The Dark Side of Online Advertising-Business Week

**scottle** · 09-25-2006, 12:45 PM

Anyone read this article in the Current issue of Business Week? Not very complimentary.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...ndex_top+story

**Domainmaster** · 09-25-2006, 01:02 PM

Yes I read it and I think it is a bunch of BS written by someone who obviously doesn't understand the Domain business, PPC Advertising, or the concept of Virtual Real Estate.

What I don't get is why they are so worried about click fraud anyway. It's just a cost of doing business if you ask me. How come a large corporation has no problem spending millions of dollars for a thirty second ad on a popular show or the Super Bowl, when that ad is far from targetted. Most people get up and go to the bathroom and very few are interested in buying the product.

At least with something like Google Adsense or Search, it is very useful in connecting business owners/advertisers with consumers who are actually interested in their product/service. I'm sick of being bombarded with ads I could care less about on TV. I do most all of my buying on the internet and use search and ppc ads frequently. So what if a few of the clicks are bogus.

**stockshark** · 09-25-2006, 01:31 PM

Originally Posted by Domainmaster

It's just a cost of doing business if you ask me.

I totally agree, and I think large companies realize this. From reading this article it appears to be small business owners, who wouldn't have the budget to advertise on TV anyway. Also, nobody is forcing them to advertise through pay per click, you can still find sites willing to place banner ads for a flat fee. Personally I don't think this will hurt the PPC model that much, it will just cause it to come up with better controls and tools, although it might send more dollars back to flat fee banner ads and that type of advertising...

**katherine** · 09-25-2006, 03:17 PM

It's one more article that will cast a bad shadow on our industry.
I think we should not underestimate the danger that comes from PPC fraud because it affects us as domainers. All it would take is a major confidence crisis among advertisers and revenue would topple.
It all boils down to the % of fraud. Up to a certain level I can agree it is sustainable and can be written off as business costs...
10 years ago spam was already there, in limited amounts. It was an an annoying issue but not a major problem.
Today more than 50% of E-mail is spam and now we've got a real problem. Spam is thriving because there are economic motives. Simply put spam PAYS. As long as it pays spam will be there. Same for click fraud. As long as some people can profit things will only get worse.