Trouble Clicks

    Internet advertising  is booming. The  industry has gone from $9.6 billion  in  revenue  in 2001  to $27 billion this year,  according  to Piper  Jaffray,  an  investment bank. And  it  is  still early days. The  internet accounts  for only 5% of  total spending on advertising, but  that fgure  is expected  to  reach at  least 20%  in  the next  few years. The single  largest  category within  this  flourishing  industry, accounting for nearly half of all spending, is “pay-per-click” advertising, which  is used by frms both  large and small  to promote their wares.
    It works  like  this. Advertisers bid on keywords  that  they believe potential customers will be interested in. This enables internet frms such as Google, the market leader, and Yahoo, its smaller rival,  to display advertisements alongside  the results of internet searches. The advertiser pays only when a consumer clicks on an ad; the owner of the website where the ad was displayed then receives a small commission.

    The benefits of  the pay-per-click approach over  tradi-tional advertising  (television,  radio, print and billboards) are obvious. Since advertisers pay only  to  reach  the small subset who  actually  respond  to  an advertisement,  the quality of  the  leads generated  is very high, and advertisers are prepared  to pay accordingly. The price per click varies from $0.10  to as much as $30, depending on  the keyword, though the average is around $0.50.
  But  as  pay-per-click  advertising  has  grown  into  a huge  industry, concern has mounted over so-called “click fraud”—bogus  clicks  that do not  come  from genuinely interested customers.  It  takes  two main  forms.  If you click repeatedly on  the advertisements on your own website, or get other people or machines  to do so on your behalf, you can generate a stream of bogus commissions. Click  fraud can also be used by one company against another: clicking on a rival frm’s advertisements can saddle  it with a huge bill. Bogus clicks are thought to account for around 10% ofall click traffc, though nobody knows for sure.
  But generally  the  industry adopted a rather cavalierattitude to click fraud. Such a fippant attitude has not gone down well with advertisers, who are up in arms about the problem. Some have even resorted  to  legal action. In  the wake of these legal challenges, Google and Yahoo recently joined  a working  group  at  the  Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a trade association, which will establish stan-dards for pay-per-click advertising,  including  the introduc-tion of  industry-funded auditing and certification, by  the middle of 2007.
  A few months ago Mr. Gross pioneered an alternative to the pay-per-click model. In February Snap, a search engine backed by Mr. Gross,  launched “pay-per-action”, a new model  in which advertisers pay only  if a click on an ad  is followed by an action such as a purchase or a download.
  Might  this put an end  to click  fraud? Don’t bet on  it, says Mike Zeman at Starcom, an advertising agency. Pay-per-action will be a niche, he predicts, since converting a click into an action depends on a variety of factors such as the ease of use of the advertiser’s website.

都是点击惹的祸

    互联网广告业正在蓬勃发展。据投资银行Piper Jaffray 报告，该产业的收入已从 2001 年的 96 亿美元增加到今年的270亿美元。这还只是刚刚开始，互联网广告投入仅占广告业总投入的 5％，但今后几年该数字有望至少达到20％。在蒸蒸日上的网络广告业中，最主要的广告形式就是“点击付费” ，其投入约占总投入的一半。为了推广产品，不论大公司还是小公司都采用这类广告。
    点击付费广告的运作流程如下：广告商竞价购买那些他们认为预期客户会感兴趣的关键词，这样就能使其广告出现在 Google（网络市场先锋）和雅虎（规模稍小，Google 的竞争者）之类网络公司的搜索结果旁。广告商只有在客户点击某个广告后才需要付费，然后相关网站的所有人就会因此而得到一小笔佣金。
    与传统广告形式（电视、广播、印刷品和广告牌等）相比， “点击付费”广告的好处不言自明。因为只有当广告传播到少数真正点击广告的人时广告商才需付费，由此他们得到的是具有较强购买意向的信息，广告商自然乐意买单。每次点击的价格平均约为0.5美元，为0.1美元，可达 30 美元，主要取决于关键词是什么。
    不过，随着“点击付费”广告发展成为一个庞大的产业，人们越来越担心所谓的“点击欺诈” ，即并非真正感兴趣的消费者进行的虚假点击。它主要包括两种形式：如果一个人反复点击自己网站的广告，或者让别人或机器代替他这么做，就能产生一连串的虚假点击从而骗取佣金。
    “点击欺诈”也可用于公司间的竞争：例如点击竞争对手公司的广告可以让其承担高额的广告费。尽管有人认为虚假点击大概占全部点击量的 10％，但没有人知道确切数字。
    通常情况下，网络广告业对点击欺诈持一种漠不关心的态度。这种轻率的态度令广告商们无法接受，他们强烈要求解决这一问题，有的广告商甚至已经诉诸法律。经历法律上的质询后，Google 和雅虎近期加入了交互式广告管理局下属的一个组织——一个商业协会，该组织拟定于2007 年上半年确立点击付费广告标准，其中包括引入由网络广告行业赞助的审计和认证制度。
    几个月之前，企业家格罗斯率先开发了一种取代点击付费广告的模式。今年 2 月份，由格罗斯支持的 Snap搜索引擎发布了  “按有效行为付费（PPA） ”的新型广告模式，广告商只需在某广告被点击后出现购买或下载行为时付费。
    那么，这样能解决“点击欺诈”问题吗？星传媒体广告代理公司的迈克 • 泽曼认为结果还很难说。他预测说，由于点击能否转化成购买行为取决于诸多因素，如广告商网站的使用方便程度等，因此 PPA 模式将会成为一个有利可图的市场。
——选自《我爱读英文》