|
|
|
How Bloggers Are Making Thousands of Dollars From the Google Adsense Affiliate Program
There is no doubt that the Google Adsense program for publishers and site owners is one of the most successful affiliate programs anywhere. There is increasing evidence that many bloggers have managed to find the right formula to make thousands of...
How To Get Free Website Traffic
Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC
A free traffic exchange is one of the best ways for webmasters to get free website traffic to their sites or affiliate marketing campaigns. Free Traffic Exchanges allow you to surf other members websites, and for each...
How To Win The War of Pay per Click Advertising.
Do you know what is the most important question among most internet marketers specially newbie’s. It’s "How to get highly targeted visitors to there site?" Believe me, I know it because I received this question from my subscribers almost daily. ...
LookSmart Not Small Business Friendly
There is a firestorm of negative press regarding LookSmart's recent marketing stumbles via numerous discussion groups, including two of the oldest and most influential, I-Search and I-Advertising Digests. Most of the critiques center on ...
Search Engines 101 - Search Engines Explained
What Are Search Engines?
A search engine is a database system designed to index and categorize internet addresses, otherwise known as URLs (for example, http://www.submittoday.com ).
There are four basic types of search engines:
...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Click Fraud – Threatening the Internet Economy
One of the most popular forms of Internet advertising is pay-per-click (PPC). Merchants place ads with search engines like Google or MSN and the ad appears whenever someone enters a relevant search.
If the ad is clicked the merchant pays a fee – anywhere from 5 cents to $100. It’s a fabulous idea – ad campaigns targeted at your most likely customers.
It’s such a fabulous idea that Google, the king of PPC, grossed $1.24 billion in the first 3 months of this year – most of it from advertising revenue.
Watch out, though. There’s trouble in PPC land. The flip side to PPC is a phenomenon called “click fraud” or “click spam.”
There are two types of click fraud. The first type occurs when someone maliciously clicks on your PPC ad to drive up your advertising costs. It could be a competitor or a disgruntled former employee.
The second type of fraud involves clicking on affiliate ads to generate income. Affiliate ads are placed on third party web sites and each time someone clicks on an affiliate ad the web site owner receives a commission.
Industry observers believe that affiliate click fraud is the biggest problem of the two. Either way, the result is the same – advertising budget depletion with little gain for the merchant.
Either type of click fraud can be accomplished with the use of automated “robots” or by hiring an army of workers. The India Times reported in 2004 that a “growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100
to $200 per month.”
How serious is the problem? It’s hard to judge exactly, but click fraud is commonly estimated at 20% to 35% of all PPC ad campaigns.
A recently launched lawsuit alleges that Google is aware of the magnitude of click fraud and does not do enough to alert advertisers of the problem.
The class action suit launched by Click Defence says that "Google has an inherent conflict of interest in preventing click fraud since it derives the same amount of income from each fraudulent click as it does from each legitimate click."
The $10 million lawsuit quotes Google Chief Financial Officer George Reyes as saying that click fraud is “the biggest threat to the Internet economy.”
Click Defense is a Colorado company specializing in click fraud detection. They claim that they themselves became a victim of click fraud when they advertised with Google’s Adwords program this year.
They are seeking damages for breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair business practices.
A Google spokesman said that the case is unmerited and that Google will defend itself “vigorously.”
About the author:
Copyright 2005 by Ross MacIver
This article may be redistributed freely on the Internet or in ezines as long as the resource box and hyperlinks remain intact.
Ross MacIver is the director of Best Online Content. We provide quality content for your web site and offer a full range of design and SEO services.
|
|
|
|
|
|