Google on ‘click fraud’
p2p news / p2pnet: p2pnet is but one of many, many (who nows exactly how many) sites ‘Do No Evil’ Google is refusing to pay after we in good faith hosted the company’s Adsense nonsense.
Google accused p2pnet of deliberately falsifying clicks, a completely unwarranted and totally false claim. It knowingly tried to embarrass us online and without warning, cut the Adsense ads. (Not that they were bringing in much. But it all counts.)
And Google took this draconian step without explaining how it had arrived at its erroneous conclusion, or answering any of our emails wanting to get to the bottom of things.
Now, declares Google ceo Eric Schmidt, quoted in the ZDNet Digital Micro-Markets blog, there’s a “perfect economic solution” to click fraud:
“Let it happen.”
Oh?
“Schmidt discussed how the pay-per-click advertising model is inherently ’self-correcting’ in regards to click fraud during a Stanford University event last March,” says the story, going on”
“Schmidt extolled the enhanced trackability of the online pay per click advertising model versus pay per impression models, while acknowledging ’smart but evil’ people try to ‘go around system’.”
Schmidt’s “perfect economic solution” analysis for click fraud suggests that any Google charges to advertisers for fraudulent clicks would naturally be viewed by Google advertisers as a ‘cost of doing business’ with Google, to be factored into advertiser ROI calculations,” says ZDNet, adding that Google engineers think it ’s “great fun” to try and get ahead of click fraud but, “because it is a bad thing, because we don’t like it, because it does, at least for the short-term, create some problems before the advertiser sees it, we go ahead and try to detect it and eliminate it.
“Part of what we do is we try to decrease the time, and increase the rate, at which the auction automatically detects that this is a bad click, naturally.”
‘Answering hypothetically’
But, waffles the official Google blog, “Eric made clear from the very beginning that he wasn’t describing our approach to click fraud and was answering hypothetically and he introduced his answer by saying: ‘Let’s imagine for purposes of argument that click fraud were not policed by Google and it were rampant …’ The ‘let it happen’ excerpt followed, in which he discusses the economic forces that can retard click fraud. Eventually the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks. In other words, the value of the ad declines. So, over some amount of time, the system is, in fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution, which is to let it happen.”
But, “he made clear that we don’t take that approach, by adding that click fraud is ‘a bad thing and because we don’t like it, and because it does, at least for the short-term, creates some problems before the advertiser sees it, we go ahead and try to detect it and eliminate it.’ He also said, ‘In Google’s case, we worry about this a lot and we have a number of technical engineers who think that this is great fun to try to go ahead of this and get ahead of it.’
“The fact is that Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system, and to prevent those clicks from ever reaching an advertiser’s account.”
Oh. That’s OK then. Now we’re clear.
Meanwhile, screw the numerous sites your laughing engineers wrongly cite as perpetrators of click-fraud, huh, Eric?
Also See:
deliberately falsifying clicks - Google, p2pnet: Adsense saga, June 16, 2006
blog - Google CEO on click fraud: ‘let it happen’ is perfect economic solution, July 9, 2006
blog - “Let click fraud happen”? Uh, no., July 14, 2006
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May 23rd, 2007 at 7:59 pm