The Buzz on Click Fraud

The New York Times ran a feature article this week on click fraud.  Why you ask?  Because, like spam, click fraud is still a big problem for advertisers. The article pointed out that as the economy tilts downward, advertisers cannot afford to waste dollars. This is a good news, bad news scenario for online advertising.

The good news is that online advertising is highly measurable.  Large advertisers that traditionally have been offline are now shifting dollars online.  This fact has contributed to online advertising continuing to grow as traditional media is in decline.

The bad news however, is that this window of opportunity is narrow.  The online advertising community must embrace measurability and enhance trust to gain share of spend from the big guys. 

There was a significant event this week that helped in that effort.  The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released from draft the Click Measurement Guidelines.  This document, three years in the making, is a great start for our community to come together around standards and enhance trust. Dozens of ad providers are busily working with third party audit firms to become accredited to the new guidelines.  Advertisers will have a way to gauge the level of commitment from ad provides when this list is made public.

Click Forensics was proud to represent advertisers in this process.  In fact, we were the only traffic quality management firm to participate and were quoted in the press release from the IAB.  Many thanks are in order for the 38 members of the working group for a job well done.

Now, we find ourselves at the beginning.  An opportunity exists to build on the foundation laid by the IAB member companies.  Click fraud is going to be a problem for a long time to come.  Progress is being made.  But in order to re-accelerate the growth of online advertising we need more than standards.  We need a community effort to work together to ensure advertisers have confidence that they get what they pay for.  Articles raise awareness, documents create a process and awareness builds urgency.  But ultimately it will take the effort of everyone in the community to get to the day where trust is commonplace and online advertising becomes the marvelous, measurable media it can be.  We look forward to continuing our efforts toward that goal.

Tom Cuthbert

The Click Quality Council invites you...

Last week I wrote about the Interactive Advertising Bureau's release of the Click Measurement Guidelines.  This document is extremely important for advertisers, agencies and ad providers.  It defines the process that will be used to measure and deliver clicks to advertisers.  The Click Quality Council is hosting a call to discuss the guidelines, describe the process used to develop them and the impact for the industry.

The call will be Wednesday March 18th at 4 PM ET/ 1 PM PT and is open to all members of the online advertising ecosystem.  We will have  George Ivie of the Media Rating Council as our speaker.  George worked directly with the IAB in facilitating discussion and building the guidelines.  Registration is available by clicking here.

Tom Cuthbert

The Lens We Look Through

On a recent trip to New York, I was asked by an ad provider executive, “Which side are you on?”  At first I didn’t know what he meant, but he clarified it for me by saying that in the world of advertisers, ad networks, publishers, and ad providers, it’s important to know whose side you’re on.

When I told him that we are on the side of the advertiser he paused, thought about it and then the light bulb went off.  What’s good for the advertiser is good for our entire industry.  100% of the over $24B spent on search advertising comes from advertisers.  They pay the bills for search engines, ad providers, parked domain companies publishers as well as those of us that are working to provide tools to improve traffic quality.

Despite our diverse client base, the lens Click Forensics looks through for every decision we make is that of the advertiser.  While Click Forensics works with a number of advertisers and agencies, we also have many clients that are ad providers.  This list includes search engines, ad networks, publishers and even parked domain companies.  The reason these companies choose to work with us is that we provide insight into the traffic quality they are selling to advertisers.  They are able to use this information to route, block, price and value the traffic to help advertisers get a better return on their ad spend.

Smart sellers look through this lens too.  Companies like Yahoo that asked advertisers how they could improve communication. The result was the cooperative development of the FACTr system enabling advertisers to communicate concerns to Yahoo.  Companies like Lycos, who realized early on that “quality matters” and began working to enhance their quality using traffic insight tools.  And industry organizations including the Click Quality Council, while made of all parts of the ecosystem, is always advertiser focused.

Advertisers drive our industry and that reality will become even clearer in the future as mobile grows more important and display begins to look like search.  We are proud of our involvement and the work of the Click Quality Council.   The CQC is an example of an industry organization that is not dominated by one constituency.  The over 100 members include companies from every corner and every perspective of the eco-system.  They sit around the virtual table as equals, all understanding it is the lens of the advertiser that matters. 

So as the IAB releases the Click Measurement Working Group Guidelines, it is important that they are reviewed through the lens that matters, that of the advertiser.  We should be asking, are these guidelines fair?  Do they have enough substance to improve traffic quality and help ensure advertisers get what they pay for?  Do the guidelines improve transparency and enhance trust between buyers and sellers?

I attended the IAB’s annual conference in Orlando last week and have a clear picture of their lens .  We applaud the IAB’s leadership and the work of the Media Rating Council and task force members who produced a foundational document.  Our hope now is that we can work together to build on this foundation to build trust, enhance transparency and accelerate the growth of online advertising.

Tom Cuthbert

IAB Click Measurement Guidelines

On the first day Click Forensics was formed, January 2nd, 2006, we called for standards to be developed around click measurement.  Our work and our focus has been to ensure advertisers get what they pay for.  There has been a need for standards and guidelines to help ensure this happens.  Today, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the highly anticipated Click Measurement Guidelines.  This document is the result of a task force that took form in September of 2006.  Click Forensics was a founding member and along with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, LookSmart and other members of the IAB, the document is ready for public comment... your comment.

Since the IAB is a publisher driven organization, we have felt a responsibility to advertisers to ensure your voice is heard throughout this process.  During the public comment phase, we want to help encourage and inject advertiser comments into the process.  It is important for you to take time and review the document.  Think about the benefits that it may have to you as a buyer and question aspects that are missing.  All ideas are good ideas and the IAB and our entire task force are eager to get feedback.  You can download a copy of the document and provide comments directly to the IAB here.  You are also welcome to provide feedback to us directly by commenting in the box below.  

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 The Guidelines are an important  foundational step for our industry.  While no one document can solve the problem of click fraud or mitigate invalid traffic, it is encouraging to us to be at this point.  We look forward to continuing to work to represent your voice and contribute toward building standards that enhance the value for online advertisers.  We are grateful to the IAB, the Media Rating Council and all the members of the task force for the hard work put in over the last few years.  Together we are making meaningful progress in building trust and making online advertising more transparent and effective.

Tom Cuthbert
President and Founder

If I could change just one thing about Google, it would be...

We all love Google but nobody's perfect!  We hear suggestions all the time from advertisers that start, "If I could change just one thing about Google, it would be..."  It was this type of feedback that lead to the Click Quality Council's "Eight Principles to Ensure Click Quality".  We shared this list with Google and Shuman took time to respond with some great feedback.  Last Fall, we released a Report Card, providing an update on how Google and others are doing on the Eight Principles.

So I thought, let's compile a new list!  Send me your thoughts and I will share them back with you and with Google.  To make it easy, just jot your idea, comment or suggestion in the box below.  Thanks!

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Tom Cuthbert

Announcing the Click Quality Council

I am pleased to announce the formation of the Click Quality Council.  Around twenty forward thinking advertisers and agencies will convene quarterly to review news, share ideas and comment on recent industry developments.  The complete list of members will be released prior to our first meeting in mid October.

Why is this important?  Because developing click measurement standards is a critical initiative and something we have been working toward for a long time.  In March of this year I wrote in this blog, “We need search providers to accept responsibility and work to build an industry standard.”  That process is well underway with the IAB Click Measurement Working Group.  Yahoo!, Microsoft along with other leading companies had executives engaged and in person and actively participating at the first meeting.  This shows a strong commitment from these companies in the effort of solving this problem.

I am in New York as I write this attending the MIXX and OMMA events and very pleased with the support we have been getting regarding the CQC.  The Business Week cover story made clear the risks involved in pay per click advertising.  We have been aware of those threats and continue to work full time on catching click fraud.  However, the real news is the progress being made together, as an industry, in developing standards to be enforced by independent third parties.

Thanks to the advertisers and agencies that have stepped forward to help with the CQC.  I look forward to reporting our progress in the coming months.

Tom Cuthbert