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Yes. This used to happen a lot on ad networks, although I personally don't know how pervasive it is now. The game is as jiggy said. Force competing ad buyers t
by pathdependent 14y ago
Yes. This used to happen a lot on ad networks, although I personally don't know how pervasive it is now.
The game is as jiggy said. Force competing ad buyers to pay for what appears to be non-productive traffic by forcing ad clicks. Since the real views are dominated by false views, the conversion rate on whatever is being sold appears to be horrible. The competitor goes elsewhere, and the scammer maintains access to artificially cheap ad inventory, since there are fewer bidders.
- dclowd9901 14y agoHow does Google prevent this? Is it simply inherently not-problematic, due to their spread of advertising?
- veyron 14y agoOverall it's hard to say whether google wins or loses overall by this. In absence of a real competitor in the search ad space, people generally will swallow google's fee hikes ...
- pathdependent 14y agoIt's a cat and mouse game. Google gets good at it; scammers get more sophisticated; google catches up again; ad infinitum. Also, in addition to the scam mentioned above -- in Google's case, targeting AdWords -- they have to deal with scammers hitting their own AdSense properties. It's a well known problem. Considering AdWords is Google's primary source of revenue, they work hard at it. For a tiny bit more directly from Google, see: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6114 http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...