Clicking for Friends
January 17th, 2007
If you pay attention to the online world at all, then you’re familiar with contextual advertising. It’s a huge business, generating billions of dollars for website owners and the companies serving the ads. It’s the primary revenue stream of Wall St darling Google Inc, and online behemoths Yahoo and Microsoft, while late to the game, are making strides in parlaying their real estate into cash cows.
It’s a fantastic platform in which readers see relevant ads, website owners are able to monetize their traffic, advertisers can reach targetted visitors, and the server of the advertisement collects revenues. The primary flaw in the system appears to be click fraud, in which a user clicks on the ad without any real interest in the underlying product or service.
While most talk concerning click fraud centers on companies clicking ads to cost their competition money or the website owner clicking ads to generate income, I have yet to hear anybody speak of clicking for friends. Is it common practice, or am I alone in my ways?
When I go to a blog or site owned by a friend and I see some contextual advertising, a lot of times I’ll click on an ad or two to help my buddy out. No, I am not really interested in purchasing some new chopsticks, but if I can click on an ad and generate some revenues for him/her, why not? Likewise for a site that I come across that I enjoyed. Great new page on Digg? I check it out, read the article, and if I enjoy it, I’ll throw the site owner a bone by clicking on an ad. Hey, he made my day better with a great post, why shouldn’t I reciprocate in kind with a little clickity-click??
It should be noted that I have never had somebody ask me to click on their ads - that would be a violation of most TOS, and a bit tacky to boot. Fortunately, I seem to have friends that hold themselves to a higher standard. This is just something I have taken upon myself to help boost their revenues.
So, do you click for friends, or am I the lone miscreant?
January 17th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Interesting… I have never done this but it is not a bad idea and I don’t see it as fraudulent at all as long as the site owner has not solicited me to do it! After all, if I am going to the site to begin with, I am interested in their topic, so I might as well follow some contextual ad links right?
January 17th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Greg man you are right on the money there.
When i use a ping service or some keyword researching tool i most always click an ad everytime i do so. In the back of my head i think everyone is providing this content and this service because they hope to make a little through the ads and get links.
Since it takes less energy to click an ad when i am leaving already that is the choice i tend to make.
Although i think it is harmless in the big picture of things i do think it is Fraud and probably the wrong thing to do.
Oh well.. If you had an ad i would click it right now after i click submit.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I’m sure you are NOT alone. I sometimes click for friends but mostly just move on.
While I agree that most advertisers wouldn’t want these clicks, I’m not sure you can file this under “click fraud.” This term seems more reserved for those big time violators who unleash an automated program or team of people to click, click, click.
To me, clicking for friends is just par for the course when it comes to contextual advertising. You may not have any interest in the ad but its not going to set off any alarms if you click on it once or twice.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I couldn’t find any ads on your site to click… j/k
interesting article. this could be debated extensively…
January 17th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I think you are not alone, and I think this is exactly the problem.
You know, it doesn’t matter if you call it click fraud, friend click or friend fraud. What really matters is the action, that is, clicking on an ad to charge the advertiser and without having any interest on the product.
Because the advertiser knows the conversion rate of his ads. On my own personal experience advertising on adsense, this was about 0%. Most clicks coming from the adsense network would just reach the main page and then leave. At the same time clicks coming from the google search page performed very well. So what did I do? I unsuscribed from the adsense advertising, and only kept the google search one.
As more and more people starts clicking on ads to “support” sites (it is very easy to be generous with other’s people money) and more and more advertisers start to realize that they are not getting an income from the adsense network, it will all start to go down, and so will all the “supported” sites.
On the other hand, there is nothing you or I or anyone reading this comment can do to stop this, so maybe it is wise to actually click on your friend’s ads before they are no more. I imagine on the future some “click per action” will have to be implemented to allow the system to continue working. I think google realizes this, and this is why they are already working on it.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Hay Greg,
If you had an ad on your blog that I could target… I could place a “Shout Out” message that says something like…
Hey Greg!
Aloha from your
Friends in Hawaii!
www. Display URL .com
Hopefully your friends would click on my ad. I would gain a new visitor and you would earn a Nickel or so.
Everyone’s happy.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Sounds like a dick thing to do!
Then again, notice how much width Google leaves as hyperlinkable space for their sponsored results. What makes them think my clicking on a white space at the top of their website, inches away from any actual sponsored hyperlink that I was interested in being directed to a sponsor?
January 19th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Hey Greg,
My first reaction was… That’s probably not the right thing to do in most cases.
But… I thought about it and did a bit of research. I looked for some blogs that would likely be displaying my contextual ads and asked myself if I would be happy or pissed off if a friend of the blogger picked the best ad (Mine) and clicked on it without intending to purchase, just to help their buddy out… Or like leaving a tip to the blogger for spending the time to write a great post.
I found several blog posts that did in fact display my contextual ads. The posts were positive in nature and the ads were relevant to the post.
So… Sure… In many situations, that’s exactly what I hope will happen.
Sometimes it’s not about the product but the story. The Blogger in this case, is helping me to set the mood and is doing quite a bit of my marketing for me by setting up the sale or back story around my product or service. The reader is also in his happy place.
In my opinion, this is a very sweet spot.
Emotions can influence information processing. In general, happy people tend to scrutinize arguments given (e.g., cost versus benefits of using a product) a lot less, since they don’t want to lose their happy moods by doing too much thinking. Happy people clicking my ads right after reading a happy or thoughtful story from a trusted friend is exactly what I want.
One of the best things that can happen is for my product or service to be somehow emotionally tied to the consumer’s happy thoughts.
On the other hand… My business doesn’t involve Structured Settlements, DUI Lawyers, Mortgages or other notoriously expensive topics that demand an outrageously huge cost per click.
In general… I would assume most advertisers would want people to click the ads in these circumstances.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I’ve done it a few times. I like spending other people’s money though. I guess I picked that habit up from my girlfriend. //g
April 14th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Greg, clicking on an ad with no other intention then to help a website earn a few cents is defrauding the advertiser. If you had an adwords compaign, and people were click on your ads at a website they just visited soley for the purpose of putting some change into the site owners pockets, would you still continue to advertise there since the conversions are so horrible?
April 16th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I think it a nice gesture I mean I wouldn’t care if somebody did this to my site. But I think click fraud is not as big as you think. If it was 60% that would be big. I think it’s less than 20%. Is it a fraud in a way yes would the owner know or be any part of it. Would you even be able to tell if it was on purpose? Say you saw an add that was good and you clicked it only to find that it was not what you wanted or the site was poor or untrustworthy. I think you would leave. So bottom line would anybody know I think that’s debatable. Anyway the contract says that you don’t tell anybody to click if people click with out you knowledge I don’t think they could say anything. there would be know way to know.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Just found this site while googling for “how to see which ads are bing clicked on”.
Great Post!!!!!
June 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I almost ALWAYS “click for friends” (including myself)., it is an easy and painless way to show support., both for the hosting site AND for the advertiser.
I am not likely to click an ad (whether interested in the product / destination or not) if it is something that I do not believe in (umm, Catholic World Domination, for one) or am not even a little supportive of.
The stats may be slightly skewed as a result perhaps, but in the long run I would not think that this is the rule for those doing the clicking. Or maybe it is., ?
AK
September 24th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I click them just to click them.. friend or foe.. it’s kind of like my way of thanking them for providing me with they useful information they have on their blog / site…
October 24th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
i think click fraud is not good since it hurts the purpose of ads by the publisher who pay a lot of money to bring prospective customers.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I believe click fraud to be huge problem. I have actually had to pause many ad groups due to huge spikes in clicks that are just too unnatural to be real clicks. Thank you for shedding light on this frustrating subject Greg.