Exposing click fraud | CNET News.com

This is the fundamental problem with internet advertising, and why the industry has already crashed once in it's short time span. Let me see if I can break it down for y'all:

1. Clicks are meaningless. There are a lot of what I would consider fraudulent ads out there that trick you into clicking on them. You've seen 'em, the ones that tell you that your computer is infected, or that your computer could be faster, or that you've won a prize. For a click to be meaningful, the respondent has to WANT to see what the product is about.
   
2. Advertising isn't always about generating leads. It's about generating AWARENESS.  There are five stages in the consumer pipeline: Awareness. Consideration. Shopping. Preference. Purchase. Awareness isn't something that can't really be measured accurately, but page loads are a reasonable barometer. But that is NOT what a click measures (see below).
   
3. Pay-per-click is unfairly weighted against the content provider. Whether or not someone clicks the ad is a sign of whether or not the ad was compelling enough to warrant interest, and shouldn't have to be about how much the publisher begged people to "help out". Publishers are penalized for poorly designed ads that don't communicate enough about a product.

Television advertising is based on ratings, or what we call in web-parlance "impressions" or page loads. We can even break this down to individuals (though it's really only individual machines. Television takes into account that if the ad is compelling, people will pay attention, but it's up to the AD to do that work. Can you directly measure response to ads in terms of a purchase. With statistics, you can get close, but the problem with internet advertising is that they're trying to short-cut the way humans behave. trying to jump from Awareness directly to Shopping. They only want to pay you for someone already in the Consideration phase ... it doesn't take into account that someone might remember an ad later and maybe google for the information, nor does it factor in repeated exposure to the ad. They're getting the Awareness for free.

So when I see stories about click-fraud, and people bemoaning how internet advertising doesn't work, all I can say is, "Duh." Anytime you try to side-step the system, it's going to bite you back.