Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
For today’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing Ken Miller, Anchor Intelligence CEO. Anchor Intelligence is a solution provider for Click Fraud.
Click fraud as you know is the dark side of online advertising and according to Wikipedia, “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud”.
Ken’s shares his thoughts on the size and scope of the Click Fraud problem, the issues and best practices to address these issues.
Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.
Today’s podcast is sponsored by the An Event Apart Conference taking place in Chicago in October.
The Event Apart Conference is a the design conference for people who make websites, announces a special discount exclusively for WOW members.
Save $200 off An Event Apart Chicago with discount code AEAWOW when you order through September 15, 2008.
Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration!
Transcript of Beyond IP Blacklisting interview with Ken Miller
BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of search. For today?’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence, a solution provider for Click Fraud.
Click fraud as you know is the dark side of online advertising and according to Wikipedia, “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in a pay per click online advertising environment when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target ad?’s link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud according to some, and I don?’t think you should have a conversation about search without having a conversation about the potential fraud.
On that note, good afternoon Ken and thanks for agreeing to the call.
KEN MILLER: You bet Bill, happy to, appreciate the time.
BILL: Ken, how prevalent is click fraud today?
KEN: Yeah, sure. It?’s a significant issue and the interesting thing is as it becomes a bigger issue and more work is done to stop the bad guys what you?’re finding is that the bad actors out there are getting more sophisticated and more aggressive in their techniques and so click fraud is actually following in a similar path to the early days of spam and ID theft and virus protection.
BILL: Interesting. Has anyone quantified the numbers that we?’re talking about?
KEN: It?’s a challenge to do that, for a couple of reasons. One, even if you release an industry-wide number, what does the recipient do with that number? Because often click fraud is targeted more towards, can be targeted towards certain advertisers or certain ad networks or can be targeted towards high keyword bids, things like that.
BILL: Would it be fair to say that it?’s a potential barrier for entry for those considering online advertising?
KEN: It potentially could be, because if you?’re an ad network, a new ad network or just going in starting off as an ad network, if you don?’t have the proper systems in place to identify and detect this you?’re not going to gain the trust of your advertisers and so it?’s going to be difficult to build a business off of that.
BILL: What are the issues?
KEN: The issue really sort of comes down to intent and what is the intent of the publisher. Sort of its most extreme or malicious intent is publishers who are serving ads on their site with the sole purpose of trying to gain money from that. And those clicks back to the advertisers are never actually going to turn into any useful event or conversion. The publishers can be very blatant in what they?’re doing and they can actually just sit and click on their own ads; we actually see that happen. Or they can get very sophisticated where they?’re using computer scripts to fake clicks to generate a lot of clicks in a short period of time or to even stretch them out over a longer period so they kind of come in under the radar, but they can set that to run and generate clicks while they?’re out having lunch or doing other things. It?’s very lucrative.
BILL: So what are currently some of the best practices to address these issues?
KEN: Yeah, sure. So there?’s a few different things that folks can do. A lot of times it really comes down to really understanding where there ads are showing up and are they showing up on publishers?’ sites that are consistent with the type of ads they?’re running? Are they going to see traffic from those sites that won?’t match up with the sorts of folks they would like to visit their site? There?’s things that advertising and ad networks can do to look into their own data and try to identify abnormalities and where the traffic?’s coming from, certainly you can do that by geography. So if you?’re selling auto insurance in Colorado and you?’re getting a lot of clicks from India or China that might not make sense.
BILL: Fair enough. The bad guys have work-arounds for that too, right?
KEN: That?’s absolutely the case, you could not be more right on there. So beyond the basic things that somebody might do to address this, that?’s where somebody, like our organization, where a third party comes in who has the benefit of seeing what these guys are doing from month to month, day to day and even across different networks so if there?’s a fraud ring going on at network number one we can help at network number two, be prepared for that.
BILL: OK, thank you very much for that. Where do we go to get more information?
KEN: Yeah, sure. So our website is www.anchorintelligence.com.
BILL: Ken, excellent overview. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time today.
KEN: Thank you very much and good afternoon.
BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by An Event Apart Chicago. Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed, 9.5 hour-long days of learning and inspiration. Check out all the great links on the WOW Technology Minute website.