Qualtiy of Traffic Issue

[9888]

I have just had 3 accounts that I am involved with cancelled because of quality of traffic issues.

These accounts have been ticking alone nicely for many months with no problems, no questions of fraud, just that as for many people, a % of my traffic comes from China, and as one might assume, not all of them buy things.

I have a couple of serious problems with this.

1: It seems that this should be a problem that Yahoo sort out, if a user is clicking from China why still pay 20c/30c and even more for the click?

2: Is it a person parking domain names responsibility to guarantee results? I would have though they would just lower the payout of clciks from China to 0 or a few cents as Google seem to do.

4: If they are aware that this traffic does not "convert" then why have Parked/Yahoo been paying out on it for so long, and does this mean that the poor advertisers for the past 3-4 months have been getting shafted?

It would seem to me that the standard/fair thing to do is to filter out the clicks/visitors that are not suitable at the PPC provider or at Yahoo, it certainly is not something that I have any control over.

I am extremely dissapointed with the way this has happened and I feel it is impossible for a domain parker/investor to offer any sort of "quality assurance" on their traffic, my understanding is that it should be the add providers responsibilty to be checking the origin of visitors and deciding if the adds displayed clicked should be paid for.

If this is a Yahoo originated problem I would be very nervous about being on of their PPC Advertisers.

Cheers Donny and Parked, thanks for the good times.

I hope you decide to make it clearer to your customers that they need to guarantee the quality of their visitors in the future, rather than it being random type in traffic, which is what I always understood PPC parking to be!

[Acro]

Yes, this is one thorny issue indeed. Any other PPC providers that demand this kind of conversion to sales? So that we avoid them.

[typist]

1: It seems that this should be a problem that Yahoo sort out, if a user is clicking from China why still pay 20c/30c and even more for the click?

2: Is it a person parking domain names responsibility to guarantee results? I would have though they would just lower the payout of clciks from China to 0 or a few cents as Google seem to do.

4: If they are aware that this traffic does not "convert" then why have Parked/Yahoo been paying out on it for so long, and does this mean that the poor advertisers for the past 3-4 months have been getting shafted?

I agree, it would be really helpful if traffic aggregators / parking providers could shed some light on this. I've been a ppc advertiser for years before I became a publisher, and as an advertiser, I care deeply about traffic quality and conversion.

As a publisher, I'd like to help advertisers achieve their goals, but this isn't always easy without any communication. Too often, conversion data and expectations seem to be treated as a closely guarded secret. An open dialogue about targets, expectations and conversion may be helpful for all parties. Just my two cents.

[Donny Simonton]

Conversion scoring/traffic quality is a thorn in my side as well. But it is something that Google has been doing for a while and now Yahoo and some of the other providers are using something similiar.

Some type of scoring system must be used to determine if the traffic being sent is good, bad, or fraudulent. Sometimes you can tell when you are being hit by CaCa, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you think traffic is awesome, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes based on the type of keywords you have depends on the type of score you will have. It's not a game, it's a formula that does work. It doesn't say that your traffic is fraudulent, it just tells us the quality of your traffic.

When I see that somebody sends 1,000 clicks to the advertisers and not a single one of them converts, it's not the advertisers fault. That means it's crappy traffic. Sometimes we can work with the partner to try and improve the traffic quality, sometimes we can't it just depends on where the traffic is coming from and what are the actual domains.

One thing about conversions to remember, it's not always a sale that has to happen. Sometime it's just filling out a form or getting to a certain page and some advertisers do not pass this information back to Google/Yahoo. Some industries 100% of the advertisers pass the data back, some 1% pass it back. Personally I do not know but I assume the higher the price for the keyword the higher the percentage of the advertiser pass the data back.

We personally pass the information back to Yahoo/Google on our sites, and we watch our conversions quite a bit. There are certain parking companies that we convert very well on and some I wish I could block from sending us any traffic.

With all of the recent click fraud lawsuits popping up, I think all PPC companies will start locking everything down very soon. I think Yahoo/Google will have to start really watching who is using their systems including Adsense, Y Publisher, and parking companies. There is a lot of money in this business, unfortunately there is also a lot of fraud as well.

Donny

[JEsports]

When I see that somebody sends 1,000 clicks to the advertisers and not a single one of them converts, it's not the advertisers fault. That means it's crappy traffic.

Donny

Donny,

I agree with some of the statements you made ... however i must argue the above quoted point you make.

Firstly, i have spent thousands in marketing my wife's real estate business and helping her get on her feet in this vast market. As an advertiser, i feel that it is MY job to convert the traffic i pay for. If a person/customer goes to a website that is related to what I am selling or offering, I pay that website to send me that person/customer. Once the customer gets to my website, it is my job to get them to buy or "convert" by offering the best deals or most intising offers i can .. which is hopefully better than my competition. Yes this is very hard to do, but it is business .. and that's how competition works.

Secondly, as a customer/shopper .. just because i go looking for a product or service on the net .. does not necessarily mean i am going to buy at that time. I might visit shopping.com or dealtime.com and they send me a list of advertisers that are selling the product im looking for. I will go to there site and say, hmmm not quite the price im looking for .. but maybe i will bookmark the site and check back next month. Does that mean my "personal" traffic is crap to them or am I potential customer in the future? .. in that case shopping.com or dealtime.com etc .. did there job for the advertiser. I might look at hundreds of these sites a day and never buy a thing .. or i might come back and buy something later which i do often.

[olebean]

Its a simple issue...

If my account was terminated I would pass it to the soliciors/lawyers, if they couldnt/ wouldnt provide prove I would sue the gits!

[Acro]

The real issue is the accusation of non-corversion to sales. Period. Not whether the traffic comes from China or Mars, for that matter. I would not want to use a PPC provider that uses a feed who demands that I meet a certain quota of sales on their advertiser's end. It's not and should not be my problem to be a salesman for XYZ, Inc. It's the fault of the PPC provider to accept such rules from their feed and advertisers. I think certain PPC providers have ridden a high horse lately, what with the millions that we've been making them with our traffic. It's a form of extortion. We need more co-operative PPC companies, to manage and control our own set of rules.

Domainers of the world, unite!

[Donny Simonton]

Acroplex -
Do you know that Google does the same thing? The difference is that when partner A sends crappy traffic, all partners for that parking company get a lower cut. I'm not saying that's why certain providers all of a sudden start paying less, but that's the way smart pricing works.

You complain to the parking company because you aren't making anything, their choice is to lose you as a good partner or go can the guy sending crappy traffic.

[Donny Simonton]

Firstly, i have spent thousands in marketing my wife's real estate business and helping her get on her feet in this vast market. As an advertiser, i feel that it is MY job to convert the traffic i pay for. If a person/customer goes to a website that is related to what I am selling or offering, I pay that website to send me that person/customer. Once the customer gets to my website, it is my job to get them to buy or "convert" by offering the best deals or most intising offers i can .. which is hopefully better than my competition. Yes this is very hard to do, but it is business .. and that's how competition works.

The difference here, is that as a partner of a parking company, you are not sending every click to the same advertiser/site. But the most important part is that if you are an advertiser and you convert 1 in 50 on average, Yahoo/Google know this. So if I send you 500 clicks, in theory, it should get 10 conversions. So you look at the overall average, for all traffic that you receive.

The other part is that on a partner level if you send 1,000 clicks to advertisers, if you have multiple domains, you will probably send it to about 800 different advertisers. So some advertisers may not convert well, some may convert easily.

Donny

[DNjet]

Sooner rather than later the PPC model as we know it will cease to exist in favor of Pay Per Action models, and probably each click confirmed by advertisers as valid before any funds are paid, the handwriting is on the wall. The result will increase CPC on quality converting traffic simply because of supply and demand.

[David G]

Sooner rather than later the PPC model as we know it will cease to exist in favor of Pay Per Action model.....

I can not see that happening as according to market research a buyer will have on average 6 or 7 contacts with the seller before he makes a transaction. Rarely will anyone take action on the very first visit to a website, be it ordering or even filling out a form.

After several visits the eventual buyer often will typein the url directly anyway since they remember the website name and not use the advertised link. On high ticket items the order is often placed over the phone (with more than 1 call involved over several days), usually an 800 number. Sometimes they order by email with no tracking code involved. Often times the buyer deletes the affiliate link even if ordering thru the ad url as they are uncomfortable with someone making money from them.

With all those obstacles to Pay Per Action I do not see it ever getting popular since the advertiser would be sending likely free traffic and real business with no assurance of getting compensated.

[JEsports]

Sooner rather than later the PPC model as we know it will cease to exist in favor of Pay Per Action models, and probably each click confirmed by advertisers as valid before any funds are paid, the handwriting is on the wall. The result will increase CPC on quality converting traffic simply because of supply and demand.

And this is all fine .. however .. if this does happen .. then the people who are supplying the traffic need to "see" the conversion data from the advertiser first hand. Right now its happening on some parking services, "behind the scenes". Personally i have never had any problems with any parking services .. and don't use many either as no need to change a good thing. However, overall, i see the issue as a big debate.

[maxo]

PPC is like Advertising on TV. You pay for your time and nobody will refund you if people do not buy your products. So I do not understand why it should be different in this case.

I agree that fraud should be dealt, but not like this harming publishers.

[DNjet]

Trader - correct , and the bids on keywords will be adjusted accordingly depending on the PPA model choosen, lead, sales etc..many large advertisers will eventually jump ship on PPC for avenues such as cj.com , it would not make sense for google and yahoo to ignore entering the PPA model , and once they do in full mode then the advertisers will go there for sure.

JE - yes it is starting to go on behind the scenes , and some not behind the scenes, as in the model DS is using with revenue.net , I think PPC will remain around as an alternative model for advertisers but it will be the cheap advertising route , as in .01 and .02 clicks for the domain owners.

Just my opinion

[Acro]

The difference here, is that as a partner of a parking company, you are not sending every click to the same advertiser/site. But the most important part is that if you are an advertiser and you convert 1 in 50 on average, Yahoo/Google know this. So if I send you 500 clicks, in theory, it should get 10 conversions. So you look at the overall average, for all traffic that you receive.

The other part is that on a partner level if you send 1,000 clicks to advertisers, if you have multiple domains, you will probably send it to about 800 different advertisers. So some advertisers may not convert well, some may convert easily.

Donny

Do you have a clause in your T&C's that excplicitly refers to a minimum conversion rate - click to sale ratio - for your advertisers?

If you don't, you need to talk to your lawyers asap. If you do, I would not do business with you.

[cayars]

I'm curious about something Donny. You have a field in your system that I user can fill out to send traffic to a different location.

Why don't you turn off the domain or redirect the problematic traffic you see for particular domains to this location the user entered?

This in affect would solve your "problem" traffic and allow accounts to not be terminated. This of course is assuming it's not fraudulent traffic.

Carlo

[Donny Simonton]

I'm curious about something Donny. You have a field in your system that I user can fill out to send traffic to a different location.

Why don't you turn off the domain or redirect the problematic traffic you see for particular domains to this location the user entered?

This in affect would solve your "problem" traffic and allow accounts to not be terminated. This of course is assuming it's not fraudulent traffic.

Carlo

In many cases when possible we do exactly what you are talking about. But when somebody only has 1 domain or it's fraudulent, there isn't much I can do.

Donny

[9888]

One more question Donny:

What happens to the balances in the accounts, will it still be paid out when the next payments are made?

I have got the message that you no longer want my low quality traffic and have moved it on, but given there was nothing underhand on my part, apart from having no hopers visitng my domains, which is impossible to control from my end!

Cheers.:beer_yum:

[Donny Simonton]

One more question Donny:

What happens to the balances in the accounts, will it still be paid out when the next payments are made?

You mean when somebody is terminated? We also alert our providers of the termination and tell them to give the money back to the advertiser.

I have got the message that you no longer want my low quality traffic and have moved it on, but given there was nothing underhand on my part, apart from having no hopers visitng my domains, which is impossible to control from my end!

You received that email if more than 10% of your traffic was from specific regions. All other traffic will be allowed.

Donny

[GT Web]

I have just had 3 accounts that I am involved with....

Isn't that a red flag right there?