India's secret army of online ad 'clickers'

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-654822,curpg-1.cms

... more reasons why affiliate and other such payment-based-on-actual-results programs are nice. :)

Hehe... interesting :)

But I don't understand why they don't use neat multi threaded bots for doing that. Some days work, but it's more efficient for sure.

Wow, that's really bad.
But I guess it's safe if you have fees based on sales..

Is it safe if the site you advertise on is honest?

Yes, but how do you tell if they are honest or not?

Online advertising has always been a complete joke really.

Cas :)

The part of on-line advertising that is a joke is trying to track how effectives the ads are based on how many clicks they get. If you assume you can’t track them any better than print ads, or billboards on the side of the road, I don’t see what makes them less effective than those other mediums. It is true that there is a great possibility for fraud in the tracking system and that can be a real problem if you PAY for the adds based on click though. But as long as you can pay a flat rate, or by impression, and you ignore the meaningless click through data, on-line advertising is just as visible, and just as ignorable, as any other kind of advertising. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be just as effective.

I disagree with the subject of this topic. “Another reason online advertising sometimes doesn't work” The fact that additional bogus clicks are being reported should not change the overall effectiveness of an on-line advertisement. The fact that fake customers are pretending to look at your ad does not change what happens when real customers actually look at your ad.

Also, it is a mistake to think that people will see you banner ad on a web site and instantly go to your web site and buy your product. Most magazine and newspaper advertisers do not expect potential customers to drop what they are doing and go buy their product right away just because they saw an ad in a newspaper. Yet those newspaper ads are stiff effective enough that advertisers pay a lot of money to run them. Most ads have longer term goals such as build product awareness and brand recognition.

No type of advertising generates instant sales on a consistent bases or can be tracked effectively. On-line advertising is only a failure if you assume it will magically be different that other types of advertising.

...or if you assume that paying $x for a banner advert will net you as many sales as paying $x for a printed magazine advert. Buck for buck, online advertising is massively overpriced. I was quoted something like $1000 for a 1-week sidebar ad on some popular net culture site (somethingawful.com or something like that) and I just laughed. I might have paid $20 for it perhaps and it might have netted me another couple of thousand downloads and perhaps even 5-10 sales.

Cas :)

Originally posted by James C. Smith
I disagree with the subject of this topic. “Another reason online advertising sometimes doesn't work”

On second though, it is true that something like India's secret army of online ad 'clickers' could sometimes cause online advertising to “not work.” My assertion was that extra bogus clicks do not reduce the impact your ad will have on actual customer. The problem is, those bogus clicks could cost you so much money that they offset any gains you made. If you are paying for ads by the click you may have a real problem with scams like this.

None of this is new. Clickbots have been around since Direct Hit came on the scene and factored click data into their search engine algorithm. I am just surprised India is taking such a low tech approach ;)