Clickfraud in PTR Getting Worse
Terry at The Affiliate Marketing Blog has written an absolutely brilliant post exposing the rampant PPC clickfraud that's going on in PTR.
Found: Click Fraud Paid Clickers - Chat With Them If You’d Like
PPC clickfraud within the paid-to-read "industry" is a problem that just keeps getting worse. The truth is, 95% of "paid to read" should be renamed "paid to search." Even in the programs where owners don't demand, beg, or otherwise try to convince members that it's their job to sit there doing search after search, most members know what's required if they want to keep the gravy train rolling along. Advertisers who pay more for an ad than they earn from the searches don't come back and buy more ads.
But too many members wanted a 'free ride' -- they clicked the paid link, they visited the advertiser's website until the timer expired, but they didn't search!!! *gasp* Why not??? Maybe because a lot of people just don't need to do hundreds of searches a day. Every day. Or maybe because so many of these bottom-of-the-food-chain "search engines" aren't worth using. With a lot of them, it seems like no matter what you search for, the result is a ton of links offering to sell you Viagra!
Of course that was a problem for the search engine affiliates, and for the PTR owners, so 'solutions' were found. Like using tracking scripts to see which members are actually making 'valid searches', and either deleting members that weren't meeting their quota, or simply drastically cutting down the number of emails they receive ("good searchers" might get 100 emails, giving them the chance to earn $60 a month, while the "bad searchers" might get 2 emails a week, giving them the chance to earn $0.16 a month).
Some decided the best way to get plenty of 'valid searches' was to automate the process. So they use scripts hidden in invisible i-frames that automatically run dozens, and in some cases over a hundred searches every time somebody clicks a link and waits for the page to load (if the strain doesn't freeze or crash their browser).
In some cases, the PTR members honestly don't understand what the problem is. After all, they're nice people. They're just trying to earn a little extra money. They don't mean to hurt anybody. And anyway, if it was wrong, the government would put a stop to it, wouldn't they? Others just don't care. They want the money and they really don't care where it comes from. As one forum member put it:
Found: Click Fraud Paid Clickers - Chat With Them If You’d Like
PPC clickfraud within the paid-to-read "industry" is a problem that just keeps getting worse. The truth is, 95% of "paid to read" should be renamed "paid to search." Even in the programs where owners don't demand, beg, or otherwise try to convince members that it's their job to sit there doing search after search, most members know what's required if they want to keep the gravy train rolling along. Advertisers who pay more for an ad than they earn from the searches don't come back and buy more ads.
But too many members wanted a 'free ride' -- they clicked the paid link, they visited the advertiser's website until the timer expired, but they didn't search!!! *gasp* Why not??? Maybe because a lot of people just don't need to do hundreds of searches a day. Every day. Or maybe because so many of these bottom-of-the-food-chain "search engines" aren't worth using. With a lot of them, it seems like no matter what you search for, the result is a ton of links offering to sell you Viagra!
Of course that was a problem for the search engine affiliates, and for the PTR owners, so 'solutions' were found. Like using tracking scripts to see which members are actually making 'valid searches', and either deleting members that weren't meeting their quota, or simply drastically cutting down the number of emails they receive ("good searchers" might get 100 emails, giving them the chance to earn $60 a month, while the "bad searchers" might get 2 emails a week, giving them the chance to earn $0.16 a month).
Some decided the best way to get plenty of 'valid searches' was to automate the process. So they use scripts hidden in invisible i-frames that automatically run dozens, and in some cases over a hundred searches every time somebody clicks a link and waits for the page to load (if the strain doesn't freeze or crash their browser).
In some cases, the PTR members honestly don't understand what the problem is. After all, they're nice people. They're just trying to earn a little extra money. They don't mean to hurt anybody. And anyway, if it was wrong, the government would put a stop to it, wouldn't they? Others just don't care. They want the money and they really don't care where it comes from. As one forum member put it:
Poor Yahoo and Google. Google stock is only selling for $400 a share. Isn’t that just a crying shameAs I said in my comment at SuperAff, everybody who uses PPC advertising needs to be aware that this stuff is going on, and try to make sure they aren't paying for useless clicks made by these people. My wife and I have a little Adwords campaign going right now, and I check the traffic logs every day and exclude any undesirable domains, especially any of these parked domains, from our campaign. Easy enough with one campaign for one site, but I'd hate to think of the nightmare involved in trying to keep the 'plague of locusts' away if I had to watch dozens or hundreds of campaigns and sites.
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