How PPC Fraud is a Danger to Online Advertising
Richard: The other negative, is PPC fraud, and that’s something we really have to, as an industry, be aware of, and, you know, do whatever it takes to squash, to make sure that the PPC advertisers are not being ripped off, whether it’s by, you know, a group in India running scripts to Russia, or whether it’s by an individual, you know, sitting in the Midwest sitting in his basement clicking on PPC competitors--
Monte: Pages, right.
Richard: --listings. So, you know, that is--I look at that as really stealing from our pockets, because when an advertiser is paying 25 cents or 50 cents or a dollar a click, and he’s going down the road of a worthless click, that may drive that advertiser to either lower his budget or to stop advertising, and then we as legitimate domainers who are providing targeted traffic, are no longer receiving the revenue from that advertiser. So that’s something that we should all be aware of and not just shrug off as someone else’s problem.
Monte: Right, because they are just like credit card fraud, it’s all gonna be built into the fees that we’re supposed to be getting as domainers and, you know, PPC publishers.
Richard: Right.
Monte: You know, the more fraud there is, the less money we’re gonna end up getting.
Richard: Right, we don’t--
Monte: And it could kill, you know, relationships they have with advertisers that then feed the whole, you know, food chain.
Richard: Exactly.
Monte: So that is an important point, so we want to definitely be conscious of that and, you know, if we know anybody that’s ever doing that or any kinds of systems, it’s good to report it if you’re on the other end and collecting the fees for that.
Richard: Right.
Monte: That’s for sure, and then of course you mention the other side, where competitors could be, you know, falsely blowing through their competitors budgets by typing and, you know, and clicking on their advertising links on a PPC page.
Richard: Right.
Monte: And blowing through their budgets by just doing that and fraud. A lot of the systems are pretty good now in terms of their fraud detection. So I think that they have a lot more systems in place to detect things like that that are going on, but obviously it can happen with mixing IPs and being all over the world and trying all kinds of, you know, mechanisms and scripts to try and do that. But on the positive side, though, tell us some of the positive stuff on PPC advertising and what you see as a future.
Richard: Well, I, you know, I consider myself one of the luckiest people that I know. You know, having come into this domainer business and the PPC, there’s so many positives, it’s really quite unbelievable. The relative low cost of PPC advertising, when you compare how much it costs companies to do traditional advertising--
Monte: Right.
Richard: --whether it’s through print, tradeshows, you know, depending on their needs, PPC is dirt cheap. So as domainers, when we look at the bids at 25 cents or 50 cents or even $2 or $3, you know, when you compare it to the cost of getting someone into a store or getting them to stop at your tradeshow booth, or, you know, actually arrange a meeting with you, or to phone you, it’s really, really inexpensive, and that--as more advertisers discover the cost benefit of PPC, they’ll be more advertisers coming in and the bids will just keep increasing.
Monte: Right. And it is shifting dramatically this year. You know, the stats are showing that there’s huge increases in diversion or redirection of advertising budgets to online PPC type advertising.
Richard: Exactly.
Monte: Either through, you know, pay per click, CPA models, all kinds of various models that are happening all over the internet, and like you said, it is working, and there’s still a lot of room to grow.
Richard: Right. And, you know, the PPC experience from a customer’s point of view is a great one. When you compare PPC versus organic search engine listings, you’ve got spammers that are trying to rig the game at [inaudible] or whether it’s a Google or Yahoo or MSN, they’re trying to rig the game so that their free listings come up, but when someone--when an advertiser’s willing to put money to say I will pay for you to come and visit, you know, for a customer to come and visit me, they’re really putting the money on the table, they mean it, and they’re not just some fly by night, you know, a spammer who’s just trying to rig the SEO [ph] game.
Monte: Right.
Richard: So the--you know, I really believe in the PPC model from all sides.
| Previous Page | Next Page |