Behavioral targeting or behavioral targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual.
For Example, a visitor is searching for home loan and he landed your site, your site offers other type of loans also like personal loans, car loans, and mortgage loans etc. Suppose visitors clicking only home loan links then here comes behavioral targeting to serve him all the ads offering home loans. It will increase the CTR of ads.
Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements to the users who are most likely to be influenced by them.
Behavioral targeting techniques may also be applied to content within retail or other e-commerce website as a technique for increasing the relevance of product offers and promotions on a visitor by visitor basis. Again, behavioral data can be combined with demographic and past purchase history in order to produce a greater degree of granularity in the targeting.
In behavioral targeting, the most important issue is starting with the right data. There is a hypothesis of what are the 10 to 15 available data points you can use that can significantly impact the value of an audience member. It is not about data mining, or amassing data, but on focusing a collection of high-value data points.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
How do I sell advertising on my website?
How do I make money from my homepage? How can I sell banner ads? How do I get started in online advertising?
On the surface these all seem like simple questions. The reality though is that there are a whole range of options out there available to you. No single one is the correct answer. Let's simplify things a little bit by assuming you have one banner ad per page on each page of your site.
There are essentially four ways to sell advertising on your site:
1. Flat Rate – The advertiser pays you flat rate to display their advertising on your site for a certain period of time.
2. CPM – Cost Per Thousand. The advertiser pays you a certain rate for every 1,000 ad impressions.
3. CPC – Cost Per Click. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on one of their advertisements.
4. CPA – Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on their ad and continues onto their site and performs an agreed upon action. This may be purchasing a product, registering for a newsletter, or any other action that has value to the advertiser.
Regardless of how you choose to sell ads on your site, the way you will track the value of each ad unit will be by calculating your effective CPM. If you sold your banner ads on a flat rate basis for $1,000 and served 100,000 pages, your effective CPM for that ad unit is $1,000/100 (since CPM is per THOUSAND page views) = $10 CPM. If you sold your ads on a CPC basis and got 200 clicks at $0.25 each or $50, your effective CPM is now $50/100 = $0.50 CPM.
As a publisher, your goal is to maximize the value you receive from each web page of your site. This value is called the RPM or Revenue Per Thousand Page Views. RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales.
"RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales".
To calculate RPM you add up the effective CPM of each ad unit on a page. For instance, if you had three ad units on a page selling for $3, $5, and $10 effective CPM's, then your RPM would be 3 + 5 + 10 =$18 RPM. Another way to calculate RPM is to take the total dollars earned from your site and divide by the number of page views. For instance if you know you made $5,000 in one month and displayed 100,000 page views, your site wide RPM is $50.
We increase RPM over time by selling a variety of ad types and using a variety of targeting criteria. To get started, first you must attempt to establish an RPM floor for your site. This serves as the minimum amount you expect to earn from your site.
Author By :Fritz Rollins
On the surface these all seem like simple questions. The reality though is that there are a whole range of options out there available to you. No single one is the correct answer. Let's simplify things a little bit by assuming you have one banner ad per page on each page of your site.
There are essentially four ways to sell advertising on your site:
1. Flat Rate – The advertiser pays you flat rate to display their advertising on your site for a certain period of time.
2. CPM – Cost Per Thousand. The advertiser pays you a certain rate for every 1,000 ad impressions.
3. CPC – Cost Per Click. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on one of their advertisements.
4. CPA – Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action. The advertiser pays you a fee every time a user click on their ad and continues onto their site and performs an agreed upon action. This may be purchasing a product, registering for a newsletter, or any other action that has value to the advertiser.
Regardless of how you choose to sell ads on your site, the way you will track the value of each ad unit will be by calculating your effective CPM. If you sold your banner ads on a flat rate basis for $1,000 and served 100,000 pages, your effective CPM for that ad unit is $1,000/100 (since CPM is per THOUSAND page views) = $10 CPM. If you sold your ads on a CPC basis and got 200 clicks at $0.25 each or $50, your effective CPM is now $50/100 = $0.50 CPM.
As a publisher, your goal is to maximize the value you receive from each web page of your site. This value is called the RPM or Revenue Per Thousand Page Views. RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales.
"RPM is the basic metric online advertising operations executives use to gauge the health of their ad sales".
To calculate RPM you add up the effective CPM of each ad unit on a page. For instance, if you had three ad units on a page selling for $3, $5, and $10 effective CPM's, then your RPM would be 3 + 5 + 10 =$18 RPM. Another way to calculate RPM is to take the total dollars earned from your site and divide by the number of page views. For instance if you know you made $5,000 in one month and displayed 100,000 page views, your site wide RPM is $50.
We increase RPM over time by selling a variety of ad types and using a variety of targeting criteria. To get started, first you must attempt to establish an RPM floor for your site. This serves as the minimum amount you expect to earn from your site.
Author By :Fritz Rollins
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Are ads ready to become content?
There have always been great ads, but is the quality of advertising great enough to rival content? Geoffrey Ramsey, Carol Kruse and Sean Finnegan debate the question of the day.
Consumers don't like ads, the idea of advertising or even the ad industry, according to eMarketer CEO and Co-Founder Geoffrey Ramsey, who pointed out that most people rate advertisers slightly above big tobacco but below lawyers.
"Consumers are getting ad overload, and new media only exacerbates the problem," Ramsey told attendees at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Fla. "Traditional advertising fairs a little better than interactive, and in areas like banner ads and video, we see a lot of negative consumer feedback."
That was the bad news from Ramsey, who painted a harsh picture for brands struggling to find ways to connect with consumers. But the good news came from Ramsey's panelists, who dissected the growing trend of ads morphing into content.
Having some fun with the idea of blurring the line between content and advertising, Carol Kruse, VP of interactive marketing for The Coca Cola Company, took to the stage with a crowd-pleasing stunt.
Before Ramsey could introduce Kruse, or her co-panelist, Sean Finnegan, CMO of Vibrant Media, the soft drink executive took control, asking both men if they would be willing to wear bright red Coke t-shirts. While Ramsey pocketed his shirt and Finnegan made a quick wardrobe change, Kruse joked about the idea of wrapping content -- the speakers themselves -- inside an impromptu Coke ad.
Getting down to business, Ramsey -- without a Coke t-shirt -- led the panel and the attendees in an interactive discussion of the new "Ads-R-Content" model.
Using clickers provided by ValueClick, Ramsey polled the crowd to see whether the notion that ads will have to become content actually holds water. While a handful of those in the room took extreme positions, saying either yes or no, the vast majority of marketers found themselves taking the middle ground with respect to the new model.
"I think that makes a lot of sense," Finnegan said in reference to the fact that most marketers viewed the new model as being something short of a sea change. "Any kind of zero-sum approach won't work, so I think some ads will have to look more like content, while others will stay the same."
Elaborating on Finnegan's analysis, Kruse pointed out that some brands will more easily adapt to the new model, while others will certainly struggle.
"I used to work for Clorox, and it's hard to see a brand like that spawning content-style ads, but if you look at what Tide did at the Super Bowl, you see that it is possible," Kruse said.
Notably, Kruse, who now works for Coke, referred to her brand as an entertainment brand. While many think of Coke as a consumer packaged goods brand, Kruse's assertion that the beverage company has become something more than the sum of its products may serve as a guidepost for brands looking to bring their messaging into the digital age.
But that messaging will require a creative ramp-up that will force brands and agencies to invest more heavily in production, according to Finnegan, who said he believes agencies are well-suited to the task.
"Entertainment units within the agencies are getting a lot more attention, and that's helping to reshape the agency model as compelling content becomes more vital," said Finnegan, who recently left the BBDO agency.
According to Kruse, that shift will mean increased costs and more work for independent production houses because digital often demands a slew of creatives for a single campaign. However, those costs may not be as painful as brands might think if their agencies are able to realize economic efficiencies by producing content-style ads for the web in conjunction with their traditional TV spots.
But the most engaging creative in the world may still fall flat, according to Ramsey, who reminded the crowd that with more users reporting a dislike of ads in general and technology that enables ad-skipping becoming more widespread, the industry may have a bigger problem on its hands than it realizes.
"I actually hope there's more disruption," Finnegan said. "The more that consumers turn away from ads, the more that will accelerate the growth of the new model."
Kruse was equally pragmatic about the prospect of consumers using technology to avoid ads.
"I think publishers will always find a way to serve ads," Kruse said. "Disruption is just a reality that we deal with."
But another reality that we deal with -- user-generated content -- might not be the place for the new advertising model, according to Kruse.
"I don't know if you'll see a ton of brands opening up the doors to UGC because that's giving away too much control, but I do think you'll see more advertising around that kind of content," Kruse said.
Whether brands simply promote UGC by running ads on YouTube or throw open the doors and ask users to handle the creative heavy-lifting, one area the panelists and those in the room were able to agree on was the notion that success will be defined by a sometimes dizzying array of metrics.
"I think that's an answer that comes down to all of the above," Finnegan said.
Will ads morph into content? That remains an open question for the future, as brands experiment in a rapidly changing media landscape.
Article By:Michael Estrin
Consumers don't like ads, the idea of advertising or even the ad industry, according to eMarketer CEO and Co-Founder Geoffrey Ramsey, who pointed out that most people rate advertisers slightly above big tobacco but below lawyers.
"Consumers are getting ad overload, and new media only exacerbates the problem," Ramsey told attendees at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Fla. "Traditional advertising fairs a little better than interactive, and in areas like banner ads and video, we see a lot of negative consumer feedback."
That was the bad news from Ramsey, who painted a harsh picture for brands struggling to find ways to connect with consumers. But the good news came from Ramsey's panelists, who dissected the growing trend of ads morphing into content.
Having some fun with the idea of blurring the line between content and advertising, Carol Kruse, VP of interactive marketing for The Coca Cola Company, took to the stage with a crowd-pleasing stunt.
Before Ramsey could introduce Kruse, or her co-panelist, Sean Finnegan, CMO of Vibrant Media, the soft drink executive took control, asking both men if they would be willing to wear bright red Coke t-shirts. While Ramsey pocketed his shirt and Finnegan made a quick wardrobe change, Kruse joked about the idea of wrapping content -- the speakers themselves -- inside an impromptu Coke ad.
Getting down to business, Ramsey -- without a Coke t-shirt -- led the panel and the attendees in an interactive discussion of the new "Ads-R-Content" model.
Using clickers provided by ValueClick, Ramsey polled the crowd to see whether the notion that ads will have to become content actually holds water. While a handful of those in the room took extreme positions, saying either yes or no, the vast majority of marketers found themselves taking the middle ground with respect to the new model.
"I think that makes a lot of sense," Finnegan said in reference to the fact that most marketers viewed the new model as being something short of a sea change. "Any kind of zero-sum approach won't work, so I think some ads will have to look more like content, while others will stay the same."
Elaborating on Finnegan's analysis, Kruse pointed out that some brands will more easily adapt to the new model, while others will certainly struggle.
"I used to work for Clorox, and it's hard to see a brand like that spawning content-style ads, but if you look at what Tide did at the Super Bowl, you see that it is possible," Kruse said.
Notably, Kruse, who now works for Coke, referred to her brand as an entertainment brand. While many think of Coke as a consumer packaged goods brand, Kruse's assertion that the beverage company has become something more than the sum of its products may serve as a guidepost for brands looking to bring their messaging into the digital age.
But that messaging will require a creative ramp-up that will force brands and agencies to invest more heavily in production, according to Finnegan, who said he believes agencies are well-suited to the task.
"Entertainment units within the agencies are getting a lot more attention, and that's helping to reshape the agency model as compelling content becomes more vital," said Finnegan, who recently left the BBDO agency.
According to Kruse, that shift will mean increased costs and more work for independent production houses because digital often demands a slew of creatives for a single campaign. However, those costs may not be as painful as brands might think if their agencies are able to realize economic efficiencies by producing content-style ads for the web in conjunction with their traditional TV spots.
But the most engaging creative in the world may still fall flat, according to Ramsey, who reminded the crowd that with more users reporting a dislike of ads in general and technology that enables ad-skipping becoming more widespread, the industry may have a bigger problem on its hands than it realizes.
"I actually hope there's more disruption," Finnegan said. "The more that consumers turn away from ads, the more that will accelerate the growth of the new model."
Kruse was equally pragmatic about the prospect of consumers using technology to avoid ads.
"I think publishers will always find a way to serve ads," Kruse said. "Disruption is just a reality that we deal with."
But another reality that we deal with -- user-generated content -- might not be the place for the new advertising model, according to Kruse.
"I don't know if you'll see a ton of brands opening up the doors to UGC because that's giving away too much control, but I do think you'll see more advertising around that kind of content," Kruse said.
Whether brands simply promote UGC by running ads on YouTube or throw open the doors and ask users to handle the creative heavy-lifting, one area the panelists and those in the room were able to agree on was the notion that success will be defined by a sometimes dizzying array of metrics.
"I think that's an answer that comes down to all of the above," Finnegan said.
Will ads morph into content? That remains an open question for the future, as brands experiment in a rapidly changing media landscape.
Article By:Michael Estrin
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"Pricing of Advertisements on the Internet"
The internet is increasingly becoming an attractive channel for advertising. Further, the market for online ads in the US is expected to grow to $26 billion by 2010. The beneficiaries of this growth in online advertising revenue are web publishers or portals on the one hand, and search engines on the other. While internet users visit web publishers for their information content, they visit websites of search engines to search for the internet addresses of publishers or for the addresses of online sellers of specific products.
Traditionally, publishers have sold display advertisements (hereafter, simply ads) such as banner ads to advertisers interested in reaching visitors to their websites. In this case, advertisers primarily relied on the number of impressions or 'eyeballs' delivered by the publishers and the asking price for the ad space, in choosing where to advertise.
More recently, search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads that are placed alongside search results delivered to users. Advertisers in this case have much more than an average demographic characteristic of the search engine user to go by in gauging the usefulness of advertising.
Search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads.The search keyword such as 'wall clock' that is entered by the search engine user reveals a specific interest in the product or even the brand, and this makes the user a valuable prospect to sellers of the product. This advertising innovation has made search-related advertising the fastest growing component of online advertising.
The success of search-related advertising has enabled Google to extend this idea to placing context-related ads at the website of publishers.
Just as online advertising has evolved from banner ads to search- or context-related ads, pricing of online ads to advertisers has evolved over time. In the early days of the World Wide Web, the pricing model for online ads imitated that used for traditional offline media such as print and TV, with the publisher charging a flat fee for displaying a fixed number of impressions of an ad. Since this flat fee was usually computed based on thousand impressions, this pricing model came to be known as CPM (cost-per-thousand).
Subsequently, CDNow.com introduced the idea of paying web publishers based on click-through generated from ads or links placed on the publishers’ website. Since the advertiser is charged only when a consumer clicks on the displayed ad, this pricing model came to be known as cost-per-click (CPC).
In basing payment on clicks, the CPC pricing model capitalised on the ease of measuring consumer response in the internet medium.Many advertisers preferred CPC over CPM because the former is more closely linked to an ad’s performance. In 2003, another innovation was introduced by GoTo.com when it auctioned the ad space to the highest bidding advertiser. This auction model is now commonplace in the search related advertising category, where specific search keywords such as 'wall clock' are auctioned, and advertisers use automated bidding software to submit bids per click for millions of search keywords.
A pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase.
Google recently made an interesting announcement -- that it would also accept bids per impressions for its context-related ad services. In sum, pricing models for online advertisements differ on whether payment is based on impressions or clicks, and on whether the price per click or impression is posted or decided through an auction.
In this context, a pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase. This model is also used in internet advertising. A distinguishing feature of our analysis is that it considers the effect of product-market positioning of online advertisers on their bids for online ads and the consequent implications for pricing policies.
Thus it considers the following research questions:
1.What are the implications of pricing based on impressions versus clicks?
2. How is pricing for search- or context-related advertising different from other less precisely targeted advertising methods?
3.What are the implications for volume discounts given for higher click through rates (CTR) of an ad?
4.What are the implications of alternate policies for choosing the winning bidder for advertisements?
With respect to the last question, two policies for choosing the winning bidder are observed in the online advertising industry. In one policy the advertiser who bids the highest CPC is considered the winning bidder. On the other hand the second one derives a rank score by multiplying the maximum CPC bid by an advertiser for a search keyword with a quality score that increases with the advertiser’s CTR, and the winning advertiser is the one with the highest rank score.Offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.
Finally, the impact of offline ads by the advertiser on the profitability of online advertising to the advertiser and publisher is considered. This is an important issue facing marketing managers as they decide how to coordinate offline and online advertising in their marketing mix.
Here, we assume that the products of these advertisers are positioned to appeal more to one of two different consumer segments. Our main conclusions are as follows:
* Bidding based on impressions or clicks yield surprisingly equivalent results in terms of advertiser and publisher profits. On the other hand, advertising placed with knowledge of a search keyword or context can be more profitable for the advertiser.
* It can also be found that, the volume discounts based on number of clicks or impressions can increase the publisher’s profit while also maximizing the profit of the channel consisting of the publisher and advertiser.
* Lastly, offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.
Article by: Subramanian Balachander & Karthik Kannan, Assistant Professors of Management, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, USA
Traditionally, publishers have sold display advertisements (hereafter, simply ads) such as banner ads to advertisers interested in reaching visitors to their websites. In this case, advertisers primarily relied on the number of impressions or 'eyeballs' delivered by the publishers and the asking price for the ad space, in choosing where to advertise.
More recently, search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads that are placed alongside search results delivered to users. Advertisers in this case have much more than an average demographic characteristic of the search engine user to go by in gauging the usefulness of advertising.
Search engines such as Google have given a new impetus to online advertising by selling search-related ads.The search keyword such as 'wall clock' that is entered by the search engine user reveals a specific interest in the product or even the brand, and this makes the user a valuable prospect to sellers of the product. This advertising innovation has made search-related advertising the fastest growing component of online advertising.
The success of search-related advertising has enabled Google to extend this idea to placing context-related ads at the website of publishers.
Just as online advertising has evolved from banner ads to search- or context-related ads, pricing of online ads to advertisers has evolved over time. In the early days of the World Wide Web, the pricing model for online ads imitated that used for traditional offline media such as print and TV, with the publisher charging a flat fee for displaying a fixed number of impressions of an ad. Since this flat fee was usually computed based on thousand impressions, this pricing model came to be known as CPM (cost-per-thousand).
Subsequently, CDNow.com introduced the idea of paying web publishers based on click-through generated from ads or links placed on the publishers’ website. Since the advertiser is charged only when a consumer clicks on the displayed ad, this pricing model came to be known as cost-per-click (CPC).
In basing payment on clicks, the CPC pricing model capitalised on the ease of measuring consumer response in the internet medium.Many advertisers preferred CPC over CPM because the former is more closely linked to an ad’s performance. In 2003, another innovation was introduced by GoTo.com when it auctioned the ad space to the highest bidding advertiser. This auction model is now commonplace in the search related advertising category, where specific search keywords such as 'wall clock' are auctioned, and advertisers use automated bidding software to submit bids per click for millions of search keywords.
A pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase.
Google recently made an interesting announcement -- that it would also accept bids per impressions for its context-related ad services. In sum, pricing models for online advertisements differ on whether payment is based on impressions or clicks, and on whether the price per click or impression is posted or decided through an auction.
In this context, a pricing model that is even more closely tied to performance is one where the publisher is paid only when the click results in a purchase. This model is also used in internet advertising. A distinguishing feature of our analysis is that it considers the effect of product-market positioning of online advertisers on their bids for online ads and the consequent implications for pricing policies.
Thus it considers the following research questions:
1.What are the implications of pricing based on impressions versus clicks?
2. How is pricing for search- or context-related advertising different from other less precisely targeted advertising methods?
3.What are the implications for volume discounts given for higher click through rates (CTR) of an ad?
4.What are the implications of alternate policies for choosing the winning bidder for advertisements?
With respect to the last question, two policies for choosing the winning bidder are observed in the online advertising industry. In one policy the advertiser who bids the highest CPC is considered the winning bidder. On the other hand the second one derives a rank score by multiplying the maximum CPC bid by an advertiser for a search keyword with a quality score that increases with the advertiser’s CTR, and the winning advertiser is the one with the highest rank score.Offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.
Finally, the impact of offline ads by the advertiser on the profitability of online advertising to the advertiser and publisher is considered. This is an important issue facing marketing managers as they decide how to coordinate offline and online advertising in their marketing mix.
Here, we assume that the products of these advertisers are positioned to appeal more to one of two different consumer segments. Our main conclusions are as follows:
* Bidding based on impressions or clicks yield surprisingly equivalent results in terms of advertiser and publisher profits. On the other hand, advertising placed with knowledge of a search keyword or context can be more profitable for the advertiser.
* It can also be found that, the volume discounts based on number of clicks or impressions can increase the publisher’s profit while also maximizing the profit of the channel consisting of the publisher and advertiser.
* Lastly, offline ads can increase advertisers’ profit from online advertising suggesting that a synergy exists between these forms of advertising.
Article by: Subramanian Balachander & Karthik Kannan, Assistant Professors of Management, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, USA
Friday, February 1, 2008
Click Fraud: A double threat
How can advertisers actually begin to help networks stamp out the problems of click fraud?
In recent months click fraud has taken an insidious turn, expanding from a marketer's nightmare to one that threatens anyone unlucky enough to click on the wrong search ad or land on a compromised web page. Fraudsters now embed malicious programs right into landing pages, banners and PPC ads delivered via ad networks like Google and Yahoo! and even hijack entire brands through 'redirects', which spoof legitimate pages but are full of malicious content. Brands victimised by these attacks suffer immediate financial damage to their campaigns, loss of customers and, worse yet, damage to their hard-earned reputations as a result.
As if that wasn't enough, advertisers are still vexed by a near total lack of visibility into the actual performance of their PPC campaigns. None of the major ad networks release the necessary information to help advertisers tweak their campaigns for the best returns, and more often than not click fraud becomes a 'write off'. And there is zero transparency and accountability in regard to the performance of affiliate networks -- so advertisers just do not know where (or even if) their ads are being shown. Of course, many don't care so long as they see a return, but those worried about brand image wouldn't want their ads to appear on pages with questionable content, and even fewer advertisers want to be associated with adware, spyware and popups. This double threat -- brand equity lost to the ravages of malware and a complete lack of campaign accountability -- still make PPC campaigns risky business for brand marketers.
But what if advertisers could see into their clickstreams to filter out malicious code that might otherwise float unnoticed within text ads? And imagine if the networks provided a full PPC performance disclosure statistics page? This might take the shape of an advertising 'dashboard' that detailed the exact amount of clicks the advertiser received -- say 100, of which 20 were questionable. The dashboard would let the advertiser know it was only being charged for 80 clicks. This would show a good-faith effort on behalf of the ad network in combating the click fraud problem. This isn't to say the networks aren't trying to crush fraud now, but without admitting they even have a problem, it's hard for them to say that they have a solution.
If ad networks like Yahoo! and Google continue to keep their most profitable customers in the dark, they'll risk losing ads from the affiliate networks, and high-paying clients will only advertise on search where there is less incentive for fraud. That would significantly impact the major advertising network platforms and threaten the promise of the online channel, hurting everyone within the PPC ecosystem -- advertisers, ad networks, affiliates and publishers.
This latter group is especially vulnerable. As advertisers begin to scale back their Google and Yahoo! campaigns from affiliate networks, publishers who rely on Google and Yahoo! will see a drop in well targeted, high paying ads. Fewer ads lead to lower per-click prices and less relevantly targeted ads. And, just as advertisers lose money, publishers find themselves no longer able to command premium prices for their inventory. Unlike advertisers who can pull, edit and otherwise control their ads, publishers suffer as a whole.
So what can brands and ad networks do about click fraud to keep themselves and their customers safe?
1. A good first step is to start taking some responsibility for campaigns. Too often marketers rely on their agencies to handle the PPC campaign from start to finish, which includes the responsibility to the brand safe from click fraud. This is lazy and more than potentially harmful to the brand. Although most agencies have their clients' best interests in mind, they're primarily interested in generating traffic. But, the quality of that traffic isn't always top-notch. So instead of waiting until an advertising campaign is over and the budget is spent, marketers need to be proactive and address invalid (and potentially unsafe) traffic while a campaign is in progress to improve campaign performance. Pay attention to abnormal behaviour, including traffic generated from spyware, malware, hit bots and other 'black hat' sources.
2. Advertisers need to have third-party auditing tools at hand to make sure that the PPC campaign provides accountability and increases return on ad spend while ensuring the health of the brand's image. Ad networks benefit from this same remedy by being able to ensure their advertisers only the highest quality clickstreams, with no malware associated with the network -- keeping the customers' customers safe, as it were.
3. Education! Educate yourselves on the latest cyber attacks and issues, and how to thwart them, by reviewing sites like About Click Fraud.
As long as there remains a financial incentive for people to commit fraud, the click fraud problem will not fully disappear. But full disclosure by ad networks can alleviate advertiser and publisher angst and allow others help the major ad networks combat the quickly escalating fraud problem. How much data should the advertising networks provide without disclosing trade secrets? That's an important question, but staying quiet and denying the click fraud problem exists may soon lead to not having much performance data at all to hide.
By giving advertisers more visibility into their campaigns, advertisers will be more than happy to help the networks stamp out fraud. But as it stands right now, everyone is still operating in the dark.
Michael Caruso - The CEO of ClickFacts shares his views
In recent months click fraud has taken an insidious turn, expanding from a marketer's nightmare to one that threatens anyone unlucky enough to click on the wrong search ad or land on a compromised web page. Fraudsters now embed malicious programs right into landing pages, banners and PPC ads delivered via ad networks like Google and Yahoo! and even hijack entire brands through 'redirects', which spoof legitimate pages but are full of malicious content. Brands victimised by these attacks suffer immediate financial damage to their campaigns, loss of customers and, worse yet, damage to their hard-earned reputations as a result.
As if that wasn't enough, advertisers are still vexed by a near total lack of visibility into the actual performance of their PPC campaigns. None of the major ad networks release the necessary information to help advertisers tweak their campaigns for the best returns, and more often than not click fraud becomes a 'write off'. And there is zero transparency and accountability in regard to the performance of affiliate networks -- so advertisers just do not know where (or even if) their ads are being shown. Of course, many don't care so long as they see a return, but those worried about brand image wouldn't want their ads to appear on pages with questionable content, and even fewer advertisers want to be associated with adware, spyware and popups. This double threat -- brand equity lost to the ravages of malware and a complete lack of campaign accountability -- still make PPC campaigns risky business for brand marketers.
But what if advertisers could see into their clickstreams to filter out malicious code that might otherwise float unnoticed within text ads? And imagine if the networks provided a full PPC performance disclosure statistics page? This might take the shape of an advertising 'dashboard' that detailed the exact amount of clicks the advertiser received -- say 100, of which 20 were questionable. The dashboard would let the advertiser know it was only being charged for 80 clicks. This would show a good-faith effort on behalf of the ad network in combating the click fraud problem. This isn't to say the networks aren't trying to crush fraud now, but without admitting they even have a problem, it's hard for them to say that they have a solution.
If ad networks like Yahoo! and Google continue to keep their most profitable customers in the dark, they'll risk losing ads from the affiliate networks, and high-paying clients will only advertise on search where there is less incentive for fraud. That would significantly impact the major advertising network platforms and threaten the promise of the online channel, hurting everyone within the PPC ecosystem -- advertisers, ad networks, affiliates and publishers.
This latter group is especially vulnerable. As advertisers begin to scale back their Google and Yahoo! campaigns from affiliate networks, publishers who rely on Google and Yahoo! will see a drop in well targeted, high paying ads. Fewer ads lead to lower per-click prices and less relevantly targeted ads. And, just as advertisers lose money, publishers find themselves no longer able to command premium prices for their inventory. Unlike advertisers who can pull, edit and otherwise control their ads, publishers suffer as a whole.
So what can brands and ad networks do about click fraud to keep themselves and their customers safe?
1. A good first step is to start taking some responsibility for campaigns. Too often marketers rely on their agencies to handle the PPC campaign from start to finish, which includes the responsibility to the brand safe from click fraud. This is lazy and more than potentially harmful to the brand. Although most agencies have their clients' best interests in mind, they're primarily interested in generating traffic. But, the quality of that traffic isn't always top-notch. So instead of waiting until an advertising campaign is over and the budget is spent, marketers need to be proactive and address invalid (and potentially unsafe) traffic while a campaign is in progress to improve campaign performance. Pay attention to abnormal behaviour, including traffic generated from spyware, malware, hit bots and other 'black hat' sources.
2. Advertisers need to have third-party auditing tools at hand to make sure that the PPC campaign provides accountability and increases return on ad spend while ensuring the health of the brand's image. Ad networks benefit from this same remedy by being able to ensure their advertisers only the highest quality clickstreams, with no malware associated with the network -- keeping the customers' customers safe, as it were.
3. Education! Educate yourselves on the latest cyber attacks and issues, and how to thwart them, by reviewing sites like About Click Fraud.
As long as there remains a financial incentive for people to commit fraud, the click fraud problem will not fully disappear. But full disclosure by ad networks can alleviate advertiser and publisher angst and allow others help the major ad networks combat the quickly escalating fraud problem. How much data should the advertising networks provide without disclosing trade secrets? That's an important question, but staying quiet and denying the click fraud problem exists may soon lead to not having much performance data at all to hide.
By giving advertisers more visibility into their campaigns, advertisers will be more than happy to help the networks stamp out fraud. But as it stands right now, everyone is still operating in the dark.
Michael Caruso - The CEO of ClickFacts shares his views
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