Google Mounts PR Campaign for Click Fraud Practices

Google is involved in a click fraud defensive PR campaign, while continuing to refuse third-party independent click fraud audits, says Donna Bogatin at ZD Net.

Google, which says it loses $1 billion a year to click fraud, has announced that it will soon let advertisers specify that they don't want ads purchased through Google displayed to users at specific Internet Protocol addresses, strings of numbers that identify computers or other devices on the Internet.

Sounds like to me like this takes a lot of responsibility for preventing click fraud away from Google, and there's no way that can be good for advertisers.

Advertisers might ban IP addresses if they suspect that users associated with specific IP addresses are clicking on their ads with ill intent, something known in the industry as click fraud. Blocking IP addresses could thwart competitors or fraudsters.

The problem: IP addresses change all the time, and click fraud pros know how to manipulate them. When I sat next to a well-known spammer last year at a Search Engine Strategies lunch, he bragged that Google doesn't shut him and others like him down because they make too much money through spammers.

This spammer, from Germany, said he and his buddies are not just tolerated, but loved by Google because they generate so much money for the big G. He'd flown to Search Engine Strategies in his private jet, and he claimed that he makes several thousand dollars a day in click fraud earnings.

Google forgoes roughly $1 billion in revenue due to click fraud according to ZDNet. Some click-fraud-fighting companies believe the practice is rampant, forces advertisers to pay an extra $16 billion a year, and that up to half of all ad clicks are fraudulent, according to Ben Charmy at Marketwatch.

Other new click-fraud initiatives Google announced include providing advertisers with a resource center to address questions and for Google to make available a standard way for advertisers and others to report click fraud.

The bottom line: Buying keyword advertising in Google is expensive, tricky, and, increasingly results in click fraud. I highly recommend blog advertising as an alternative. It's obscenely cheap, remarkably targeted, and, with the right creative, yields great results.

There's no doubt that some percentage of clicks are fraudulent, yes. But search is still the most effective form of advertising and study after study confirms that fact.

While I won't dismiss the value in blog advertising, it's absolutely no substitute for search. How many businesses have been built exclusively on the strength of a blog ad campaign?

You are going to see more and more business built on blog advertising.

I personally have used blog ads to drive one million uniques to a site in 4 weeks; to achieve clickthru rates as high as 2.3% at less than 50 cents a click; and to create buzz around blog ad campaigns.

This hits on a few different important issues. The need for third-party independent click fraud audits is important for both advertisers and bloggers.

Bloggers need to be able to verify that Google is properly tracking clicks and filtering out the fraudulent ones. Without that verification, I've moved away from Google Ads to other advertising services.

The discussion in the comments is also very important. Making sure that your site shows up well in searches should be an important part of ones marketing strategy, as should being sure that you make smart use of blog ads to drive traffic and buzz at appropriate times. It shouldn't be either/or, it should be both/and

If you're a publisher that's simply looking for traffic (i.e. clicks) to a website, then sure, blog advertising can be an effective marketing channel. Maybe even on par with search.

But if you're an e-tailer looking to generate sales (e.g. your "vacuum" example from another post), there's absolutely no way you'd be able to meet your volume goals by advertising on blogs alone.

Finding qualified traffic isn't very difficult to do, unless of course, you're trying to do it at scale. And that seems to be the challenge for nearly every marketer I know. There's no way any one of them could substitute blog advertising for search marketing and continue to meet their volume goals (i.e. stay in business) on an ongoing basis.

Peter: Wanna bet on that?
B.L.

First, let me make sure you're clear on my position. As previously mentioned, I am not dismissing the value in blog advertising. In fact, my company buys a significant amount of it through programs like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and other blog networks. We've run any number of campaigns where "contextual" has worked on it's own. We've also seen how it can improve the performance of a "search" campaign when the two channels are integrated together.

With all that said, there's no doubt in my mind -- and more importantly, in my database -- that search is more effective than blog advertising. I have millions of data points that confirm my position.

So, yeah, I'm happy to take you up on that bet :)