Quote from jagmot:
I work for a merchant who used Google and Yahoo pay per click. We stopped using pay per click due to massive click fraud.
The companies are aware however it is impossible to completely stop. The other problem is just like you get telemarkerters calls at home...lots of business search google and then try to sell your company business services. You bet they are clicking on your paid ads meant to generate business for your company...not theirs.
Solution: Flat rate click ads. This is not speculation, this is a fact. The merchant I work for has bought some phrases for a flat fee in the past two months. We are very happy with the flat fee arrangement. We haven't tried this out on Yahoo yet.
Remember when AOL went from minutes based service to unlimited? Expect some brisk business and a huge driver in Google's growth over the next few years.
Oh and there is no contract, month to month.
Interesting development with the flat rate. Do you find your company paying more or less per conversion?
Flat rate is probably doable for large accounts, what about smaller accounts?
I personally think Adsense is a great product, if implemented correctly.
For adsense to work correctly, Goog needs to completely eliminate their biggest sources of click-fraud. 1/ domain warehouses and 2/ mini-sites made for adsense.
These sites provide zero value to the advertiser and more importantly zero value to the end-user.
Why someone would actively seek and then click on a site filled with pages and pages of unrecognizable links baffles me. ( Apart from click fraud, these sites are also the biggest sources of online malware).
The fact is goog does not want to do anything about these 2 sources of click fraud because the stats they use to sell to advertisers will not look as good.
The other sources of click fraud are easily eliminated by removing the IPs that are competitor clicks, and removing IP's that show up frequently but do not purchase anything. Then paying goog a flat fee for the rest of the clicks.
With the economy slowing down and increased online competition from better quality niche ad-delivery platforms, the natural progression of the current online ad-media will be to pay-per-delivery. ie goog will be paid only when someone clicks and buys something.
I am still short goog, I expect to see 450 where it will consolidate. Then if the general market is weaker, it will see 350 . I plan to cover at low 400 and 350 or on a break above 600.
