Thursday, December 07, 2006

Click Fraud Endangers PPC

The companies that participate in click fraud -- either by perpetuating it or allowing it to occur on their networks -- are forcing some advertisers to move from pay per click into other advertising commission schemes.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies gave the elephant in the room its overdue recognition by telling members what most of them already new about click fraud, according to MediaPost. The group also debated the issue of poor quality clicks, where publishers use deceptive means to bring people to websites that contain content that they could care less about.

This gray area should be tackled as well since their is abundance of bogus traffic. Advertisers who are still interested in playing in PPC should ask for clauses in their contracts with ad networks that guarantee that PPC costs won't stray beyond thresholds.

For example, in this case, where a PPC campaign grew in cost by tenfold with zero increase in leads generated, advertisers should be able to set a maximum such as, if clicks to leads falls beyond X, I stop paying, or at least the commission structure is adjusted.

Google et al who offer PPC will react only to the extent that their revenues are threatened. They should be willing to compromise and offer options so that advertisers don't have to leave them altogether.

By John Gartner at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

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