Engine Manager or Atlas One Point.
I don’t want to downplay the impact that click fraud may have on some advertisers, but don’t let that discourage you from advertising on the internet. Just make sure to track your ROI (return on investment) for each campaign that you launch, and you will be OK. For instance, some time when I am driving on the highway I will glance at a sign on the side of the road even if I am not even remotely interested in what they have to offer. However, prices of this form of advertising are based on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model, so technically the advertiser has paid a small amount for an impression that is very unlikely to convert to a sale. In the offline world, marketers have had to learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns, and if they make more money than they cost, they continue to run them. I would predict that the same will happen with online marketers - as long as you keep your head above water with your advertising campaigns, you will probably just have to learn to live with a small amount of click fraud.
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