By: David A. Utter | Source: webpronews.com

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com, and others have established a working group to define a standard for clicks, in an effort to identify valid and invalid ones on search advertising.

The Click Measurement Working Group established by IAB and the member companies who have joined it will develop a series of click measurement guidelines. The definition they establish will help to separate legitimate clicks on advertisements from the illicit ones that advertisers consider to be invalid, or worse, fraudulent.

IAB’s announcement comes in the wake of Google’s $90 million settlement in an Arkansas click fraud case. The plaintiffs in that suit are continuing to battle with Yahoo, Ask, LookSmart, and other companies over click fraud allegations.

Ideally, the adoption of such guidelines will provide more transparency into how search advertising companies measure and charge for clicks. Clicks that do not meet the standard will stand out when an advertiser has an account independently audited against the defined guidelines.

Google dominates the search advertising industry. Its actions impact the other players around it. Recently, Google began to show its AdWords clients more information on invalid clicks, a small step toward greater transparency into its measurements.

Transparency has been a persistent demand of search advertising clients. Search engines have intentionally kept their methods opaque to outsiders, even those who fuel its revenue stream. They claim transparency will educate criminals on how to beat the system.

The development of a click guideline could help people game the system as much as it assists advertisers in identifying legitimate clicks. If the fraudsters out there can come up with a way to meet the guidelines, assuming they haven’t done so already, advertisers may end up paying for illicit clicks unless the search companies can reliably identify them before the advertiser is charged.

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Source: searchenginejournal.com

As part of the week long testing of Yahoo Publisher Network contextual advertising here on Search Engine Journal in anticipation of some discussion at Search Engine Strategies we have added YPN advertisements to our RSS feeds.

In the past I had not been the biggest supporter of embedded RSS advertising since our RSS feeds used to only serve excerpts of the posts here on SEJ. After joining the online newspaper blog syndication network BlogBurst, however, which requires full length posts in feeds, my mind has changed.

Previously the blog excerpts served as teasers for subscribers to Search Engine Journal’s feeds. Subscribers would read the excerpt which would build their interest, then they would click over to the blog from their reader or aggregator - to read the entire story and subsequently be served ‘on-site’ advertising.

Things have changed since 2003 with more and more blog readers following entirely blogged stories in the comfort of their aggregator of choice… which more than likely cuts down on the aggregator to blog CTR%.

In turn, a loss of potential advertising revenue. So, while sifting around the Yahoo Publisher Network admin I was reminded about their easy integration into RSS Feeds which serves a complete contextual advertisement for one Yahoo Search Marketing customer.

Read more at searchenginejournal.com

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