Month: October 2006

Click-Fraud: Worse than TiVo?

The Post has another article about click fraud and how some internet advertisers are attempting to band together to fight back:

In the past year, industry analysts say, new forms of click fraud have emerged from the shadows of masked operations into plain view on the Internet. Dozens of Web sites offer to pay people to sit and click on ads, or to type certain words into search engines for hours at a time. Some sites have forums where people swap click-fraud tips.

Advertisers, who often pay for online ads only when someone clicks on them, have been crying foul and complaining to federal regulators. They’ve also sued the Internet’s largest ad networks, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., which earlier this year settled class-action lawsuits by advertisers.

A new lawsuit was filed last month in Pennsylvania seeking class-action status against Google. The FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating click fraud.

On-line advertising is gaining phenomenally because the results supposedly have been better than those for the 30-second spot. I wonder how the problem of click fraud compares with the problem of people skipping the commercials when they use TiVo or another DVR.

TiVo

It’s a different kind of issue, but the same effect: paying for an audience that isn’t seeing the ad. Click fraud is malevolent and deceptive, more like a RICO activity. TiVoing is just an individual’s decision to fast-forward through the commercial.

With click fraud, the advertisers lose because they may be paying a dime for each click (although the price varies depending on the demand for the search term). The person doing the clicking loses too, because at half a penny a click, if they can click on 10 ads a minute (waiting for the sites to refresh so they can click again), that’s a nickel a minute or $3 an hour. Google and Yahoo (and the web sites that receive the fraudulent traffic, and whose owners must be behind the click-fraud rings) are the winners.

Still, I wonder which is the bigger economic problem for advertisers: skipping broadcast ads or fake clicks on web ads?

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Washington Post: Instant Letters to the Editor

Earlier today I saw an article called “A Messy Age for Music” about digital music on the Washington Post site. It was part of a package the Post put together on the iPod’s 5th birthday.

I thought the article was pretty informative, but just took issue with a quote that essentially equated the iPod with Betamax or 8-Track tapes. Maybe it’s just that we’re an eight-iPod family that makes it personal for me, but I just believe that with this week’s announcement that Apple sold 8.73 million iPods in the last quarter, and bringing the cumulative total to more than 67.6 million, it’s pretty unlikely that Apple’s AAC format is going to become obsolete and unplayable.

I searched the web to find how many total 8-track units had been sold, and couldn’t find a figure. Anybody have a number on that? I’m betting it was significantly less than 67 million, and that the critical mass for the iPod format will keep it from becoming obsolete.

So I blogged about it, and linked back to not only that article, but all of the articles in the series.

Then, as I was reviewing traffic to my blog tonight, I realized something interesting: several readers had gotten to my post through the Washington Post site. When I clicked back I discovered this:

Post Links to Bloggers

Since this is powered by Technorati, I assume it’s important that you “ping” Techhnorati in order to be included in the listings. I have used the free service pingoat to ping Technorati and several other blog engines.

I had seen and heard some articles about how the Post “gets” the conversation of the blogosphere. It was neat to experience it first-hand, and to write a letter to the editor that was essentially published instantly.

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The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil

I had to catch my plane at 3:45 yesterday in San Francisco, so I couldn’t stay for the post-conference workshop, but I did get some good reading material for the ride home, Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book. A signed copy, no less.

The Corporate Blogging Book
I got through the first seven chapters on the plane. It’s a good overview of blogging from the corporate perspective, and what it has to offer both from an external marketing perspective and also for internal/employee communications.

Here’s a link to Debbie’s blog, where she has links to some other reviews, and where you can download and read Chapter 1 right now.

I think Chapter 7, “Top Ten Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog” is the highlight…but then, I haven’t read the last three chapters or the 40 pages of Bonus Resources. Not surprisingly, one of the top ten tips is “Package what your write (ten Tips, five Rules, seven Ways.)” Here are the other nine:

    Choose the right topic (be sure it’s specific)
    Find your voice
    Invite a conversation
    Always, always link
    Write for Web readers
    Write for Google searchers
    Publish consistently
    Take risks
    Have fun

I’m looking forward to reading the rest, and maybe I’ll have a full overview then.

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Big Layoffs at NBC

The Washington Post had an article yesterday discussing the seismic shifts at 30 Rock:

NBC Universal announced sweeping cuts to its television operations yesterday, demonstrating just how far a once-unrivaled network must now go to stay competitive with YouTube, social networks, video games and other upstart media.

The media giant said it will shed up to 700 jobs — 5 percent of its workforce — and slash $750 million from its budget by the end of 2008. The changes will be felt from Secaucus, N.J., where MSNBC will shutter its headquarters, to television sets around the country, which will soon begin tuning to game shows and reality programming in the 8 p.m. time slot. NBC said it plans to phase out costly scripted dramas and comedies during the first hour of prime time.

Network television, for half a century the unquestioned leader in media profitability and viewership, is wrestling with the same challenge facing newspapers, news magazines, radio and other traditional media properties: how to manage costs while converting to digital delivery in an increasingly splintered media landscape. Although the promise of revenue in the new era is great, actual revenues from Internet and mobile media services still are not.

Viewers have noticed that things in TV land have been changing bit by bit in recent years, now that they can get their favorite shows on their PCs, cellphones and iPods. Yesterday’s announcement by NBC Universal, however, is an indisputable signal that — at least for one network — the television-as-family-hearth era is dying.
…
NBC News President Steve Capus starkly illustrated the new landscape, which must include all forms of delivery that consumers demand: “We’ve been a TV business that dabbles in digital. Now, we’re positioning as a news content-production center going forward that happens to do television.”

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting take on the NY Times’ version of the story, too.

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