Quote:
| Originally posted by Who-Wiz [b]Good posts: headsurfer writes -...For a competitor, time would be better spent improving their product, instead of clearing the battle field for their other competitors. Increasing someone's marketing costs artificially and lowering their ROI doesn't seem like a practical use of anyone's time to me still. Then again, I don't understand script kiddies much either, even when talking to them at length. \\ WIZ // |
This may be so but is far from reality. There are zillions of geeks out there sending out viruses. We all get them most every day. It takes time and effort making and mailing viruses. Yet they do it as they consider that form of destructive vandalism fun, mentally rewarding and challenging for the geeks that they are. They would rather waste time on that than making money and improving their product (if they even have one).
It's amazing destuctive geeks have not electronically vanadalized the PPC advertisers yet. It would seem relatively easy for someone to write a Script which automatically scans Overture and Google looking for high priced PPC bids (say over $10) and automatically clicking on them a number of times each day. It could be done from IP cloaking, anonymous or various IP addresses and computers to avoid any red flags being raised. Not that they would spot them anyway.
I see safesys and others have said there are safeguards against abuse involving cookies and IP addresses, etc. However, I doubt if they are in place or really work. Why would Overture only charge you for 1 click per day per IP when in fact the average buyer visits a website on average 6 times before they place an order?
If someone uses the PPC link to visit more than once a day it would seem well justified to charge for each visit, even if it's obvious it's the same computer or IP. Plus, I have seen no evidence they limit the number of PPC's per IP anyay. I am fairly certain that is not being done. If it is, please show some proof.
Potential cases of PPC vandalism could easily cause zillions of dollars in damage every day, far more damage than caused by email viruses.