Impression Spam Worries Google Advertisers

[sebastian]

Yikes - this causes me tremendous worry and hopefully many of you can understand this concept. As an Adwords client myself spending anywhere from 1k-2k/day, I am extremely worried about this.

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3485386

If you are an Adwords client, please read this and learn the additional ways that scams can equate to a loss of money and time.

What really concerns me is this Google product manager discounting the whole thing and acting as if Google can stop any and every thing that happens.

I am sorry, but i call Bull _ _ _ _! I think it's arrogant for this product manager to simply dictate that it's "not a problem" ...yet, after complaints were made the company removed some of the "false" impressions that it said earlier "was not a problem".

If you have read my posts over the years, you know how frightened I am of click-fraud and my predictions that it would really hurt the industry. Not only has click-fraud gotten tons of attention in '05, we now have impression spam to contend with....

Even though doing away with CTR factors in ad display would 100% eliminate impression spam, Google response to such a move was to say that there CTR policy makes it better for users and advertisers.

That's a bold and all-inclusive statement that could easily be argued. Can I get a witness from all my Overture folks. We all know overture performs better and conversion rates tend to be far better.

...overture, i might add does not consider CTR. It's pay to play and that's how pay-per-click should be. Do we really need Google babysitting relevancy on ads? NO. Let the market dictate this aspect of spend itself.

That article was more than just opening our eyes to a new Google scam - it goes a long way in showing Google's arrogant attitude to customers (i.e. Google's product manager discounting the whole thing.) and their inability to respond to such 'attacks' with admission that perhaps they CAN DO WRONG, nobody's perfect - and fix the system.

ARRRGH!

[AussieWebmaster]

Good catch and definitely a good read....

[Discovery]

I didn't find the product managers comments too far off base. It didn’t sound as though they had discounted this problem altogether. Of course inflection is an important part of a persons comments that gets lost in articles. How they emphasized certain points would better help me understand how seriously he/she took this matter. Thanks for pointing out this issue though, I have also seen spikes in impressions in the half mill magnitude, most of the time it came with a spike in clicks and conversions, but I will keep a closer eye on it thanks to you.

At any rate, I do like Google's CTR. It took a bit of time to get my arms around how our ad strategies impacted the CTR and our rankings, but once I did it has paid off very handsomely.

I cant say the same for Yahoo/Overture.
We squeeze enough quality traffic out of Overture to come out ahead of the game, but their interface makes doing business with them very painful. The HUGE lag times in ad changes, reports that come out a day and half late, and most often inacurrate is extremely frustrating. The traffic at Overture is good and of the clicks we convert our sales are good, it is the interface into that traffic that is holding us back in a big way. Sorry this is getting off subject.. but pain fuels many words.

I hope that Google can solve this issue without discarding CTR.

Cheers,

Lead Discovery

[AussieWebmaster]

I cant say the same for Yahoo/Overture.
We squeeze enough quality traffic out of Overture to come out ahead of the game, but their interface makes doing business with them very painful. The HUGE lag times in ad changes, reports that come out a day and half late, and most often inacurrate is extremely frustrating. The traffic at Overture is good and of the clicks we convert our sales are good, it is the interface into that traffic that is holding us back in a big way. Sorry this is getting off subject.. but pain fuels many words.

Lead Discovery
Overture has all sorts of impediments. They better address a bunch of them or MSN is going to have an easy job taking over the number 2 spot.

[sebastian]

...so say something that means something AussieWebmaster. [re:comments above] Your right, Overture does have some UI issues and DTC problems a'plenty ...but conversions are much better than Google in my experience as well amongst many of the folks i communicate with daily.

but, better conversions or not - it's still a better model to keep the engines OUT of the ad selection criteria process. it only makes sense that the highest paid ad should be #1. ...regardless of CTR. this is the point of the thread and discussion. SHOULD CTR BE CONSIDERED? ...i say, NO.

CTR is not a bad thing per se, but BECOMES a bad thing when its effects can be manipulated. you can't manipulate someone's MAX CPC ...but if one can manipulate the CTR, Google no longer has control - the scammers do.

For Google to say in one breath that it's not a "major concern" and then refund someone who complains is hypocritical.

Am i alone in noticing a lot of frustration with Google policy since they lost darling status and went IPO??? ...the toolbar snafu, trademark case losses, microsoft-esque monopolistic tactics. This situation just adds fuel to the fire.

I bet Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management would change his tune if it were his money potentially being spent erronously... it's easy to call something "no big deal" when you're on the revenue reception side of the fence.

[AussieWebmaster]

Sebestian I actually get far better ROI from Google even with the play you have to do for positioning. With the right creative and a large enough Max bid you can get the top spot and then the increase in the CTR helps lower the CPC.
Obviously there are more 'tire kickers' coming through from the top spot, but once there you can work the other end to help improve conversion.
Overture on the other hand has less conversion from the top spot for my area, though that is directly attributible to the fact that most of the converting traffic I have found to be from MSN and they have their own Featured Listings which pushes you down to number 3.
Thankfully I usually have that spot too - so I have the measureables to assess both.
The turnaround time of Overture's editorial staff is a major drawback. The limit of one creative to a keyword slows your optimization process and confuses results. The reps are jumping ship faster than they can get accustomed to their newly assigned accounts. I have had three in three months - all have left (one who I know left due to internal politics).
Internationally they have lost some ground also by being dropped by AOL.
Many of the people who are still there seem to think "take it or leave it" - we have what you want - and to an extent that is true - but if MSN rolls out with a friendlier approach they could capture enough to rock the Overture boat.
Their publishers will be ripe for going with someone else if they see the bids dropping as competitive bidders move to MSN or with more places to get traffic sees a drop in CPC.

[tonerman]

I use dedicated landing pages to track all PPC campaigns so my stats are 100% accurate. I see 10-15% of my daily spend going to the same user clicking on the same ad with the same search term everyday. Please view my post http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4019&highlight=tonerman

This irritates me and probably costs me (and you) a lot more money than impression fraud.

[OptimizeOnline]

but, better conversions or not - it's still a better model to keep the engines OUT of the ad selection criteria process. it only makes sense that the highest paid ad should be #1. ...regardless of CTR. this is the point of the thread and discussion. SHOULD CTR BE CONSIDERED? ...i say, NO.

CTR is not a bad thing per se, but BECOMES a bad thing when its effects can be manipulated. you can't manipulate someone's MAX CPC ...but if one can manipulate the CTR, Google no longer has control - the scammers do.

For Google to say in one breath that it's not a "major concern" and then refund someone who complains is hypocritical.



Like AussieWebmaster, I also find that a greater ROI can be achieved over Overture when ads are optimised to take advantages of the benefits of CTR. So, I'd certainly not like to see the CTR element from Google AdWords removed - not for now anyhow.

That said, I do believe Google do have a growing problem with click fraud and impression fraud and it is likely they will need to consider alternative ways to measure relevancy for ads.

Measuring how long visitors are away from the Google SERPs may be one way. With so many Google toolbars installed on PCs these days they most probably have a means to consider this as an element of relevancy at least.

[AussieWebmaster]

I think that the day we get a phone bill like report each month these problems will be more easily addressed. I find it hard that someone is combing through 200 million daily impressions or double that when content is added in...

[andrewgoodman]

I have definitely seen impression spam perpetrated by hot-headed competitors. This can kill some of your best, high-performing words. Of course this would be affecting all advertisers on a given page, so Google really needs to watch out for this.

[AussieWebmaster]

I have definitely seen impression spam perpetrated by hot-headed competitors. This can kill some of your best, high-performing words. Of course this would be affecting all advertisers on a given page, so Google really needs to watch out for this. True except for the guys who pause their accounts before the impression fraud.... then drop back in with great CTR and pay less for top spots.

[sebastian]

It's a catch-22.

If we don't discuss it, Google stays comfortable and can wish the issue away - however, we also run the risk of teaching new wanna-be spammers and scamers a new trick.

AAARGH!

I would like to state again however that the whole point to my post is whther or not CTR should be considered. Do any of you really believe you'd get less conversions if CTR was abolished? i think not.

Once again I must say that if a component has the potential to hurt more than it helps, it should be reconsidered. In my experience, I have had awesome CTRs and I want to establish this upfront as the rally for its removal has nothing to do with the quality of my ad placement. I place well because my company is in the top 5 of my industry with a strong brand - BUT - that also leaves me wide open for all the "playa-haters" that would like to come after us and attempt to thwart our efforts.

Little Minnie's Ebay Ad probably has nothing to worry about, but when you have tremendous levels of traffic and lots of popularity, you become more of a target...

[Discovery]

I would agree that it may depend on the industry your in as to which network performs better. We work in the debt, mortgage and insurance lead generation business, which is of course extremely competitive. Google outperforms Overture almost 2-1 in every category. Clicks, conversions, click cost and conversion to a sale (we track if the debt, mortgage or insurance company closes the deal).

The benefit to overture's pay for position system helps us in the sense that we can turn it off and turn it on again without penalty. With Google you have to very careful doing this.

The downside is that with Overture any newbie to PPC can put up ridiculous bids to attain top position, it may take a week or so, but they soon find out that they are getting their clocks cleaned and pull out. Then the next 2 or three newbies fill in. Point being I see A LOT of irrelevant companies filling top positions in our industry on Overture. This hurts our effectiveness there in all categories. Does this happen on Google, sure, but to a far lesser degree which I believe is attributable to CTR.

We view Overture as incremental lead generation. It provides some return, but nowhere close to what Google can do.

I would love to be proven wrong and double my business.

Lead Discovery

[tonerman]

We view Overture as incremental lead generation. It provides some return, but nowhere close to what Google can do.

Agree 100% with this statement in my field - computer products ecommerce site. We have extensive Overture overlap with Google campaigns and Overture does not come close to Google volume. Nice, but...

[skyhigh]

We have had this problem for over a month on one of our top keywords. All of a sudden one day every competitor disappeared, except for one. Ever since then it has only been that one site showing. Of course I contact google, and they do absolutely nothing! I have no problem with CTR, but google needs to use historical performance rather than just real time performance. We have used this keyword for years with about 5% CTR, and now all of a sudden we can't manage .03%. Its stupid. It seems the only way to have an level playing field is to fight fire with fire since google won't do anything.