Click fraud: A good reason to avoid Google's content network

May 18, 2007 @ 9:15 am · Filed under Click Fraud, Google AdWords

A new study has come out that suggests that the problem with click fraud is much bigger than what Google and Yahoo! are admitting to. This article is an interesting read all the way through, but AdWords advertisers will want to pay especially close attention to the end of the piece:

Click fraud doesn't appear to be a major problem when the ads appear on Google's and Yahoo's respective websites, Milana said. The trouble starts cropping up once Google and Yahoo deliver the ads to other websites that are part of their vast marketing networks. "They just don't know what happens beyond their own firewalls," Milana said of Google and Yahoo.

What does this mean to you? Disable content network distribution of your ads! Surely, there are advertisers who are getting great returns from their ads being displayed on the AdWords content network, but it's not for the feint of heart.

A good practice is to run some tests with content network distribution, monitor the metrics of those tests, then judge your ROI form there. This is not recommended for new AdWords users–get your accounts tuned for performance first, then experiment with more advanced techniques such as this.

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2 Comments »

  1. PPC Hero : Click Fraud, Invalid Clicks and Everything In Between says:

    […] Google has made similar strides in allowing more visibility into protecting yourself from click fraud. The biggest piece of this puzzle is of course the Placement Performance Reports and the Site Exclusion Tool. Since there is a lot of chatter that Google's content network is to blame for an increase in click fraud, these tools allow advertisers to see each site and its performance over time. Then you can then choose whether or not to exclude those sites. Of course there are other things that can be done to mitigate the effects of the content network like separate content from search campaigns, simply bid lower on the content network, and track the content network like a hawk (those Placement Performance Reports again). […]

    July 25th, 2007 at 10:40 am
  2. PPC Hero : Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Click Fraud says:

    […] Google has made similar strides in allowing more visibility into protecting yourself from click fraud. The biggest piece of this puzzle is of course the Placement Performance Reports and the Site Exclusion Tool. Since there is a lot of chatter that Google's content network is to blame for an increase in click fraud, these tools allow advertisers to see each site and its performance over time. Then you can then choose whether or not to exclude those sites. Of course there are other things that can be done to mitigate the effects of the content network like separate content from search campaigns, simply bid lower on the content network, and track the content network like a hawk. […]

    July 25th, 2007 at 11:34 am

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