Click Fraud — An Insider Look 87
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece going inside the world of click fraud. It includes the record of a phone call the reporter had with someone calling themselves 'Kiss' who operates many pay to click and parked sites. From the article: 'Reached by telephone, Kiss says that his registration name is false and declines to reveal the real one. He says he's the 23-year-old son of computer technicians and has studied finance. He owns about 20 paid-to-read sites, he says, as well as 200 parked sites stuffed with Google and Yahoo advertisements ... He claims to take in $70,000 in ad revenue a month, but says that only 10% of that comes from PTRs. The rest, he says, reflects legitimate clicks by real Web surfers. He refrains from more PTR activity, he claims, because it's no good for advertisers, no good for Google, no good for Yahoo."
Oh oh, slashdot is a part of it (Score:4, Funny)
"Nothing to see here. Move along."
I guess I got defrauded into clicking on a story that wasn't there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're right, that would only be funny in a story making fun of deaf or blind people. Certainly not in a story about people who click with no intention of using the page they are loading.
Re: (Score:1)
For some reason, if you try to read a story that just recently appeared on the front page, Slashdot simply gives an error message similar to "Nothing to see here. Move along." I suspect that is a syncronization issue, where the story is only half-posted.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Good on him (Score:2, Informative)
Hooker With a Heart of Gold? (Score:4, Interesting)
I seriously doubt ethics suddenly kicked in at some threshold number of sites. Instead, I would argue there is some kind of point beyond which managing so many parked domains stops getting really profitable.
Between the cheating story from a couple of days ago and this, I'd say trying to earn an honest day's pay is much harder. It is for me anyway.
Re:Hooker With a Heart of Gold? (Score:5, Informative)
Then, as people arrive either on accident or through the incompetence of the search engines, people looking to buy stuff either click on ads or (more likely and more profitably) click on google search rank, and find stuff to buy.
This creates value for advertisers (because morons eventually click and buy), so money trickles down to the parked spam page maintainers.
Google + all are making money via providing a web of spam and increasingly worthless search results. The big question is: how long can Google afford to crap where it eats?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As for worthless search results - if the outcome is the same, does it matter?
Or am I missing something?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ideally this should make all the search engines get smarter - if Google drops the ball, someone else will pick it up. I certainly don't get too many spam results in my search query answers.
It all depends on where people go to get their searches - Google might make more money 'supporting' parking sites, but if the users go somewhere else it should self-correct.
Hopefully.
Re: (Score:2)
If I had a penny for (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
I'd probably have less. I don't click on banners, but that's probably because most of those I see are advertising something I (a) view as shoddy OR (b) have no use for anyway. I'm never going to click on one of those Mortgage ads, why would I ever even think of doing business over a large financial matter with point and click ad vendor? I want to see a face and know where to find so
he claims he claims (Score:1, Funny)
That guy only claims a few hundred K.
Feh.
Re: (Score:2)
Fraud2.0 (Score:1)
Full report/page: here [360is.com].
Nick.
10-15%? (Score:5, Insightful)
Average time on a site (Score:1)
A bit ot perhaps but I'm wondering how the fellow can measure the average amount of time a user spends on a site. If I visit a site by clicking an add, his log shows 1 entry. The referer of which should be google btw so how he traces the ad display source is also a mystery. If I read his pitch and navigate away or simply close the site, that action isn't logged. He only sees the initial hit so how can the assumption be made of an average few second visit?
Re:10-15%? (Score:4, Interesting)
The upside, I guess, is that if there are a large number of fraudulent clicks, you'd probably be able to identify them as a group (say, when they come in a sudden spurt, or all from the same referrer). I'd love to see Google say, "OK, obviously you're the subject of an attack. We'll eat the cost this month and try to track down the jackass responsible, but you should probably take a month or two hiatus from advertising with us while waiting for that jackass to move on to somebody else. Sorry."
If that makes smart fraudsters try to even things out a bit, then yeah, I guess you end up just lumping it in as the cost of doing business. It kinda sticks in your craw that somebody's making something for nothing, but you pursue them the best you can and try not to dwell on it since overall you're making money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am sure with a little effort we can switch those click percentages around ;-).
Sounds fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I wonder what his expences are?
I wonder what his taxes are?
If someone where racking in that kind of cash some one might notice.
Re:Sounds fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
I also find this very interesting:
On disability since a 1996 car accident, Ballard, 36, lives with her ailing mother and her cat, Sassy. She says she works day and night running Owl-Post, a five-year-old group named after the postal system in the Harry Potter novels. Sometimes, Ballard says she takes a break at lunchtime to tend her vegetable garden or help her elderly neighbors with theirs.
OK, so she works like a dog at this job, "night and day". Interesting, but...
She claims her take amounts to only about $60 a month, noting that if she made more than $85, the government would reduce her $601 monthly disability check.
WTF??!! Why is she working like a dog, night and day, for $60 a month? She could make more money selling Herbalife shit. Clearly, this Ballard woman is lying, too--and the reporter doesn't bother to question it.
It's almost a given that both of these people are seriously under-reporting their income, cheating on taxes, etc. And you can bet that both of them are pushing WAAAY more click-fraud than they claim.
Re: (Score:2)
If you were making only $600 a month (who could survive on that) wouldn't you try to make more mon
Re: (Score:2)
1) There are ways, even on disability, to supplement your income. She could be watching children for familiy and neighbors, she could be doing low-end web design, dog-sitting, flower arrangements--there are literally a million little, tiny ways to supplement your income when you have shitloads of free time because you're stu
Re: (Score:2)
Making any amount of money, even by babysitting, is supposed to be reported and wil endanger your disability check.
Re: (Score:2)
Making any amount of money, even by babysitting, is supposed to be reported and wil endanger your disability check.
You missed the point of this, entirely. I'm sayi
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, I thought we establi
Re: (Score:1)
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SUPPLEMENT DISABILITY by making up to $85/month, why would you work at a $2 per day job in order to make your $60? Why not work at a $2/hour job, like dog sitting, or a $10/hour job, like babysitting kids for the nieghbors? That way, you could work for one week, make the maximum $85 allowed, and then spend the rest of the month reading or hanging out with your mom. WHY DO THE EXTRA WORK IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Because apparently she enjoys her $2 a day "job" and either can't or won't do
Re: (Score:2)
So I'll take that as a yes.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, probably not.
But I don't understand what's illegal about clicking ads. You can only click an ad if you want to buy something? You can only click certain links once?
Re: (Score:2)
You wouldn't? What would you do? Just stop eating, let them foreclose your house and take your kids to an orphanage? If you can't live on what you have, and there's a way to make more, you'd do it because you'd have to.
One of the people in the article is
Re: (Score:2)
Where does this stop, then? Is it OK to shoplify a couple extra bags of rice and cans of soup from the supermarket, if you get that desperate? How about just holding up a liquor store or gas station, or robbing a bank, or mugging someone on the sidewalk to take their wallet?
The point is, if
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We're not talking about ads, bub. We're talking about breaking laws related to disability insurance, and possibly tax evasion. Read the whole post, next time.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, with finger quotes around it?
Re: (Score:1)
My dad suffered a brain aneurysm and stroke in 1998 leaving his left arm 99% paralyzed (he can move the shoulder a matter of a couple degrees but that's it for the entire arm and hand) and his left leg paralyzed enough that he can't walk on his own. Further, there are documented short term memory problems, confusion, confabulation, etc. We still had
Re: (Score:2)
Click fraud hurts in other ways as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Click fraud hurts in other ways as well... (Score:5, Informative)
Be careful with that. Clicking on your own ads is a quick way to get your google account disabled. It's not worth the risk when some people have had trouble getting google to turn it back on again. They probably let people get away with it to a point because an accidental click can happen here and there, but it is against their TOS to click on your own ads.
The other mistake a lot of people make is telling others to click on their ads to support their site. Big no-no.
Yep. Manually visit ads on your site... (Score:2)
True, I'm probably being a bit paranoid. But it's not like I have any power in my advertising relationship with Google.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When your handle is "Kiss" ... (Score:2)
No it's not! (Score:4, Insightful)
No it's not. It's completely different. It's more like handing out free samples, and to your horror finding that there are people who will just take any crap they get for free, even if they're not interested. It's like sending out mail order catalogues to people who just need something to put under a table leg to stabalize it. In fact, it's completely like, oh, let's say, paying a TV network based on pulled-out-of-ass Nielsen ratings, only to find out people go to the toilet during a commercial break! Who would've thought?
, MostChoice e-mailed Google to point out 316 clicks it received in June from ZapMeta.com, a little-known search site. MostChoice paid an average of $4.56 a click, or roughly $1,500 for the batch.
There's your problem right there. $4.56 per click?! What are ya, nuts?
Record per-click (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
At my place of employment, we sell high priced bath items. More often than not our Overture (now Yahoo) price per click is around 3 to 4 dollars, especially during the holiday season. Since the product's profit margin is typically high, the price-per-click is pretty reasonable. Especially since those kind of clicks usually generate sales (unless they are fraudulent of course).
Click Fraud or Domain Parking? (Score:3, Insightful)
Click fraud is click fraud. When someone or something fraudulently clicks on advertisements to inflate the website publishers CTR and ideally stuff his pockets full of cash. This is somewhat more then slimy or immoral and is something to be legitimately upset about because it hurts advertisers *and* legitimate website publishers (who are competing in a diluted marketplace because of these automated 'clickbots').
PPC is down no matter how you look at it. Marketers, typically, jumped the gun on this new fangled advertising and spent boatloads of money 'targeting' their clientele without even having to research. Surprise. Not everyone is trustworthy. Right now google uses a blacklisting system. It is a thorny issue. If I wanted to blacklist my competitor whats to stop ME from hiring a security specialist in Croatia or Texas to start an artificial click campaign on their behalf?
Fortunately for if I considered my ad revenue...well, revenue, I'd go broke. I bleed money. But then its a good cause and my day job puts food on the table. Just keep those clickbots away from me. I can still use that nickle on the dollar!
Re: (Score:1)
Make up your mind. The article seems a little confused about the subject matter. Domain parking is slimy, but assuming you're not paying kids from India to click your ads its perfectly legit.
That's pretty much what the article is talking about. Except its not necessarily kids from India, but housewives from Indiana. Tens of thousands of people, all over the world (although many of these Paid-to-Read sites only allow people from countries most targeted by advertisers -- the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Whoever heard of "Croatian Toast"? Or "Croatian Tea"? Or "Croatian BBQ"?
For every stupid spammer there are two smart ones (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen the pattern one more than one site, for what it's worth. Amazing really, as a 2:1 ratio of smart to stupid is *way* above my expectation of humanity.
What exactly is 'legal PTR'? (Score:2)
Domain Parking Sites / Viruses (Score:3, Interesting)
A recent virus I saw would redirect most traffic to those domain parking sites, and pseudo-search engines that (with names like, searchmastertoyou115.com) seem to be nothing more than a method for fradulent click through payments.
Has anyone else seen this sort of thing?
Click fraud shouldn't even be an issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason it's an issue at all is that advertisers insist on measuring the wrong thing: the number of clicks on an ad. I suppose that's an improvement over measuring "impressions", but it's not much of one.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether or not an ad generates additional purchases of the service or product in question over and beyond what it would be without the ad.
So clickthroughs isn't what they should be measuring. Instead, they should be measuring actual purchases that occur as a result of the ad. It's kinda hard to fake a purchase.
But they're lazy. They'd rather measure the wrong thing easily than measure the right thing with difficulty.
Until they get their heads out of their asses, they'll continue to have these problems.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So you recommend advertisers place ads on your site, then they tell you how many of the people you sent to them actually bought something. And when they promise to give you the real numbers and track it accurately, etc, you are going to trust them not to under-report those numbers? Click thru is the only mutually verifiable statistic
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, name/brand recognition is one of the big reasons companies advertise.
That's why soooo much money is spent on getting the same advertisement in front of your face multiple times. On Tv, you're lucky if you see the same commercials only a couple of times during an hour long program.
I guess it's a question of wh
Re: (Score:1)
They'd never make any money.
Or if you don't actually sell anything on your website, but want people to be aware of your product(s).
Re: (Score:2)
Makes sense. Of course, at present there's no way for Google to know when you receive a purchase. But in the future, that won't be the case, because of Google's payment system.
We could get to the point where you get a big discount on your ads if you accept Google payments to pay for them, and you only get charged when ad clicks turn int
Why is this a disaster? (Score:3, Interesting)
What this really about is companies have paid for advertising assuming near 100% valid clicks, and upon discovering that they in fact only get 85% valid clicks, feel they have paid too much. The natural result, then, is going to be a 15% drop in the cost per click, both to ad purchasers, and in payout to affiliate websites which display them. Or maybe a segmented price scheme, where sites more likely to experience useless clicks will cost less per ad. The people setting up bogus ad-filled sites will see their revenue drop proportionate with their "success" at attracting bogus clicks.
Don't get me wrong. The more effective Google and Yahoo can be at eliminating fraudlent clicks, the better. But there is going to be some point of diminishing return when deciding what is a bogus click is not worth the effort, and you will just have to lower the price or risk losing ad-business.
click fraud from splogs (Score:1)
This whole thing stinks (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm Couldn't be those pop-up, pop-under and pop-in ads interrupting normal internet activity that are making consumers mad at advertisers now could it? OVER advertising is driving people away. It shows up at movies, so people rent movies or pay for on demand. Ads are added to videos and VOD. Bastards! It shows up on TV, so people record TV and skip it. Now there's talk of no-skip advertising on DVR's. Complete bastards! They're all over the radio so you have to keep switching stations or get an iPod or satellite radio. Then, of course, there's ALWAYS telemarketers regardless of how many no-call lists you're on or what service you pay the phone company to keep your name and number unlisted. Complete freaking bastards!!
Extremely suspicious that Yahoo and Google may be funding these parked websites to multiply their ad hits. "Oh, yeah, if it's not one of the parked websites we fund... I mean... uh..." OMG! The internet has some purpose besides advertising? How the hell did this happen?I just hope that whenever internet2 becomes accessible that advertising is forbidden.
Relax (Score:1)
Moralist Scum? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahh yes, this reminds me of my days as a mercenary for hire. See, I was a moralist hitman. I flatly refused to stab people to death. If someone asked, I'd tell them, "Look, I shoot them - 2 to the body, one to the head - or the deal's off. Stabbing people to death is bad for business."
Say Kiss, if you're reading this; do the world a favor and step in front of a bus when you get a chance. Your ad sites are not content, they are pollution.
Who clicks?? (Score:1)
Propaganda or what? (Score:1)
Try to imagine, what advertiser will do if they heard about this news. Of course they will think twice before they put their money for advertisement
if he can make $70000 per month without being detected, then show me. I'm also wonder.
No sympathy (Score:2)