Defining Clicks and Click Fraud

abb_road writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have banded together and created the Click Measurement Group, with the goal of creating a standard definition for a 'click'. The group will have some access to the three companies' click data, although the access won't be unlimited. The move comes in response to advertisers who claim that click fraud is costing them almost $1 billion dollars a year, and who have hit Google and Yahoo with lawsuits alleging negligence in fighting click fraud."

Marketspeak Translation (and Full text)

[vmxeo]

How grave a concern is click fraud for advertisers?

There's a host of stuff out there that concerns marketers that needs to be cleaned up. It includes impression measurement, it includes click measurement, standardized contracts, so you know for us it's all a big picture of stuff that in order for the maturing of the medium needs to be done. And how big a deal is click fraud? We don't like anything that would give marketers concern, especially if it's a solvable problem.

Translation: We've got a lot of stuff to sift through, which we haven't even started on yet. But it's ok, 'cause the results would only scare people unnecessarily. ANd we don't want that

Advertisers say the search engines haven't done enough to combat fraud.

Search produces results. End of story. It produces results. My guess is that these advertisers would like to see any concern that might seep into the view that their management has, or anybody else. Because they know in their heart of hearts that this really works. It's in everybody's interest to clean this one up.

Translation: We haven't actually asked. We just kinda assumed it's a problem.

What exactly have the search companies pledged to do?

We're going to go forward with developing click-measurement guidelines that will address at a public level all the sort of subsidiary issues of that, which includes fighting globally invalid clicks and also click fraud.

Translation: We had a few ideas scribbled out on a cocktail napkin... but we lost it when one of the associates spilt her apple-tini all over it.

Did Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and others involved promise to give you unlimited access to their click data?

They have committed the time, the energy, the resources to see this through to a final industry guideline--one that's accepted by not just themselves, but by agencies and by marketers and by the advertising industry overall. Does that mean that they would bring to bear some data and other insights? Absolutely. Could they still have proprietary solutions of their own? Yeah, stuff that might be protected by their own (intellectual property), but they have committed the resources to help.

Translation: First, the asked who we were, then they laughed at us, then said absolutely not. We're coming up with some sort of backup plan though. :(

Media need to operate with transparency. There's marketers and agencies who are paying money for things. They need to know, what are they paying for? What does that look like? What is the standardized way in which that's being counted? And also ultimately, is that audited? Can we validate that (using a third party)? And so, in an industry that is now going to be close to $16 billion this year, it should be relatively obvious that we need to operate with the principles that all media operate under.

Translation: Ok, we just came up with our contingency plan: if we keep asking, and some point they'll have to say "yes", right?

What's the timeframe for creating the click-measurement guidelines?

I've learned through experience with standards I never make a commitment to timelines. It took us 14 months to do the ad-impression guidelines, which is kind of the last big one that we did. We don't really know what we don't know at this point. We could come to a conclusion and say "Geez, we're pretty close. There aren't any outside data--let's get it done." Or we could say, "Hmm, I don't think we're comfortable with that issue, let's dig deeper."

Translation: We have no idea.

What bodies will be involved in auditing, using your definition?

That will be really up to the industry to define that, so in the process of developing measurement guidelines we'll also be developing audit guidelines. That's how we did it in the impression guidelines, so I fully expect to do the same thing.

Translation: We're waiting for

Re:Definition of a `Click':

[rainman_bc]

In Firefox, right click on the link, click on `Open Link in New Tab'.

Just middle click on the link. Faster. ... and in Windows, middle click closes the tab. Although in Linux it refreshes the tab.

Stupid default settings for FF that are not the same across OS's...

Re:Definition of a `Click':

[CottonThePirate]

No, I advertise my photography company on Google. You pay per click, worse, you bid per click so pay more for fancier keywords. My photography keywords tend to cost anywhere from .05 - 1.00 per click. Try wedding photography, want to be the first one on the google list? Try $8 or $9 PER CLICK! I seem to have about a 5-10% conversion ratio of clicks to sales, so that's $100 per sale in advertising for a wedding photographer. This is part of the reason I do mostly animals and non-getting-married people. I once heard on PBS that the average consumer spends like $500 a year on advertising. (ie. you buy a coke for $1.00, and coke spends .05 of every dollar they get on advertising, so in their model you just spent .05 on advertising). As a small bidniz owner I'm saddened by all you punks that ignore my ads :-p just my .02. By the way, go to my site and click all the "get a camera free" google links, also click on them on any site you see, then maybe we can put those scammers out of business. I wish google had a "no skeezy" advertising option.

There already is a definition for a click

[The Real Toad King]

It's the level 2 DOM event that is triggered after the mouseup event if the position of the mouse hasn't moved a set distance (varies from OSes/Desktop environments) after the previous mousedown event.