Comments on: Online Click-Fraud A Whopping 16%

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:07:21 +0000

DGI, what do you recommend besides adsense? I have tried chitika with little success. I do have pretty good luck with Amazon, though not on this blog. I’m steal wary of selling follow text links.

By: Dividend Growth Investor

Dividend Growth Investor — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:30:31 +0000

Actually google will continue dominating the search engine market. But why people keep using adsense as opposed to other programs is beyond me.

By: Curt

Curt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:39:27 +0000

The number of online ad providers in growing very fast, even as Google Adsense remains the leader. I would think one of these is going to figure out a way to reduce the click-fraud % and therefore create more value and a competitive advantage.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:27:07 +0000

Well, publishers can come close to figuring out what particular keywords pay if you have an adwords account. Google tells you what it would cost to target certain keywords and you can figure out deductively what percentage off the top google takes (averages about 20% last I heard). But they could certainly be more open about it. It is in Google’s best interests not to piss of publishers, I would think, since the multitude of small publishers are their bread and butter. I think once competitors like Yahoo, MSN, Chitika, and adbrite start approaching adsense’s level of sophistication, publishers will start demanding more of Google in order to stick around and they’ll have to clean up their act. I’m hoping, anyway.

By: Mr. ToughMoneyLove

Mr. ToughMoneyLove — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:45:18 +0000

The entire Adsense business model has too much mystery, with no disclosure even to publishers as to what a click is worth. How do we know if Google is not engaging in click measurement or compensation fraud as well?

By: Kyle

Kyle — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:22:25 +0000

I agree with your point on advertisers moving to a click-to-sale model, which means bloggers will have a lot more work to do (i.e. preselling affiliate products, etc) compared to simply putting up adsense and hoping for the best. I think adsense will continue to work in the future, just not as much as it once did. There will always be advertisers willing to pay for untargeted traffic for a low enough price.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:01:48 +0000

Great article and the 27% number is suprising. I wrote recently on how Google’s adsense pay outs seem to be dropping and I can see why this may be the case now. Long term though advertisers will move towards a Click to Sale model where only clicks that result in sales of a product or service will payout. This means that bloggers should start looking at non-Adsense sources of income!

NB; Stumbling this article…