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A Closer Look at PPC

By admin | March 8, 2007

Media buying and  advertising experts that run PPC campaigns are charged each time someone clicks on their ad. For example, if you bought the rights to the search term LCD TV on a search engine for $3 per click during the holiday period, the ad would appear next to the search results. Each time someone clicked on the ad, you would be charged $3.Another important part of understanding click fraud is knowing where your ads actually appear. When you buy rights to display your ad after a search term is typed into Google or Yahoo, for example, it can appear not only on the search engine site, but also on thousands of so-called “affiliate sites.”

Affiliate sites are websites that have readers or audiences who might be interested in your product. For instance, a website that provides reviews of digital cameras could arrange with a search engine to run affiliate ads to its content. If a reader clicks on the ad, Google or Yahoo shares the revenue from that click with the website owner, the affiliate.

This is an effective way for media buyers and advertisers to reach a broader number of targeted consumers around the world. But search advertising, and in particular affiliate advertising, is also a medium that is currently threatened by the ease with which fraudulent activity can occur at the expense of advertisers.

Because affiliate websites are paid each time someone clicks on Google ads displayed on their websites, many are tempted to click on ads on their own sites or to organize sophisticated rings of individuals who agree to click on one another’s ads. After years of worry and uncertainty about the severity of the affiliate-based click- fraud problem, BusinessWeek published a cover story on the topic in the fall of 2006, exposing the sophistication and reach of these nefarious networks–many of which the search engines knew little about.

electronic retailer magazine

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