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If you think about it from Google's perspective, its working like its supposed to. Overzealous fans going on click-fests are a problem for Google's customers (

If you think about it from Google's perspective, its working like its supposed to. Overzealous fans going on click-fests are a problem for Google's customers (the advertisers). Automatically banning that account and showing those ads elsewhere completely solves that problem. Simple load-balancing at work. What more do they need to do?

ajross 14y ago
That's what I was thinking reading this. Whether it is due to "overzealous fans" or not, click fraud is click fraud. Google (really any advertising broker) can't make a business out of selling fake "clicks", they have to sell views by real users. There has to be a solution to prevent these clicks from registering, and they picked the easy one.
RandallBrown 14y ago
If Google knows the clicks are no good, why do they have to ban the user instead of just voiding the clicks and not giving them any money?
- chimi 14y ago
  Because they never want to have to deal with the potential problem ever again. They want to move forward and creating a machine moving forward with all the ducks in a row is better than constantly re-evaluating the potential fraudsters -- however small that potential may be. Remember, in this case, Google is the customer and the content provider is the vendor. Google has decided not to be those vendor's customer anymore.
pkteison 14y ago
The problem is the wrong person is punished, and the content creator has no recourse, and it nets out worse for everyone. Somebody who used to be rewarded for producing good content no longer is so they stop. Google's content gets worse, advertisers venue for selling their ads gets worse, consumers have less good content to watch. Nobody wins. Would you want me to be able to shut down your business with a relatively simple action for me to take, without you being able to take any recourse, without you even having any relationship with me? It has terrible externalities with seemingly innocent actors, imagine what could be achieved with a bit of malice, as you will find among competitors.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  It might be more of a supply and demand thing. Google thinks it has an endless supply of small bit-players willing to supply content so it doesn't value any of them. They might be right. It really hasn't cost them anything so they haven't spent anything trying to fix it.
chanon 14y ago
I think the fact that anyone can get anyone else's adsense account banned by clicking their ads everyday means it's not really working the way it should. Competitors can just kill each other's revenue sources. But, I'm guessing the really big channels will get protection from that, while the small guys would get banned.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is true, the attitude of 'click a few times to send some money' (which really is sending the advertisers money) is always a bad idea. And as long as you realize the advertiser is the customer and the guy uploading videos is the product, well you don't leave a bad carton of milk on the shelf do you? Its a sad way to treat the content producers. From the big picture however the 'bad actors' figured out that there was a 'hole' in the AdSense cover which you could pull millions out of, it was create a bunch of AdSense accounts in a bunch of accounts and distribute clicks through them. Reasonably easy to automate and provided a good return on the investment. So independent video producer with a modest stream? Or part of a clickfraud ring? Hard to tell apart. But the customers really hate seeing a bunch of clicks that don't result in any conversions. The solution will end up with advertisers paying less per click (we're already seeing that in Google's reports) and/or switching to a per-impression model, or on the outside chance a flat fee over time model which is analogous to the magazine model.

ajross 14y ago

That's what I was thinking reading this. Whether it is due to "overzealous fans" or not, click fraud is click fraud. Google (really any advertising broker) can't make a business out of selling fake "clicks", they have to sell views by real users. There has to be a solution to prevent these clicks from registering, and they picked the easy one.

RandallBrown 14y ago

If Google knows the clicks are no good, why do they have to ban the user instead of just voiding the clicks and not giving them any money?

chimi 14y ago
Because they never want to have to deal with the potential problem ever again. They want to move forward and creating a machine moving forward with all the ducks in a row is better than constantly re-evaluating the potential fraudsters -- however small that potential may be. Remember, in this case, Google is the customer and the content provider is the vendor. Google has decided not to be those vendor's customer anymore.

pkteison 14y ago

The problem is the wrong person is punished, and the content creator has no recourse, and it nets out worse for everyone. Somebody who used to be rewarded for producing good content no longer is so they stop. Google's content gets worse, advertisers venue for selling their ads gets worse, consumers have less good content to watch. Nobody wins. Would you want me to be able to shut down your business with a relatively simple action for me to take, without you being able to take any recourse, without you even having any relationship with me? It has terrible externalities with seemingly innocent actors, imagine what could be achieved with a bit of malice, as you will find among competitors.

noonespecial 14y ago
It might be more of a supply and demand thing. Google thinks it has an endless supply of small bit-players willing to supply content so it doesn't value any of them. They might be right. It really hasn't cost them anything so they haven't spent anything trying to fix it.

chanon 14y ago

I think the fact that anyone can get anyone else's adsense account banned by clicking their ads everyday means it's not really working the way it should. Competitors can just kill each other's revenue sources. But, I'm guessing the really big channels will get protection from that, while the small guys would get banned.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is true, the attitude of 'click a few times to send some money' (which really is sending the advertisers money) is always a bad idea. And as long as you realize the advertiser is the customer and the guy uploading videos is the product, well you don't leave a bad carton of milk on the shelf do you? Its a sad way to treat the content producers. From the big picture however the 'bad actors' figured out that there was a 'hole' in the AdSense cover which you could pull millions out of, it was create a bunch of AdSense accounts in a bunch of accounts and distribute clicks through them. Reasonably easy to automate and provided a good return on the investment. So independent video producer with a modest stream? Or part of a clickfraud ring? Hard to tell apart. But the customers really hate seeing a bunch of clicks that don't result in any conversions. The solution will end up with advertisers paying less per click (we're already seeing that in Google's reports) and/or switching to a per-impression model, or on the outside chance a flat fee over time model which is analogous to the magazine model.