September 23rd, 2006
Click fraud - here we go again
Yet another piece on click fraud, this time from Businessweek – which of course is an “old medium” itself. What amazes me is the elephant in the room: This is not an intractable problem. (Ask me about intractable: I just came back from the Middle East!)
Wherever the money flows, so does the information. People can’t get paid without an arrangement with someone. Yes, the miracle of the Internet is the ability to do so many things in an automated way, and of course there’s a chain of distribution and marketing partners and whatnot between Google and Yahoo! and the people who actually post the ads…
But, just as with spyware, this thing won’t get cleaned up until the advertisers – the ones who inject the money into the system in the first place - start requiring more accountability from their partners, starting with Google and Yahoo! and ending where the money ends. As a collection agent, Google and Yahoo! may not really care…until they are told to care.
So perhaps this story from Businessweek is just a sign of the market beginning to work: Advertisers will start to notice, their bosses and shareholders will start to complain, and marketers will get more specific in their contracts about what kinds of sites their ads can appear on. And Google, Yahoo! et al. may start to wield their market power on behalf of their advertisers.
All it takes is better record-keeping and effective know-your-partner rules. Is this some kind of Sarbanes-Oxley for the Web advertising business?
For the record, I think SOX rule are overbroad where regular business is concerned.
Esther Dyson is an editor at large at CNET Networks and author of ZDNet's Release 0.9 blog. See her complete bio and full disclosure of industry affiliations. Although she can't respond to all e-mails, you can contact Esther here.
