Google Gets Undue Credit for Ad Conversions
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Google undeservedly recieves credit for many clicks on the online ads it delivers via its search engine, but Microsoft wants to put a stop to that.
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There&#8217;s a long article today by Kevin Delaney in the WSJ (sub req&#8217;d) about Google&#8217;s efforts to woo advertisers into its print and audio ads tests: There have been some hiccups. Mr. Schmidt said in October that in tests of print-ad sales, &#8220;the first iteration didn&#8217;t work.&#8221; Google executives have given the system a major overhaul [...]
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Measuring time on page instead of hits is likely to hurt Google but help YouTube.
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Only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.
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Businesses and developers can work with the rival to Google's ad programs on a free or subscription basis.
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The joy of web app advertising...sob Google is rolling out yet another way of pumping advertising onto the web with Gadget Ads, and this time it reckons it can trick you into thinking it's real "content", whatever that is.â¦
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Google, on Wednesday disclosed  data showing that while its pay-per-click Web advertising  system is under regular attack from fraudsters, virtually all  such tricks are automatically detected, rebuffing critics who  say its online ads are a magnet for fraud.
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A controversial practice enables some domain name registrars to make short-term gains from registering domains that others might want. Now Google -- the vehicle for their revenue -- says it wants to do something about that.
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GoogleÂ is testing a new advertising format that it hopes will make people spend more time looking at ads online, and even embed them in their own Web sites.
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Inside Adsense announces that the recently launched (for beta testing) referral scheme for Adwords advertisers&#8217;Â  products will soon be available to all Adsense publishers in referrals-supported languages. Dubbed as Referrals 2.0, the new scheme allows Adsense publishers to direct traffic from their sites to various advertised products of Adwords clients and earn on a cost-per-action [...]
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InfoWorld - Google&#160;is testing a new advertising format that it hopes will make people spend more time looking at ads online, and even embed them in their own Web sites.
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Plus: Google apps for your site, and HP's pretexting debacle.
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Today in Google&#8217;s Public Policy Blog, Alex Kinnear, Group Product Manager traces the history why Google decided on buying out ad serving company, Double Click. The controversial buyout plan got Google receiving some flak from search engine competitors. Microsoft for one was not happy about the deal. After tracing back the history of ad serving and [...]
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Google's dependence on ad revenue makes it particularly vulnerable to an economic recession, some experts say -- but others point out that the nature of its advertising may insulate Google from any downturn.
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A civil suit filed in Florida by Dell and its Alienware subsidiary is giving insight into the enormous sums of money that can be made by creating Web pages full of advertising links.In October, Dell sued a group of domain registrars, alleging the companies bought more than 1,100 domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics, such as &quot;dellbatterrogram.com&quot; in order to put advertising links on the pages.The practice, known as&#160;typosquatting, is illegal. It&#39;s intended to draw unwitting Web surfers to pages with URLs (uniform resource locators) that are similar to legitimate sites, and then redirect them to other sites. The owners of these Web sites get revenue from advertising referral programs every time a link is clicked.The defendants -- Belgiumdomains, Capitoldomains, Domaindoorman, Netrian Ventures, iHoldings.com, Juan Pablo Vazquez, and 10 unnamed defendants -- deny the claims. Dell contends the businesses, most of which are registered outside the U.S., are shell companies engaged in collusion.Dell sought a court order in November to freeze their assets so the money from their operations wouldn&#39;t disappear. Last month, the court amended the freeze order, and contained in the details of the new order are clues to just how much money the defendants may be raking in.Google, whose AdSense advertising-placement program was used to monetize the domains, was ordered to hold in a special account the first $1 million collected on behalf of the defendants each month. The second $1 million that accrues in the account every month will be given to the defendants. If more than $2 million accrues in one month, the money is split between the defendants and the Google account.Google takes a cut of AdSense revenue, which shows that it in part benefits from this kind of abuse of the Internet. However, Google recently announced it will not allow AdSense campaigns on &quot;kited&quot; domains.Kiting is a technique used by some rogue registrars to avoid having to pay the fee for using a domain. The domain is repeatedly registered and unregistered within a five-day Add-Grace Period. The grace period, which applies to a handful of TLDs (Top Level Domains) was intended to let people get a refund of their domain registration fee if they made a spelling mistake.Kiting often goes hand in hand with another abusive practice, &quot;domain tasting.&quot; A domain name is registered and monitored during the grace period to see if it gets sufficient traffic to pay for its registration fee. The domain owners then get refunds on the sites with low traffic. However, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers&#160;(ICANN) is considering keeping a $0.20 fee&#160;it normally refunds as part of the registration process in order to stop tasting.Dell has accused the typosquatter defendants in its lawsuit of both practices and is claiming their profits as well as $100,000 per infringing domain used.Google&#39;s antikiting policy doesn&#39;t apply to domain tasting, meaning the company will still potentially benefit from Web sites intended merely for advertising. A Google spokesman said Tuesday, however, that Web sites are supposed to have legitimate content in order to be accepted into AdSense.Other information in the court documents shed light on the economics of monetizing domain names. Dell contends the defendants control some 1 million domain names, and believes they also have used at least 64 million other unique domain names.When the court froze the defendants&#39; assets in November, it also froze their ability to stop renewing domain names that weren&#39;t producing enough revenue to justify the registration fees. Since the defendants controlled so many domain names, the automatic renewal of those names -- likely around 3,000 domains a day -- cost them $20,000 per day.However, the defendants successfully petitioned the court to cancel domains that were generating less than $8 a year in revenue.&quot;These [figures] tell us that there&#39;s lots of money in tasting, and it&#39;s a game of huge volume,&quot; wrote John Levine, a consultant and author of &quot;The Internet for Dummies&quot; on his blog.The Dell case continues in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.&#160;
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Blog: Google now lets advertisers see exactly which web sites their ads appear
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(InfoWorld) - Google will provide more data and tools to help its advertisers assess and combatÂ click fraud, a controversial practice that is the biggest enemy of the otherwise highly popular and profitable online advertising model known as pay per click. With most of its escalating revenue coming from pay per click ads, Google has a vested interest in addressing click fraud, which happens when someone clicks on these ads with malicious purposes. Because in this format advertisers pay every time someone clicks on their ads, companies sometimes click on competitors' ads to drive up their ad spending. Another common click-fraud practice is for Web publishers to click on their sites' ads to increase their commissions. "We're trying to provide advertisers as much transparency, understanding and control around this issue as we can," said Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety. Thus, starting in March, Google plans to allow its advertisers to "blacklist" certain IP addresses for whatever reason, such as suspicion of click fraud or simply because their clicks never lead to a sale, he said. "IP filtering is going to allow advertisers to say: 'If I believe a given IP address isn't producing productive traffic for me, then I don't want to ever show my ads to that IP address,'" Ghosemajumder said. Also this month, Google intends to launch a Web site "resource center" devoted to click fraud, where the company will post information and tutorials to educate its advertisers about this issue, which Google prefers to call invalid clicks. Since July, Google hasÂ reported to advertisersÂ the number of invalid clicks to their campaigns, as well as what percentage they comprise of all clicks. Later this month, Google plans to beef up these reports with another figure: the amount of money Google didn't bill the advertiser by detecting and discarding invalid clicks, he said. Finally, in the second quarter, Google will provide advertisers with a standardized interface for reporting click fraud complaints that lead to an investigation, he said. Estimates about the incidence of click fraud vary widely, with some people saying it affects a negligible amount of ads and others suggesting that upwards of 40 percent of all clicks are malicious. Less than 10 percent of clicks on Google ads are deemed invalid, Ghosemajumder said, declining to be more specific. Most of those are proactively detected by Google, and only 0.02 percent are declared invalid as a result of advertisers' complaints, he said. Google prefers to use the term invalid clicks because it maintains that not all incidents of click fraud are malicious in nature, but can also come about from innocent user behavior, such as some people's tendency to always click twice on a link. ClickForensics, which provides technology and services to combat click fraud, estimates that in last year's fourth quarter 14.2 percent of clicks were fraudulent. Advertisers have taken Google, Yahoo, and other providers of pay per click adsÂ to court over the issue of click fraud, alleging that these companies haven't done enough to curb the practice. Google reached aÂ landmark settlementÂ of a click-fraud class action lawsuit last year which many described as a big victory for the company. A loss could have likely cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, but instead Google managed to settle the case for $90 million. As part of the deal, all but several hundred Google advertisers forfeited their right to sue the company over click-fraud instances dating back to 2002. The settlement also allowed Google, which admitted to no wrongdoing or liability, to only pay a third of the settlement in cash -- all for plaintiffs' attorney fees -- with the rest taking the form of credits for advertisers. Of the $60 million allotted for ad credits, many estimate that only a fraction, possibly no more than $12 million, will be claimed. Â