Joel Spolsky has an interesting explanation of how fraudsters use fake blogs and zombie PCs to scame AdSense adverstisers. This problem isn’t specific to AdSense, it works for any cost-per-click advertising system that allows small Web sites to host advertising.
Update: Niall Kennedy also has a post about how spammers and fraudsters are abusing Google’s services.
1 response so far ↓
1 Bryan // Oct 25, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Good.
The “clickthroughs means our advertising is working” model means that advertising executives STILL don’t get the web.
Give me some reason to actually buy your product (instead of going onto your site for a minute), and you’ll have a fighting chance. It wouldn’t hurt if you made it incredibly easy to buy your product as well (see Amazon).
I don’t fault Google at all - they’re providing a service/product that suckers want to buy (AdSense).
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