Why it is important for parked to fight fraud!

[LucidPhoenix]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_40/b4003001.htm?campaign_id=ds5

Most academics and consultants who study online advertising estimate that 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake, representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings. Usually the search engines divide these proceeds with several players: First, there are intermediaries known as "domain parking" companies, to which the search engines redistribute their ads. Domain parkers host "parked" Web sites, many of which are those dummy sites containing only ads. Cheats who own parked sites obtain search-engine ads from the domain parkers and arrange for the ads to be clicked on, triggering bills to advertisers. In all

Fraudsters are going to kill the golden goose. We need to all support parked.com and other companies who are fighting these scammers.

 

[Andrew Shaw]

They have already done significant damage. PPC's are all very low right now.

 

[GT Web]

Parked.com should ban all Chinese members (maybe except for a select few who can prove their clicks are legit). Sorry for the over-generalization, but on this forum at least it seems the vast majority of Chinese parking domains with them are scammers.

 

[Theo]

Chinese click it cheaper and smaller :-D

 

[Donny Simonton]

This acrticle is definitely interesting. They talked to us before writing this article and they were asking us some questions about click fraud. Nothing too exciting in the final article besides that click fraud is worse for some people than for others.

Just terminating all chinese partners is a solution, but not all chinese partners commit fraud or have trouble converting. The article says that the clicks being committed from Korea, I think were fraud, maybe they were legit clicks, that just couldn't be converted. There are many things to look at when a click happens that the article does not take into account.

The past week I was at a conference where a few domain parking companies were and we had some chance to talk about different things that were being committed against each of us. Everybody had different solutions to solve the problems, the best was "let Google handle it", but many were very complex.

Some of our new solutions include limiting certain types of traffic, traffic scoring, pre-approving all new signups and a bunch of internal improvements to detect fraud. All of these have made our fraud fighting on a daily basis much easier than before. But I still think we have a long way to go, before I'm happy.

You need to look at it this way, when you only have good partners, the advertisers are happier, our search partners are happier, I'm happier, and we pay out a lot more to those partners. Which in the end makes everybody happy.

Donny

 

[BrianCarr]

Well said, Don.

 

[Donny Simonton]

Brian, Thanks. It seems we are both having the same issues with our provider.

Let me know if you ever need anything.

Donny

 

[Ian]

Good info Don. I think parking service providers and google really need to work out something to ensure that advertisers get back value for their money. The results of CF are already impacting on some of us...PPC is seriously dropping! Scammers and frausters deserve no mercy!!!

 

[Samuel]

Yes, this is a wakeup call, not just for ALL parking companies but for ALL HONEST DOMAINERS TOO.

We ALL need to work out something about it before ppcs hits the bottom.

I admire Donny for taking firm actions against these fradulent scammers.

Samuel

 

[RepCentral]

To me this means that we need better geo location to be put in place.
I am talking about really good geo locating systems. Maybe IP6 can help.
This will have the effect of not banning one group or another but allow the vendor (the person paying for the click) to specify payment for clicks from a certain region.
I can sympathize, if I were a vendor, there`s no way I would pay clicks from Romania if there was zero chance for the person to pay (or me to deliver the goods or services). Some vendors may be more inclined to geo locate even stronger (only Georgia[US State] or Atlanta[US Large City]).

The good news is that vendors would probably pay even more for these better geo located traffic clicks.

We have to start thinking of the vendors and help them with tools to refine where their ads go. Then I bet they will start to pay better.
Along with this, the PPC providers need to help the domainers understand where their visitors are coming from and where the clicks are focused on.

Can you imagine how much a vendor would pay if you told him you have a domain in which 99% of your visitors were located within 100 miles of him and were interested in related products. If you have good traffic then it would be a gold mine for all parties and I bet mucho dinero he wouldn't care that the domain is a PPC site as long as it was tasteful and attractive.

For generic by region limited sites, the geo locating would mean multiple vendors would get ads in an exclusive sense by regions. That would be even better and if PPC suppliers can deliver this, then every one will be happy. For example "steaks.com" would deliver "Steak and Ale" in the southern part of US and Potsdale Park Restaurant for Southern England. Neither vendor would see each other on the domain and both would be happy with their visitors.

There are tons of options here and the evolution of PPC sites can really help but they have to want to improve and make more money.

 

[Beachie]

This article is laughable. Firstly, the guy has spent $2m since 2003, and is complaining about 5% loss. Try getting that kind of effectiveness in traditional print, radio and TV media advertising. It's obviously working well enough for him or he wouldn't have been persisting for three years!

Secondly, he's complaining that he's getting fraudulent clicks from countries like Syria and Korea - has he not seen the geo-targetting option that stares you in the face every time you edit your Google campaign?!

The power of targetted Internet advertising has the traditional media running scared, including BusinessWeek, as this article proves.

 

[denny007]

Accounts cancelled @ parked was mostly NOT a fraud, but everyone was sending there CN traffic, because they simply paid a lot for it. Same in my case - I sent legitimate typo-traffic, no fraud. Account got cancelled (later I had some emails with Don and he re-instated the account).

 

[March2005]

That is an interesting article. It is long, but I recommend reading it all.

 

[David G]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_40/b4003001.htm?campaign_id=ds5

That was the best article I have ever read on the subject of ppc fraud.

 

[Beachie]

That was the best article I have ever read on the subject of ppc fraud.

I agree that the issue of click fraud needs to be highlighted, but that article was far from unbiased. Like I said above, how can an advertiser spend $2,000,000 over three years and NOT SEE the geotargetting options in AdWords? You don't think BusinessWeek have a hidden agenda in scaring advertisers back to their medium?

Also, am I the only one who thinks it's weird for a named, US-based, "mom and pop" couple to openly admit to making $5000 per month in click fraud? How did the journalist actually come into contact with these people?! Is there a Click Frauders section in the YellowPages? Are they members of Clickaholics Anonymous? Perhaps he found them at a Repetitive Strain Injury self-help group? Or did he just walk the streets, randomly asking people until he found some?

 

[denny007]

how can an advertiser spend $2,000,000 over three years and NOT SEE the geotargetting options in AdWords?

There is also option to switch-off "search partners" (parking, ppc search engines) and content network. I usually bid high for Google results, much less for "search partners" and very low for "contet network" - and it works well, I pay approximately same money per lead.

 

[pleasedelete]

This article basically makes it look like PTR sites combined with domain parking is a huge problem. I think it may spin off some problems for targetted search. I'm pretty sure that domain parking is given search engine status (meaning an advertiser can't opt out of it when they choose not to have ads shown on contextual sites). I think that if enough advertisers complain about domain parking, then Google might make an option for publishers to opt out from showing their ads on parking pages. That could lower bid prices significantly for ads shown on parking pages.

Why do people bite the hand that feeds them?

 

[David G]

...I think that if enough advertisers complain about domain parking, then Google might make an option for publishers to opt out from showing their ads on parking pages. That could lower bid prices significantly for ads shown on parking pages. Why do people bite the hand that feeds them?

That's not so bad if you are more into YPN or Adsense as that scenario would no doubt make clicks on 'real websites' much more valuable.

 

[denny007]

I'm pretty sure that domain parking is given search engine status (meaning an advertiser can't opt out of it when they choose not to have ads shown on contextual sites).

It is imho status "search partner" and advertisers can opt-out