Impression Spam Worries Google Advertisers
clickz.comRob McGann writes:
" Google is on the lookout for 'impression spam' but denies it poses a big threat to paid search advertisers. Advertisers and SEM firms beg to differ...
For Lisa Wehr, president of SEM firm Oneupweb, incidents of impression spam like the one Leino experienced call into question the logic of Google's CTR-based ad-ranking system.
'It's further evidence that if there is a chink in the armor, it will be exploited,' Wehr said. 'This is where Google needs to review what they're doing. Without the CTR algorithm, impression spam would go away.'
But Kamangar defended the value created by its CTR-based ad ranking system for both search engine users and advertisers. 'Our ad ranking system ensures that the most relevant ads will be seen by the users of our search engine,' he said. 'It's good for advertisers because it prevents advertisers from dominating a narrow field simply by paying a higher cost per click.'
Gauging the prevalence of impression spam is another thorny problem, said Gordon Brott, VP of marketing for WhosClickingWho, a business that identifies and stops click fraud.
'As far as we can tell, impression spam is not nearly as widespread as click fraud,' Brott said. 'But it's probably safe to say that the problem is going to get bigger.'
Google, however, doesn't expect incidents of impression spam to escalate, Google's Kamangar said.
'We have an automated system in place that detects when unusual amounts of impressions are occurring without click-throughs,' Kamangar said. 'And we have a team of analysts in place to research cases that are reported to us. It's a mechanism that grows more sophisticated over time and one that is working. So we do not expect an increase in the number of incidents in the future.' ""
posted by Jen @ 9:29 AM
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