Click frauds…

I am not against Click-thro-ads but I don’t think it can sustain the internet cogwheels. Here is why:

1, There is no relevence in placing ads where people are not expecting ads. It makes sense to place ads in search results page where I want to find something. But, when I visit social networking site, I am not looking for information, rather, I am looking to make friends or learn something new. The chance that I will click on an ad is less.

2, Click fraud has become very common. It is too tempting. A click there, a click here, a click then, a click now will add few more cents. In few cases, it is as high as few hundred dollars. (Don’t click on any of the sponsored links. They are all legal advisers and would set them back by few hundred dollars ) So, the easiest way to make money is look for which adword is costly and then start writing about that topic and do “click fraud”.

3, I find some content extremely useful, some free software making me productive but there is no way to say my “Thank You” to the website owner. I click on the ads. Simple, huh? I think this will be the most important reason for the fall of contextual ads. Fraudulent clicks can be prevented by monitoring the clicks but “Thank You” clicks are impossible to prevent. Because, they are impossible to track and pin down.

4, The mere ubiquitous presence of TextAds, Banner Ads, etc is making people Ad-blind. I don’t remember when I clicked on a ad. Put aside clicking, I don’t remember seeing an ad.

5,  What if someone writes a browser that automagically doesn’t display ads? Firefox extentions do that but for lesser mortals, if Maxthon or IE come up with such browser the model is dead, forever.

And, according to MediaPost, the percentage of ad clicks that are fraudulent is rising every year:

The overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6% in fourth-quarter [2007], up from the 14.2% click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006 and 16.2% for third-quarter 2007.

The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.3% in fourth-quarter 2007 — up from the 19.2% average click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006 and 28.1% for third-quarter 2007.

Now, there talks of ISP (Internet Service Provider) injecting ads into the pages you browse. This is the next logical step, since your ISP knows every site you browse and every click you do and every purchase you make. He has your brain mapped.

Apart from this, mobile advertising is said to be taking off. Gosh! I really wouldn’t want my personal device to buzz because of an ad SMS/MMS and with my small screen, I don’t want to see TextAds also in my mobile and I willing to pay my calls/smses, which I am already doing.

Researches say that people are not willing to look at ads even if they are paid. But, they are willing to pay to avoid ads. So, what is the solution? That is a multi-billion dollar question. If you know the answer, please share it with us.