4 ms·

I don’t understand: Why can’t Google just count those clicks as invalid and keep the AdSense running with no ban? If Google has the ability to detect fraudulent

I don’t understand: Why can’t Google just count those clicks as invalid and keep the AdSense running with no ban? If Google has the ability to detect fraudulent clicks, then there is no reason to ever ban any website for AdSense fraud.

rstupek 7y ago
That assumes google can actually detect all fraudulent clicks, no?
fwip 7y ago
If Google's fraud-detection isn't 100% accurate (and I'm sure it's not), then simply removing detected fraud disadvantages those who don't have any fraudulent clicks.
vidarh 7y ago
In that case you've removed the risk of iterating to try to find a way to get past their checks.
JangoSteve 7y ago
I'm going to make a guess here from my own unrelated experience trying to debug problems in live systems. It is often much easier to detect that there is _some_ unusual activity present than it is to categorically define exactly which activity is legitimate versus which isn't. Usually, this is because you can easily detect some of the anomalous behavior but not all of it. So you'll have some activity which is obviously anomalous, some which is obviously legitimate, and some which could be either. And sometimes when you've detected some that are obviously anomalous, most of the rest of the activity ends up being in the category of "could be either" with almost none left in the obviously legitimate. So from Google's point of view, I'm sure they ban the account so that they 1) don't end up paying a lot of money to users for the "could be either" activity, and 2) don't need to keep expending server resources continuously categorizing and serving the obviously anomalous traffic.
- DFHippie 7y ago
  I'm sure this is right. You don't have enough statistical mass with any click by itself, but in the aggregate you can detect fraudulent activity with a high degree of certainty. Google's plan is to make it sufficiently expensive to avoid detection in the aggregate that selling fake clicks isn't a viable business proposition. The fraudsters have inverted the game: they can't beat Google's detection algorithms, so they can't sell you fake clicks, but they can sell you protection from their fake clicks. Google's move at this point seems to be lessening the punishment for fake clicks so it's still not economically viable to sell them but also not economically viable to use them as a threat.
morelisp 7y ago
I worked on fraud detection products for several years, and in the end the only explanation I had was misaligned incentives between the publisher, advertiser, agency, ad server, and other adtech middlemen. The publisher wants to show little clickfraud to keep their rates high, but don't get the data to handle nor often have the technical resources to prevent it if they knew. The advertiser doesn't really understand the modern ad market so sees "fraud" and will go to the agency that promises zero fraud, even if they're more expensive than just eating the fraud. The ad server doesn't really care per se, and can't do much because (outside RTB optimization) the publishers are the only ones who can really do the work to prevent the fraud. But they need to keep the publisher and agency happy, so they measure it. Both the publisher and agency get unhappy if the numbers are high, no matter how true they are or how inefficient it would be to bring them down - so the ad servers are either incentivized to lie (in practice meaning, not investing much in fraud detection) or to kick publishers with high fraud rates off. (The closely-related question is why fraudulent clicks matter at all, when CPM/CPC rates should pretty quickly decline in proportion to target the same number of real people for the same price. But no matter how much we tried to sell actually useful features - e.g. no ads for your vacation planning service on a news article about a plane crash - all any customer ever cared about was click fraud!)
mmahemoff 7y ago
Detection is far from precise and the tactics are always changing, a cat-and-mouse game. With enough suspicious activity, it's safer to suspend or ban the whole account.
- georgebarnett 7y ago
  If only there were some sort of device you could use to determine if the website was a small business. Such as a telephone. Put another way, actual relationships with customers solve this problem trivially.
x0x0 7y ago
My guess: because the limit to Google getting paid isn't inventory. There's effectively unlimited places on the internet to put ads. What is limited is the dollars flowing in from advertisers. If they perceive Google Ads to be fraudulent, they bounce. Put another way: someone testing Google Ads with a $100 ad buy is (my guess) 1000x more valuable than a (new to Google) publisher someone showing $100 worth of ads. If the former experiences fraud, they leave. If the latter has their $ yanked by google, eh, there's still trillions of ad slots per day available.
- bmm6o 7y ago
  That is, customers are more important than excess inventory.
csours 7y ago
Google wants to protect the people paying them, ie the advertisers. They don't care as much about content creators etc.
nitwit005 7y ago
Presumably much of the detection is probabilistic. Some algorithm notices a bunch odd traffic from Chile hitting a French website, clicking ads at a high rate, so it all gets tagged as fraudulent. But some of that traffic was probably real. If the fraud rate is high enough, they likely can't pick out any real users anymore, as they get lost in the noise.
sdinsn 7y ago
> If Google has the ability to detect fraudulent clicks They don't.
jonknee 7y ago
That would give publishers a nice incentive to produce automated clicks themselves. There are no great answers to this issue, Google definitely falls short but full transparency is also not the answer. The amazing thing to me is Google treats almost everyone the same. From a site getting $5 a month to $5,000 to $50,000. About the only difference I've noticed is I sometimes get to have conference calls with people who have the same suggestions. I've provided Google with billions of (legit!) ad impressions over the years and wouldn't even get a phone call before being kicked off.
- twism 7y ago
  won't those publisher produced automated clicks count as invalid as well?

rstupek 7y ago

That assumes google can actually detect all fraudulent clicks, no?

fwip 7y ago

If Google's fraud-detection isn't 100% accurate (and I'm sure it's not), then simply removing detected fraud disadvantages those who don't have any fraudulent clicks.

vidarh 7y ago

In that case you've removed the risk of iterating to try to find a way to get past their checks.

JangoSteve 7y ago

I'm going to make a guess here from my own unrelated experience trying to debug problems in live systems. It is often much easier to detect that there is _some_ unusual activity present than it is to categorically define exactly which activity is legitimate versus which isn't. Usually, this is because you can easily detect some of the anomalous behavior but not all of it. So you'll have some activity which is obviously anomalous, some which is obviously legitimate, and some which could be either. And sometimes when you've detected some that are obviously anomalous, most of the rest of the activity ends up being in the category of "could be either" with almost none left in the obviously legitimate. So from Google's point of view, I'm sure they ban the account so that they 1) don't end up paying a lot of money to users for the "could be either" activity, and 2) don't need to keep expending server resources continuously categorizing and serving the obviously anomalous traffic.

DFHippie 7y ago
I'm sure this is right. You don't have enough statistical mass with any click by itself, but in the aggregate you can detect fraudulent activity with a high degree of certainty. Google's plan is to make it sufficiently expensive to avoid detection in the aggregate that selling fake clicks isn't a viable business proposition. The fraudsters have inverted the game: they can't beat Google's detection algorithms, so they can't sell you fake clicks, but they can sell you protection from their fake clicks. Google's move at this point seems to be lessening the punishment for fake clicks so it's still not economically viable to sell them but also not economically viable to use them as a threat.

morelisp 7y ago

I worked on fraud detection products for several years, and in the end the only explanation I had was misaligned incentives between the publisher, advertiser, agency, ad server, and other adtech middlemen. The publisher wants to show little clickfraud to keep their rates high, but don't get the data to handle nor often have the technical resources to prevent it if they knew. The advertiser doesn't really understand the modern ad market so sees "fraud" and will go to the agency that promises zero fraud, even if they're more expensive than just eating the fraud. The ad server doesn't really care per se, and can't do much because (outside RTB optimization) the publishers are the only ones who can really do the work to prevent the fraud. But they need to keep the publisher and agency happy, so they measure it. Both the publisher and agency get unhappy if the numbers are high, no matter how true they are or how inefficient it would be to bring them down - so the ad servers are either incentivized to lie (in practice meaning, not investing much in fraud detection) or to kick publishers with high fraud rates off. (The closely-related question is why fraudulent clicks matter at all, when CPM/CPC rates should pretty quickly decline in proportion to target the same number of real people for the same price. But no matter how much we tried to sell actually useful features - e.g. no ads for your vacation planning service on a news article about a plane crash - all any customer ever cared about was click fraud!)

mmahemoff 7y ago

Detection is far from precise and the tactics are always changing, a cat-and-mouse game. With enough suspicious activity, it's safer to suspend or ban the whole account.

georgebarnett 7y ago
If only there were some sort of device you could use to determine if the website was a small business. Such as a telephone. Put another way, actual relationships with customers solve this problem trivially.

x0x0 7y ago

My guess: because the limit to Google getting paid isn't inventory. There's effectively unlimited places on the internet to put ads. What is limited is the dollars flowing in from advertisers. If they perceive Google Ads to be fraudulent, they bounce. Put another way: someone testing Google Ads with a $100 ad buy is (my guess) 1000x more valuable than a (new to Google) publisher someone showing $100 worth of ads. If the former experiences fraud, they leave. If the latter has their $ yanked by google, eh, there's still trillions of ad slots per day available.

bmm6o 7y ago
That is, customers are more important than excess inventory.

csours 7y ago

Google wants to protect the people paying them, ie the advertisers. They don't care as much about content creators etc.

nitwit005 7y ago

Presumably much of the detection is probabilistic. Some algorithm notices a bunch odd traffic from Chile hitting a French website, clicking ads at a high rate, so it all gets tagged as fraudulent. But some of that traffic was probably real. If the fraud rate is high enough, they likely can't pick out any real users anymore, as they get lost in the noise.

sdinsn 7y ago

> If Google has the ability to detect fraudulent clicks They don't.

jonknee 7y ago

That would give publishers a nice incentive to produce automated clicks themselves. There are no great answers to this issue, Google definitely falls short but full transparency is also not the answer. The amazing thing to me is Google treats almost everyone the same. From a site getting $5 a month to $5,000 to $50,000. About the only difference I've noticed is I sometimes get to have conference calls with people who have the same suggestions. I've provided Google with billions of (legit!) ad impressions over the years and wouldn't even get a phone call before being kicked off.

twism 7y ago
won't those publisher produced automated clicks count as invalid as well?