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I get that it's a hard problem. I don't think this is about "reviewing all search results". This is about reviewing the people who are paying you money to run

I get that it's a hard problem. I don't think this is about "reviewing all search results". This is about reviewing the people who are paying you money to run ads. In this case, there were likely plenty of signals of fraud. This advertiser was advertising to multiple domains, and each domain was relatively young. Those domains would likely also have had low organic traffic. Here are some candidate solutions. I haven't thought these through deeply. This is spur-of-the-moment thinking. A multibillion dollar company could hopefully do better than me. 1 - Google could review new paid domains. In this case, the fraudulent site posted contact information, including the phone number for the real business! Phoning that number would have revealed the fraud immediately. 2 - Google could generally validate the identity of its advertisers. Advertising for a business? Cool, let's see some incorporation or tax paperwork. 3 - Google could impose a cost for being fraudulent. Want to run ads? Cool, we'll take a $1,000 retainer for each top-level domain you want to advertise. When you close your account, you can have it back after a 90-day waiting period. If we bounce you for fraud, we'll keep it. I used to work in ad tech. We reviewed the people we entered into financial relationships with, because we knew their bad behaviour could affect us. Google could do similarly.

giarc 4y ago
I don't disagree that a trillion dollar company should be able to prevent this, but to be facetious, do they want to? To your suggestions... 1- who is going to phone that number? They have millions if not billions of advertisers. Also, don't they want new businesses (with likely newly registered domains) to come and start advertising and paying money? 2. see above but "who is going to review the paperwork" also, easy to create fraudulent documents 3. Most small restaurants probably spend $100 on ads, likely aren't going to advertise if they need to put down a bunch of cash. To Google, this just looks like a restaurant coming to advertise. So what if it has the same name. Two Dominos pizzas in my town could both set up ads and they should accept them. I totally get why this is bad, but I think it would be very difficult for Google to control in a way that the OP twitter user is suggesting. This isn't an old school ad business where you meet with clients. Google is a trillion dollar company because you can run ads in 1 minute of work.
- cldellow 4y ago
  Yes, this would impose costs on Google and decrease their conversion rate of new advertisers. I agree they wouldn't want to voluntarily do it--but I was responding to the perceived impossibility of it. Another option: deal with it by franchising--small potatoes customers would go through a middleman. The middleman would charge a markup, and be the one whose reputation or money was on the line, and so have incentives to prevent fraud. Google does something similar for AdX relationships currently--big publishers can go direct, midsize publishers go through a third party middleman. Again, I'm just spitballing ideas here. If Google wanted to be a better steward, I believe they could be. I'm not even saying they're obligated to do this, I'm just saying I believe they could try harder to vet advertisers.

giarc 4y ago

I don't disagree that a trillion dollar company should be able to prevent this, but to be facetious, do they want to? To your suggestions... 1- who is going to phone that number? They have millions if not billions of advertisers. Also, don't they want new businesses (with likely newly registered domains) to come and start advertising and paying money? 2. see above but "who is going to review the paperwork" also, easy to create fraudulent documents 3. Most small restaurants probably spend $100 on ads, likely aren't going to advertise if they need to put down a bunch of cash. To Google, this just looks like a restaurant coming to advertise. So what if it has the same name. Two Dominos pizzas in my town could both set up ads and they should accept them. I totally get why this is bad, but I think it would be very difficult for Google to control in a way that the OP twitter user is suggesting. This isn't an old school ad business where you meet with clients. Google is a trillion dollar company because you can run ads in 1 minute of work.

cldellow 4y ago
Yes, this would impose costs on Google and decrease their conversion rate of new advertisers. I agree they wouldn't want to voluntarily do it--but I was responding to the perceived impossibility of it. Another option: deal with it by franchising--small potatoes customers would go through a middleman. The middleman would charge a markup, and be the one whose reputation or money was on the line, and so have incentives to prevent fraud. Google does something similar for AdX relationships currently--big publishers can go direct, midsize publishers go through a third party middleman. Again, I'm just spitballing ideas here. If Google wanted to be a better steward, I believe they could be. I'm not even saying they're obligated to do this, I'm just saying I believe they could try harder to vet advertisers.