StanleyWong.org

I just finished reading Ben Edelman’s great detective work to uncover click fraud scheme utilizing Yahoo! Search Marketing: “The Spyware - Click-Fraud Connection — and Yahoo’s Role Revisited“. This is a great piece and well worth the read for anyone who purchases advertising on the web.

I’d like to expand upon Ben’s post. The assertions of “Syndication Fraud” and the “Pay Per Click Promise” with respect to Yahoo! is much more widespread than what is reported. When an advertiser purchases pay per click advertising on Yahoo! Search Marketing or Google AdWords the advertiser is largely expecting and intend to buy highly targeted contextually relevant search engine advertising. Yahoo! is breaking this “Pay Per Click Promise” by allowing these ads to be placed on pages other than search results. This type of Syndication Fraud is running rampant across the web particularly among parked pages (where domain speculators purchase domain names for the sole purpose of monetizing the natural traffic on them) and dynamic doorway pages (dynamically generated pages are created to fool search engines so they can show up on natural/organic search results).

The reason for this is is search based PPC ads (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, etc.) command a much higher cost than the equivalent content based search ad (Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, etc.). Often time the search based ad commands as much as a 5-10X premium over the content based advertisment. The incentives are obviously there for the aspiring domain parking and black hat search engine optimizers (SEO).

The end result shortchanges advertisers who will receive lower quality clicks as a result of these practices. I have first hand experience with this since I have found my advertisements purchased on the Yahoo! Search Marketing keyword for “MBNA credit card” show up across the web on parking pages that have nothing to do with the keyword that I have purchased.

Just check out the following example site (parking page): http://www.m2card.com/

My site (creditcardjungle.com) is listed as the 8th result on the page even though the advertising buy was strictly for search keywords only. Definitely a case of syndication fraud.

Or this one: http://lb5.netster.com/index/Site=bWFkNGFkcy5jb20%3D

This is an example of Google Syndication serving up the ads. Where is contextual placement that I have purchased?

I believe that Yahoo! (& Google) has a contractual responsibility to deliver what was promised to their advertising customers. I feel shortchanged!
Stanley

Filed by SWong at 6:43 pm under Interactive Advertising, SEM