Well, here we go again. The advertising industry is under seige for yet another potential boondoggle--and one that Business Week (Oct 2) claims may present "the single biggest threat to the Internet's advertising gold mine." Yikes! Although this scam concern has floated around the advertising industry for the last couple of years--often focusing on the big guns like Google and Yahoo who are most vulnerable--BW has one of the best discussions of this internet plague written thus far. Read and weep, budget directors.
BW defines click fraud as "clicking on internet advertising solely to generate illegitimate revenue for the web site carrying the ads; those doing the clicking typically also get paid." Professional revenue thieves have been around for centuries, but there are few merry men looking after these Robin Hoods. Advertisers and marketers, who pay per click for their use of these webnets, are losing millions report both BW and Advertising Age.
Okay, the robbery system has it's legal, financial and pragmatic impacts, but there is the sociopolitical issue of advertising's industrywide problem of controlling the bad apples in their barrel too. How do we stop the bleeding? Do we need more laws? More passwords? Fewer entry points to the system? Better fraud detecting software that can't be breached by every 12-year-old hacker in the country? And why do we want to demonize both advertising and the internet delivery system anyway?
I guess because we can.
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5 comments:
Hi Dr. Orman
Interesting question.
I had to do a little research on it, but I found some insightful info regarding this topic.
In short the answer is that the problem is impossible to solve. there are many ways for the perpetrators to remain undetected.
Advertisers are just gonna have to eat it if they decide to continue paying the sites they choose to advertise on per click
Here's the website: www.arachnoid.com
the article is entitled "Networks of sleaze."
perhaps you've already come across it, considering the wording of your question.
hope this helps,
m taghizadegan
We can't demonize the Internet or advertising in this case. It's the unethical entities that are involved in this activity. Can't Google go back and research where the clicks came from? Couldn't they figure out that a series of clicks all came from the same email? I guess even if that were so, one could still argue they were legitimately visiting the site.
I don't think audiences who participate in Nielsen or Arbitron research are always being honest either...they select their favorite programs, whether they routinely watch them or not.
I can only assume that Google will solve this problem with a technological innovation, since they're the ones paying for it!
I concur with a few points made by professor Mullen.
Firstly, Arbitron and Nielsen subjects have been known to falsify their reports from time to time. Understanding this, Arbitron has developed new technology in the hopes to eliminate the problem and remedy the complications.
That said, Google will definitely, being at the forefront of the internet revolution, develop some process by which to ensure the safety and legitimacy of this click market.
If the government can track our every move, phone call and mouse click, what, aside from legal issues, is stopping Google...cost…because in the long run they could be saving much more by spending now.
Dane K.
I've been lucky enough to speak with a computer programmer and scientist by the name of Paul Lutus.
In his article he speaks about his difficulty in taking care of a problem with online identity theft.
He then segued into the question of click fraud.
The problem, as he puts it, is going underground, which makes it next to imposible to locate the source(s) of the problem.
I agree that the problem is not that advertisers are evil or in anyway demonic. In fact they are the victims of the fraud, as are the consumers who genuinely care to do business online.
Not only does this problem speak to the need for increased security measures, but it also will unquestionably speed up the push toward governmental regulation of the internet.
Mr. Lutus explains the problem much more clearly than I can, so here's his site www.arachnoid.com And again the article is entitled "Networks of sleaze."
The article doesn't bash advertising, so please consider it in order to expand the debate.
Hello Dr.Orman,
I had no idea that people are being paid to click on advertisments on the internet. I never would have pictured that as a possible job, so who came up with this scamming job?
It's not fair to other brands, and gauranteed this causes many problems because people are thinking that their brand is popular and that they'll get more sales if they continue to put their ads on the internet, when infact they're getting ripped off. So will advertisers stop or continue with putting their ads on the internet?
Eventually there may be some type of software to help control all this but I'm wondering if it would even be worth it because I my self just ignore the advertisments and I'm sure many other people do as well.
It will be interesting to see all the changes that happen with the internet.
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