Click Fraud Network

Ad Network Quality - a busy week!

tomcuthbert — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:14:00 GMT

Just last week, I served as a panelist on a Search Marketing Now webcast titled: "Ad Networks Best Practices: Keeping Your Advertisers Happy.” Dana Todd, the CMO of Newsforce.com and President Emeritus of SEMPO, joined me and we covered the topic of quality in ad networks. In the webcast, Dana talked about best practices for ad networks and how they can manage traffic quality and value for their customers. Transparency between search engines, ad networks and advertisers was discussed as a key component...(read more)

Case Study - Sometimes It Ain’t Click Fraud

admin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:57:00 GMT

Reproduced with the permission of Neil Matthews. Originally posted at http://www.clickqualityconsultant.com/index.php/2008/06/11/case-study-sometimes-it-aint-click-fraud/ I was recently working with a client based in the US who had seen a massive increase in click through and no corresponding increase in conversion. He contacted me with a view to investigate possible click fraud. As a starting point I obtained an invalid click fraud report (see below). From this we can see an incredibly suspicious...(read more)

Is Your SEM Manager a Robot?

mgraham — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:35:00 GMT

Recently, many advertisers received an “exciting announcement” in their Adwords accounts. Google announced that its new Automatic Matching feature is rolling out in a new expanded beta format. Automatic Matching has been enabled for some advertiser’s accounts since the end of February. The expanded beta now opts more advertisers in to this feature. Automatic Matching is an algorithm-based broad match feature designed to serve ads on keywords not already in an advertiser’s keyword list. It kicks in...(read more)

In Defense of the Brand

Tom Cuthbert — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:16:00 GMT

Advertiser brands are being used against them. This week's Wall St. Journal had an excellent article about “Piggybacking” . (No they are not referring to throwing a kid on your back and jumping around the yard!) This piggybacking is a form of brand infringement that is haunting thousands of advertisers. It is the practice of buying a trademarked brand and profiting from it. Google is guilty of facilitating this practice. The Journal gave several exceptional examples of how brands including American...(read more)

“The Happiest Place on Earth” - TRAFFIC Conference Orlando

Tom Cuthbert — Tue, 27 May 2008 00:24:00 GMT

The domain industry is fascinating. I have enjoyed being involved in events that are both educational and productive for Click Forensics and me. The latest event is the TRAFFIC conference held this week in “The Happiest Place on Earth”, Disneyworld of course! Everyone seemed happy (even though there wasn¹t a Starbucks anywhere to be found!). The domain industry appears to me to be at a crossroads. While the value of names continues to rise, the earnings from monetization programs are falling. Domain...(read more)

Geo-Targeting Your Clicks

Neil Matthews — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:11:00 GMT

This post discusses the topic of geo-targeting your pay per click campaigns. What is Geo-Targeting? Geo-Targeting is the ability to set a target country(s) to which your ads will be served. This allows the advertiser to set which countries they are interested in gaining. Why Geo-Target? If your target or product is restricted to a particular location, then any clicks from outside of that place are of zero quality. You are paying for clicks that will never convert. The solution to this is to use the...(read more)

Under the Iceberg

Tom Cuthbert — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Over the past two years we have been trying to bring attention to the real danger of click fraud. It is a real problem that is getting worse not better. Since we began reporting our Click Fraud Index, the overall rate has climbed over 20%. This problem has been highlighted in mainstream publications including Business Week, USA Today and the Wall St. Journal. No one today denies that click fraud is a problem and that it is having a negative effect on the growth of the online industry. What may be...(read more)

Why Yahoo Matters

Tom Cuthbert — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:57:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago at Search Engine Strategies in New York, Click Fraud made big news. Yahoo announced a partnership with Click Forensics that changes the tone of the ongoing “Click Fraud Debate”. Since late 2005 there has been denial, litigation, finger pointing, 17 page reports and lots and lots of media coverage around the topic of click fraud. In March of 2006 I wrote that, “It will take a community approach to solve the problem”. Since then the community of advertisers, agencies, third parties,...(read more)

Click Farms

Neil Matthews — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:26:00 GMT

This blog has been bringing you a series of posts which cover the basics of click fraud. This series is continued with an article on click farms. What is a click farm? Basically a click farm is a loosely couple group of people who are paid to click on ads. Click farms are often called pay to surf schemes and can be camouflaged behind market research, usability test and other nefarious devices to hide the real reason click farms exist; to make money fraudulently. To break down how the activity is...(read more)

Click Bots

Neil Matthews — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:16:00 GMT

As mentioned in previous posts, in this introduction to click fraud series, there are three main methods to commit click fraud, manually, via a click farm and by using click bots. This post discusses click bots. A click bot is a computer program which can be used to repeatedly click on ads in an attempt to generated revenue, in the case of publisher click fraud , or to deplete an advertiser’s budget in the case of competitor click fraud . Click bots are the high tech and most effective way to commit...(read more)

Does Google Have Enough Data to Combat Invalid Clicks?

Neil Matthews — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:34:00 GMT

This article asks the question does Google have enough data to combat the increasing invalid click problem? The thinking behind this post is based on the premise that Google only has data up to the point of the click, once the user is past the ad on Google or one of their content partners and has reached your landing page, they do not have valuable post paid click data. The data Google does have access to include: source addresses, user agent details, JavaScript enabled, cookies enabled and lots...(read more)

Competitor Click Fraud

Neil Matthews — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:11:00 GMT

This post continues the introduction to click fraud series, and discusses competitor click fraud. Competitor click fraud occurs when your direct competitors click on your ads in an attempt to place their own ads more highly. This in turn gives them a better opportunity to sell their services or goods. This type of click fraud, as the name suggests is committed by your competitors. This does not necessarily mean your traditional bricks and mortar competitors who do business in the same sector and...(read more)

Publisher Click Fraud

Neil Matthews — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:56:00 GMT

In a series of posts, we would like to bring you an introduction to the main subject areas of click fraud. In this post the topic of publisher click fraud is discussed. Publisher click fraud occurs when a website owner publishes an advertisement on their website from syndicated ad programs such as Google’s Adsense or Yahoo’s Publisher Network. Using these programs the fraudster is allowed to add advertisements to their site, which, when clicked upon by visitors, generates a payment. The fraud occurs...(read more)

Community Click Fraud Solutions

Neil Matthews — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:57:00 GMT

I would like to talk about, what I call, community click fraud solutions, and why I think they are a better answer to the click fraud problem than stand alone solutions. What is a Community Click Fraud Solution? A community solution is where lots of advertisers pool their data about invalid clicks and low quality visits and allow it to be centrally analysed. The larger the statistical sample, the better the resultant data. The data is then used to help detect and stop click fraud by developing algorithms...(read more)

New Kid On The Block

Neil Matthews — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:03:00 GMT

I am a new member of the Click Fraud Network blog, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and give an overview of the work I will be doing on the network’s blog. My name is Neil Matthews, and I am an independent click fraud consultant. I am 36 and I live in Newcastle, a small city in the north east of England near the Scottish border. What Is My Task? In short, I am taking up the baton and developing this blog to help create more of an open forum of discussion for everyone...(read more)

The Click Fraud "State of the Union"

admin — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:26:00 GMT

Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg recently published a story with dueling perspectives from my friend Shuman, of Google, and me highlighting our differing views of the click fraud problem. It got me thinking about how far the community has come toward solving the click fraud problem and how far we still have to go. It was just a little over a year ago when search engine giants – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – publicly pronounced their support for the development of industry standards for measuring click...(read more)

MFA Sites: Pay-Per-Click’s dirty little secret

Kevin Embree — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:00:00 GMT

Let me know that I've done wrong When I've known this all along… I'll keep you my dirty little secret - Dirty Little Secret, The All-American Rejects What are Made for Ads (MFA) sites? MFA sites generally have very little to no useful content and yet display a large number of pay-per-click (PPC) ads targeted at specific keywords. Large domain portfolio owners make large amounts of money when PPC ads are clicked on the sites they manage. Do MFA sites provide valuable traffic to advertisers? No, although...(read more)

Pay-Per-Action (PPA) Does Not Escape Fraud

Lori Weiman — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:38:00 GMT

Google recently announced the global expansion of it's new PPA program available to select adwords advertisers. For those unfamiliar with this terminology, PPA means pay-per-action, also called CPA, cost per action. Participants pay for traffic delivered to their sites only when a specified action occurs e.g. white paper download, online registration, lead form completion, or an online purchase through a shopping cart. The CPA model has been used for many years by affiliate marketers through companies...(read more)

Advertisers should never pay for traffic from bots.

Kevin Embree — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:13:00 GMT

T he Department of Justice and FBI released results yesterday of their ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt and dismantle “botherders” and "botnets" and have identified over 1 million new victim computer IP addresses. OPERATION BOT ROAST is a national initiative and the FBI is working with industry partners, including the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University, to notify the victim owners of the computers. The FBI defines a botnet as "a collection of compromised computers under...(read more)

Over 1 Million Potential Victims of Botnet Cyber Crime

Paul Leury — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:05:00 GMT

The department of Justice and the FBI along with the cooperation of Microsoft Corporation and the Botnet Task Force have announced the results of an ongoing cyber crime initiative. Operation Bot Roast is a national initiative that has uncovered over 1 million victim computers infected by botnet software. The FBI release states: "A botnet is a collection of compromised computers under the remote command and control of a criminal “botherder.” Most owners of the compromised computers are unknowing and...(read more)

Tom Cuthbert on Click Fraud at Search Engine Strategies 2007 Canada

Paul Leury — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:42:00 GMT

Tom Cuthbert, President and CEO of Click Forensics will be participating in a panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies 2007 conference held in Toronto, Canada. The panel will be discussing the types of click fraud while offering best practices on how to protect your pay per click campaigns and accurately audit your PPC traffic. Tom will be joined on the panel by: Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager, Trust & Safety, Google, Inc. Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing,...(read more)

Jeffrey K. Rohrs to Oversee Click Quality Discussion at Search Engine Strategies 2007 Canada

Paul Leury — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:54:00 GMT

Jeffrey K. Rohrs to Oversee Click Quality Discussion at Search Engine Strategies 2007 Canada — Jeffrey K. Rohrs, ExactTarget's Vice President of Agency and Search, will help fuel discussions about click fraud as part of this week's Search Engine Strategies 2007 Canada Conference & Expo. Organized by two of the world's leading search authorities, SES provides attendees with real-time actionable information needed to grow a business through search engine marketing....(read more)

Profiting from Click Fraud

admin — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:57:00 GMT

A day or so ago, Shuman Ghosemajumder from Google posted two blogs on his personal site questioning Click Forensics data, methodologies and motivation. While it is really unfortunate that we have to take time to address these issues, I will. It is unfortunate because Shuman and I have had numerous phone conversations, email exchanges and meetings over the past nine months and we discussed many of the topics he brought up in his post. Let me begin… 1) Many third parties have not counted clicks properly...(read more)

Everything's going to be great once we get our fraud problem solved

admin — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:59:00 GMT

In the 1800's, cattle rustlers of the open-range era were generally cowboys who had drifted into unlawful practices. They knew the cattle country and were adept at roping, branding, and trailing. These outlaws needed only to buy a few cows, register a brand, and begin branding stray cattle. The altering of brands was a frequent practice among rustlers. So, what does cattle rustling, a crime of the past, have to do with click fraud? Well, cattle rustling , like click fraud is not a crime of the past...(read more)

Correcting Google's Inaccuracies

admin — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:05:00 GMT

First, let me introduce myself by way of my recent background – I left Symantec and joined Click Forensics because I wanted to help fight the industry’s biggest problem, click fraud, which threatens the economic foundations of the internet economy. At Symantec, I was responsible for the development of all heuristic technologies used to combat online criminal activities including Phishing, Crimeware and Online Identity Theft. I was very surprised to see the posting on Shuman Ghosemajumder’s blogsite...(read more)