Impression fraud
is a special case of click fraud. The prototypical impression
fraudster is the competitor who resorts to unfair means
to gain an advantage. His primary motivation is to reduce
the ranking of his competitor, and then save himself
money by inserting his own ad at a lower rate. Another
possible motivation may be a hit-and-run operation (random
act of violence). Given the potentially devastating
consequences it could have on a person's website return
on marketing investment, it could even be a disgruntled
employee.
To illustrate the mechanics and motivation of Let's
call this individual Grinch. Assume that Cindy Lou (our
protagonist) has an advertisement for Christmas trees
running on google ad words. Cindy Lou's Pay Per Click
advertisement has been doing rather well, getting a
lot of click throughs. She doesn't have to bid a whole
bunch to rank high on the sponsored links because the
position is a function of bid price and Click Through
Ratio. She is getting decent traffic through her PPC
campaign. The traffic is very focused, a large
number of visitors end up converting. The trees are
moving off the lot and things are shaping up rather
fine. Grinch too has an advertisement running. Unfortunately
(for Grinch), his advertisement is not getting a lot
of clicks. In fact, his CTR is so dismal that he has
to pay ever increasing sums just to keep it displayed.
His ROI is not that great given his higher cost base
for the PPC bid. He does not like the fact that
Cindy's campaign is doing rather well. Not one bit!
So he does something devious.
Grinch toggles off his own PPC ads and then does a lot
of searches for keywords appropriate to Christmas trees.
He searches on google, and asks his friends to search
too. Only he never clicks on Cindy Lou's ad. He runs
his campaign for a few days, and Cindy sees her CTR
go down and she is at the bottom of the heap. It's now
down to a level where Grinch sees a level playing field
and steps in toggling his PPC ad back on. Grinch is
suddenly back in business, while Cindy has to keep up
somehow. Remember, it's almost November and she has
to sell off her trees rather soon. Anecdotal
evidence suggests that the loss from this activity may
well run into thousands of dollars for larger advertisers
(maybe when Cindy Lou Trees Inc. goes nationwide).
For impression
fraud to be effective it has to happen at relatively
high volumes (usually accompanied by a traffic
spike ). The result will be lots and lots of impressions
and a very low CTR. Also if its done for competitive
reason, Grinch may identify himself (if you are really
keeping tabs on things) because he has to switch his
ads on and off. Reporting it to Google immediately will
help but will not get you any compensation. Google will
still charge you more money for ad placement in a certain
position. The impression fraud attack is extremely insidious,
because even though the consequences can severely affect
the return on investment ( ROI), Google's policies don't
allow refunds to take place. The take home point is
that you have to keep tabs on the traffic, including
traffic that is not getting to your site. If you are
using a web metrics product, ask your vendor if they
have the ability to upload your Ad words data
into your web metrics account. You have to reconcile
the data from what your historical CTR has been
to your current CTR, and your costs. It will help to
level the playing field, calculate your effective ROI,
and may even allow you to look at alternate plans that
are now available from Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves.
For More Information,
please visit http://www.sofizar.com/impression-fraud.php |
