Ways Around Click Fraud?

Click fraud is getting a lot of attention in the mainstream press. The Economist had an interesting article this week on the problem, suggesting that it could be the number one threat to Google's market capitalization moving forward. Google's engineers are quoted glibbly proclaiming that "they're having a lot of fun" keeping up with the fraudsters. This attitude is probably not appreciated by the folks buying the adwords or banners.

I've talked to a bunch of online marketers about where this is headed, and I've heard some really interesting ideas (one of which is mentioned in the Economist article.)

1. Begin tying pay-per-click back to some more concrete pipeline metric. The problem with comping search vendors on clicks is akin to compensating B2B marketers on leads (with no strings attached.) Smart B2B marketers demand to be measured further up the pipeline--for example to qualified leads or even to closed deals. The added credibility of "real revenue" far outweighs the potential for "the incompetence of the sales force" or other such drivel. Marketers / search engines should start thinking of ways to pay little for clicks and a lot more for qualified leads or even wins. This takes better systems, sure--but Google should have no problem with this. Witness the ease with which they've been able to get people signed up for Adsense!

2. Begin thinking about impressions as well as clicks because of the attitudinal component. Google could get around the clicks issue largely by starting to look at unique served impressions across some segmentation--the idea that Google isn't just in the business of filling the pipe but also in the business of changing impressions. Even if someone doesn't click on it, if Oracle comes up everytime someone does a database search, that's gotta have an effect on attitudes (if anyone knows of research showing this, we'd love to hear about it.) This gets around click fraud because Google could start looking at research-driven test / controls--essentially changing the game.

3. Just keep going with the arms race. Hackers are constantly thinking up new ways to fool Google on what makes a legitimate click, and of course Google "has fun" responding. Not getting into all of the specifics, the danger is that Google will eventually start cutting into more and more legitimate clicks--which will harm their revenue streams and also the reputation of search and online advertising in general over the long haul. All of this is statistical or algorithmic in nature--thus not perfect. If we've learned anything from years and years of Microsoft / hacker battles, there's no sure fix for anything like this. Unfortunately, this option is both most likely in the near term and also least likely to be effective.

For those of you interested in the original article in the Economist, you have to be a subscriber or view a short advertisement for a day pass, but here's the link.

Needed: Longitudinal Tracking of B2B Online Behavior

There is an interesting article at eMarketer by Dave Hallerman published last summer called "Finding the B2B Marketer." There are a lot of great charts (such as the one to the left) showing where business decision makers (BDMs) look online to search, find information, compare and potentially buy. Not surprisingly, Search and particularly Google come up at the top of the list. It also points that (at least as of last summer) businesses were not optimizing for search.

There is another article recently posted at marketingpower.com that claims that online advertising is much more effective on branded original content sites than on portal sites or search sites. I guess my reaction to that article is--yeah, no kidding. But search sites are still incredible important because most of the time people are clicking on the search results, not the ads on the side. However, there are instances where the paid ads are powerful, such as when a BDM types "marketing analytics optimization" into Google and gets five vendors on the right side. I bet some of those make his short list.

This is all interesting information, and there's a lot more of it out there online, but I think it points out the need for longitudinal tracking of B2B searching and buying behavior online. My hunch is that the influencer communities, both formal and informal, are becoming more and more important in searching for solutions. I'd define formal influencer communities as those like LinkedIn or more specific industry-specific communities such as the CMO Council; I'd define informal communities as largely those loose affiliations of sites in the blogosphere (such as the B2B marketing community of which this site is a part.)

My other hunch is that the relationship between third party communities and manufacturer sites is critically important. If it's true that BDMs start by searching, hit 10-20 relevant third party sites, and then develop a short list of candidates, what are they using manufacturer sites for? I'd argue that the main purposes at this point are likely:

• Establishing credibility
• Anticipating and answering technical and business solution questions clearly
• Providing a clear path forward (e.g. demo, live chat, 1-800 number, etc.) to avoid the stale lead syndrome

Clearly, it's important to get a high site ranking in search--but I'd argue it's just as important to make sure that all paths lead to the manufacturer site. This means, once again, mastery of the influencer communities first and providing a credible path forward on the manufacturing site second.

So I guess the point I'd like to make is this--if anyone knows of a solid longitudinal tracking study focused on BDMs' online behavior I'd love a comment on it. It could be a really powerful piece of analysis that would have a big impact on how online marketers spend their energy in the B2B space. If not, I think there needs to be a good study done on how BDMs are changing in how they search, evaluate and buy using the Internet... it's changing every day.