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It's pretty simple: this has to be wreaking havoc with Adsense - depleting ad budgets, artificially inflating CTRs, and giving website owners revenue they didn'

It's pretty simple: this has to be wreaking havoc with Adsense - depleting ad budgets, artificially inflating CTRs, and giving website owners revenue they didn't earn. This extension also exposes website owners to unfair Adsense bans for generating high numbers of invalid clicks, which can cost them two months of revenue that is almost always withheld when Google bans a site. So by using this you could be costing someone (your favorite blogger etc.) their livelihood. If you are going to block ads, block them. Don't click on them.

siegecraft 10y ago
Were there really enough people using this to cause such an impact?
- downandout 10y ago
  I don't know, but I certainly wouldn't want to be a favorite site of even one AdNauseum user. Adsense is very sensitive to stuff like this, especially in higher CPC niches.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    Why not? On the short term, you get more income from ad revenue. Who knows what the effect on the long term is going to be.
    - downandout 10y ago
      You would be banned - very fast. You would never actually receive the money since Adsense pays out on a two month delay. They are very good at identifying this type of activity and the webmaster is the one that pays the price.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Well, if that’s true, within of months, half of websites will have to search for a new ad network, and we might get a chance at less intrusive ads.
        vkou 10y ago
        ... Or, more likely, they will switch to an ad network with more obnoxious, or dangerous ads. Google, Microsoft, and their ilk are a fair bit better as ad networks then some of the less scrupulous players. Yes, the large networks occasionally serve dangerous ads. But by far and large, they have better standards then most of the fly-by-night ad networks.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Or, even more likely, they’ll actually switch to direct negotiations with the advertisers themselves, through more open and manual brokering platforms.
        vkou 10y ago
        This model works for buying advertising space on ESPN, or in a print magazine, but not on the internet. Economies of scale, need for targeting, the inability to force unskippable 5-minute-long streams of ads on users... There's a reason why everybody uses ad networks.
        kuschku 10y ago
        I’ve done all this myself before – even when running a small Let’s Play site with a few friends we negotiated with publishers directly for advertising, and managed to get quite good deals. I’m not sure why you think this is so complicated or impossible.
- notahacker 10y ago
  If someone creates a plugin with the stated goal of screwing up your clients' analytics to discourage them from paying you, do you really wait for it to work before you remove it from your platform?
- hedora 10y ago
  There is one more now. I completely forgot to install this until I saw this story this morning.
  - deadcast 10y ago
    Yeah after hearing about all of this I'm now a new happy adnauseam user! :)
- kylebenzle 10y ago
  I've been using it for a few months and more recently took to installing it on public computers and telling anyone who would listen to use it. Just put it on my Mom's computer a day ago. I alone had it on a dozen machines or so.
abhv 10y ago
How can the Adsense distinguish whether it is AdNauseum clicking or the human clicking?
- downandout 10y ago
  They probably can't, since it's an extension and thus uses the user's browser, IP, cookies etc (Adsense does use mouse tracking and other techniques that will likely flag these clicks as suspect, requiring additional analysis). Therein lies the problem. It appears to them as if someone is going and clicking on every ad, or is using an automated headless browser to click on ads. That can easily get you banned. Google doesn't care about who is doing it, they only know that it is happening on your site, and as a result will treat your site as a threat to the Adsense network.
  - ryanhuff 10y ago
    How about clicks from browsers that have this plugin installed are just not counted? That sounds simple enough.
    - downandout 10y ago
      They could certainly do that in this case, but they are probably trying to send a strong message to would-be developers of similar extensions. One is a nuissance; a thousand would be much more difficult to chase down and block. Also, if these developers really wanted to, they could distribute it directly from their site and dynamically generate the extension, packaged with a unique identifier, for each download. This would make it effectively unblockable. So simply identifying an install of this specific extension is not a solution.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      How can they tell if the browser has this plugin installed?
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
pdeuchler 10y ago
Neither you nor Google has any right, morally or legally, to tell me what to do with the content that Google willingly served to my personal property (my computer). Once those electrons cross that boundry from <Google's property> to <my property> they lose any and all control (although of course in reality they try their damnedest to retain it). If Google wants to wholesale block all IPs that cause them a problem with click fraud that's their prerogative, but manipulating the electrons that very safely reside within my own private property and then turning around and continuing to serve me ads is something straight out of a Dickens novel and I shudder to think of what happens after the second chapter.
- downandout 10y ago
  Of course you can do anything you want. I'm just telling you the potential repercussions, which include destroying someone else's livelihood. If you are OK with that, fire away. But if everyone did the horrible/harsh things that they are legally entitled to do in this world, we would be in a very bad place.
  - pdeuchler 10y ago
    If your income stream relies on millions of random internet strangers gracefully letting your code live rent free on their own personal devices then you have nobody to blame but yourself. That is assuming that sending GET requests to a public internet endpoint is a "horrible/harsh" thing to do...
    - downandout 10y ago
      Right, just like a DDoS attack is just "sending get requests to a public internet endpoint".

siegecraft 10y ago

Were there really enough people using this to cause such an impact?

downandout 10y ago
I don't know, but I certainly wouldn't want to be a favorite site of even one AdNauseum user. Adsense is very sensitive to stuff like this, especially in higher CPC niches.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  Why not? On the short term, you get more income from ad revenue. Who knows what the effect on the long term is going to be.
  - downandout 10y ago
    You would be banned - very fast. You would never actually receive the money since Adsense pays out on a two month delay. They are very good at identifying this type of activity and the webmaster is the one that pays the price.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Well, if that’s true, within of months, half of websites will have to search for a new ad network, and we might get a chance at less intrusive ads.
      - vkou 10y ago
        ... Or, more likely, they will switch to an ad network with more obnoxious, or dangerous ads. Google, Microsoft, and their ilk are a fair bit better as ad networks then some of the less scrupulous players. Yes, the large networks occasionally serve dangerous ads. But by far and large, they have better standards then most of the fly-by-night ad networks.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Or, even more likely, they’ll actually switch to direct negotiations with the advertisers themselves, through more open and manual brokering platforms.
        vkou 10y ago
        This model works for buying advertising space on ESPN, or in a print magazine, but not on the internet. Economies of scale, need for targeting, the inability to force unskippable 5-minute-long streams of ads on users... There's a reason why everybody uses ad networks.
        kuschku 10y ago
        I’ve done all this myself before – even when running a small Let’s Play site with a few friends we negotiated with publishers directly for advertising, and managed to get quite good deals. I’m not sure why you think this is so complicated or impossible.
notahacker 10y ago
If someone creates a plugin with the stated goal of screwing up your clients' analytics to discourage them from paying you, do you really wait for it to work before you remove it from your platform?
hedora 10y ago
There is one more now. I completely forgot to install this until I saw this story this morning.
- deadcast 10y ago
  Yeah after hearing about all of this I'm now a new happy adnauseam user! :)
kylebenzle 10y ago
I've been using it for a few months and more recently took to installing it on public computers and telling anyone who would listen to use it. Just put it on my Mom's computer a day ago. I alone had it on a dozen machines or so.

abhv 10y ago

How can the Adsense distinguish whether it is AdNauseum clicking or the human clicking?

downandout 10y ago
They probably can't, since it's an extension and thus uses the user's browser, IP, cookies etc (Adsense does use mouse tracking and other techniques that will likely flag these clicks as suspect, requiring additional analysis). Therein lies the problem. It appears to them as if someone is going and clicking on every ad, or is using an automated headless browser to click on ads. That can easily get you banned. Google doesn't care about who is doing it, they only know that it is happening on your site, and as a result will treat your site as a threat to the Adsense network.
- ryanhuff 10y ago
  How about clicks from browsers that have this plugin installed are just not counted? That sounds simple enough.
  - downandout 10y ago
    They could certainly do that in this case, but they are probably trying to send a strong message to would-be developers of similar extensions. One is a nuissance; a thousand would be much more difficult to chase down and block. Also, if these developers really wanted to, they could distribute it directly from their site and dynamically generate the extension, packaged with a unique identifier, for each download. This would make it effectively unblockable. So simply identifying an install of this specific extension is not a solution.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    How can they tell if the browser has this plugin installed?
    - seanp2k2 10y ago

pdeuchler 10y ago

Neither you nor Google has any right, morally or legally, to tell me what to do with the content that Google willingly served to my personal property (my computer). Once those electrons cross that boundry from <Google's property> to <my property> they lose any and all control (although of course in reality they try their damnedest to retain it). If Google wants to wholesale block all IPs that cause them a problem with click fraud that's their prerogative, but manipulating the electrons that very safely reside within my own private property and then turning around and continuing to serve me ads is something straight out of a Dickens novel and I shudder to think of what happens after the second chapter.

downandout 10y ago
Of course you can do anything you want. I'm just telling you the potential repercussions, which include destroying someone else's livelihood. If you are OK with that, fire away. But if everyone did the horrible/harsh things that they are legally entitled to do in this world, we would be in a very bad place.
- pdeuchler 10y ago
  If your income stream relies on millions of random internet strangers gracefully letting your code live rent free on their own personal devices then you have nobody to blame but yourself. That is assuming that sending GET requests to a public internet endpoint is a "horrible/harsh" thing to do...
  - downandout 10y ago
    Right, just like a DDoS attack is just "sending get requests to a public internet endpoint".