Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud
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Seth Godin posted a message to his blog today, “Ads are the new online tip jar,” where he encourages site visitors to click on ads when they enjoy content on a site.
If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click.
That’s all fine and good, except that it screws the advertisers who end up paying for empty clicks and get a poor ROI.
Ultimately, those advertisers get priced out of PPC advertising and there is less demand to run ads on the sites with great content that are getting all the thank you clicks.
Yes, “the economics of the web would change immediately,” as Godin states. We’d go from a system that works to one where everybody would lose.
- Posted in Affiliate News, Affiliate Opinions
45 Comments
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On August 22 @ 1:56 pm posted[...] other opinions see Is Seth Godin encouraging click fraud and Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud. This is the kind of subject I wish Techcrunch would talk about or would make its way onto [...]
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On August 22 @ 3:53 pm posted
[...] as Godin states. We’d go from a system that works to one where everybody would lose. (Shawn Collins) For a big picture guy like Seth this a really stupid idea. For an experienced online marketing [...]
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On August 26 @ 6:03 pm posted
[...] 3: Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers with Fake Clicks, Is Seth Godin encouraging click fraud? e Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud), e sul quale è costretto ad intervenire (direi quasi ritrattare…) con una frettolosa [...]
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On August 26 @ 11:38 pm posted
[...] Seth Godin’s Thank You Clicks [...]
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On August 27 @ 9:02 am posted
[...] Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud [...]
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On August 27 @ 3:12 pm posted
[...] things were not so simple – a lot of people took that post word for word and started blaming Seth for promoting click fraud. Things turned so worst [...]
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On August 31 @ 9:41 am posted
[...] other opinions see Is Seth Godin encouraging click fraud and Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud. This is the kind of subject I wish Techcrunch would talk about or would make its way onto [...]
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On August 31 @ 9:41 am posted
[...] other opinions see Is Seth Godin encouraging click fraud and Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud. This is the kind of subject I wish Techcrunch would talk about or would make its way onto [...]
That's pretty stupid of him. I'm not too impressed with Godin to begin with. I see the economics of the web changing from direct to brand advertising if everyone followed his lousy advice. You'll say goodbye to relevant ads and hello to beer and soft drink ads.
reply to this comment“Pretty simple, but not an accepted online protocol, at least not yet.”
Duh!!! Because of what you said above Shawn. And Seth knows it too.
“I can say this because there are no ads here but,”
Sure no ads on that blog, but he certainly has them on Squiddo. Oh wait…that's content pages. Guess they are being starved.
Irresponsible of him to post that. Also against many PPC agenceis TOS…like Google. He had to say that somewhere that he didn't have the actual ads posted.
reply to this commentWeird – it sounds like someone hijacked Seth's blog. That's just crazy talk. *shakes head*
reply to this commentHis rebuttal post is obnoxious.
reply to this commentSeth is an Idiot. He should have a link that says “click here if you think I am a schmuck”.
reply to this commentMarketing guru FAIL!
Does Seth Godin understand online advertising? His analogy to visiting a restaurant is the same as clicking an ad is telling me he doesn't. What Godin needs to make clear (if he understands it) is Tip Jar widgets are the new Tip Jar. He knows about widgets right? And really great job in not allowing comments on the posts Seth.
reply to this commentEven though I love the delicious subversiveness of the idea, I agree with the SEM folks. I have done CPC advertising both as a blogger and a brand manager and I have always had zero tolerance for websites (or keywords) with high clicks and low conversions. If clickthrough rates go up and conversion rates drop, marketers would shift ad dollars to search, away from content/ placement, and ad budgets available to bloggers would drop, instead of going up.
Seth Godin’s “more clicks -> lower conversions -> better landing pages -> higher conversions -> higher budgets†hypothesis assumes that marketers can learn to design significantly better landing pages to convert disinterested (or mildly interested) leads. I’m not sure if I share his confidence.
reply to this commentI suspect people would just start paying for sales instead of clicks. Things would probably work that way already if it weren't hard to track.
reply to this commentWell, from a readers PoV, Seth statement make perfectly sense. If I am satisfied with the content, clicking the ads is a way to thank the author (monetarily).
OTOH, this behaviour bombs every marketers PPC campaigns, but these are the marketers perils.
reply to this commentIf what Seth said is wrong, the Web Advertising is wrong, not Seth!
For instance, I read ads in magazines ALL THE TIME! Sometimes, I even spend more time looking at ads than reading the content. I even go to the websites of advertisers that I see in magazines. The advertiser paid the magazine for this very thing.
I feel that clicking on an ad on a website is the same thing. The ad is usually not big enough for me to actually know what the product is all about, so the only way to know that is to click it.
To me, saying that people can't click on ads on the web if they have no intention to buy is like saying that the first thing we should do when we get a magazine is rip out all of the ads and then mail them back to the publisher so that they know we don't care about them.
So, I say click, click, click. And if it messes things up for a while, the so be it! If web advertising is that broken, then blame the system, not the people who click.
reply to this commentIt's great is you click on an ad to learn more, but if merely a gesture with no intention of paying further attention after the click, it doesn't benefit anybody.
reply to this commentSorry, a follow-up.
Advertisers pay millions of dollars to advertise in magazines. Yet, when someone buys something they saw in a magazine, the advertiser (i.e., company selling the product) really has no idea that the person bought the product because of the ad. So, the obsession on the web with linking clicks to purchases is pretty silly. I think it's time for web advertising to evolve.
reply to this comment> I think it's time for web advertising to evolve.
If Web advertising were to have less tracking, I would say it would be devolving.
There are ways to code print ads to track performance. I think they should evolve to a point where it's clear to calculate the ROI, but that's neither here nor there.
reply to this commentI have no intention of buying a BMW anytime soon, but I like their ads and I read them in magazines. When out browsing the web, if I stumble across an interesting ad (even with no intention of buying the product) I click on the ad because the ad itself may be interesting/fun.
So, I really do not see how you can differentiate this from “clicking to show support.” They both result in no sale for the advertiser.
reply to this commentIt isn't as if anyone ever spends money on things they see in ads, is it?
reply to this commentPrint and online advertising are different animals. Even there, there are many different types of online advertising, such as performance marketing, CPM, and CPC. “Click, click, click” may be taking money OUT of a publishers pocket depending on the situation. Seth needs to brush up on the performance marketing industry before giving bad advice.
reply to this commentWow. You ever see the “war room” of an online advertising campaign from the advertising side? There is a spread sheet that could wrap around the room twice with everything they are tracking. And that's just the online campaign, it may be a split deal with offline and TV. As a publisher, I want to know the value of my inventory to an advertiser so I can maximize revenue. If I'm not tracking I might as well close up shop.
reply to this commentOkay, so maybe on THIS blog, I am a contrarian. I happen to like Seth. HUGE fan. But this time he really did blow it. Big time.
reply to this commentHe says that cicking on ads is a Tip? I dont think so. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and tipped YOUR waitress from someone else's wallet?
No go, Seth!
I've blogged about this, too.
http://www.trafficandconversion.com/seth-godin-...
–Mark Widawer
p.s. Seth posted an “explanation” on his blog a few hours later, which does NOT follow from his original post.
I can't believe that someone like Seth Godin could make such an irresponsible post. This could hurt us all big time.
reply to this commentI couldn't believe it when I read Seth Godin's post. I am not sure that it is fraud, but I am surprised that Godin would suggest it non the less. I don't think that that type of behavior should be encouraged EVER.
reply to this commentPeople with the kind of social strength that Seth Godin has can't go around saying things like that… it's just plain wrong…
reply to this commentContent ads are never as targeted as search advertising for that reason. You're 'buying' a curious prospect's momentary attention with your ad.
My thoughts on this are in a longer blog post at:
http://guydz.com/moneypowerwisdom/seth-godin-ti...
All success
reply to this commentDr.Mani
“When was the last time you went to a restaurant and tipped YOUR waitress from someone else's wallet?”
That is *exactly* it! Very good way to put it. I, too, have been a fan of Seth's for a while, so was disheartened when Shawn brought this post to our attention. (Haven't read the rebuttal yet.)
reply to this commentIt seems that Seth is coming from a good place, but I totally agree with you Shawn. I wonder if there is some sort of Ad/Tipping business model that would work with full disclosure of course.
reply to this commentI'm appalled that a well respected internet marketer would engaged in this chicanery. Right or wrong, that's one of the reasons why some adwords marketers don't like using the content network.
How can this be interpreted as anything other than click fraud. I would not my ads to appear on a site where a person is encouraged to click on an ad if you like the content on the site-What is that?
reply to this commentI wrote likewise on my blog that Godin’s proposal amounts to stealing from the advertiser. It’s a different story if you actually intend to purchase, but if you’re just clicking PPC ads to leave a tip…
reply to this commentIn a perfect world, I don't think it would matter. You figure that in the end, if people are NOT clicking on a site or they are but the advertisers are not getting a return that the end result will be the same. That said, I can't stand economists when they pose perfect worlds because they just don't exist.
In our non perfect world I would think that at minimum there is some lag time where the site is making more money than it would otherwise. Also, I think you have to add some amount of incompetence ALWAYS where marketing groups are not doing a good job of tracking exactly where revenue comes from and so they continue to support the sites with lots of clicks. This incompetence can be lack of visibility in their process or maybe they are just doing large purchases and have a tough time tracking or they are having someone else do the purchasing for them in a large media buy. These folks will continue to probably fund the site, again, for some limited period of time.
Is Seth probably right? Sure. Is Shaun right that it is click fraud? Probably true. A definition debate me thinks.
reply to this commentSeth Godin is probably wrong; however, there is a big assumption that seems to be made in all the criticisms I've read: that all advertising on these sites will be on a pay-per-click basis.
reply to this commentHow many out there has never clicked an ad that they weren't sincerely interested in?
Do not be dumb enough to think that the advertisers don't know about “friend clicks”… it would be fun to hear from somebody that actually works with advertising (making the actual ads – not trying to make money from them). They'll tell you that it's calculated!
It's like with magazine ads, how many of you have seen an ad for lets say a bottle of wine and ripped the page out and went to the store to buy that wine?
How many of you have bought a bottle of wine because (perhaps) the ad they saw in a magazine two days earlier lingers in the back of their heads?
You “affiliaters” should know that they usually leave a 30-day cookie – why is that? If the ads isn't supposed to be clicked out of curiousity? If you only click ads to buy something they wouldn't be needed, right?
Not that I condone “click fraud”, I merely state that it's calculated in the price (at least by the big guys)…
reply to this commentThat's really appalling… Could it be that the repercussions of advocating this practice just didn't cross his mind? I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, and say it's an oversight, but who knows?
reply to this commentI worked on the advertiser side for 10 years, so you can save the sanctimony.
A more appropriate analogy with magazines would be if you ripped out a random ad from a magazine at the doctors office to show your misdirected appreciation of the content.
reply to this commentIn cases where it's not pay-per-click, such a practice would benefit nobody, but it would be detrimental to the advertiser and publisher, as it would artificially inflate the clicks for ads.
reply to this commentOkay, so is everyone aware that Seth has apologized on his blog about the post? However, is explanation still makes me think he's got a lot to learn about online advertising. But he does know he made a mistake.
reply to this commentYep, he did post an apology. I'm normally a fan enough of Seth's to read much of his material whether I agree with it or not (its 50/50). His blog post on this topic definitely was not a “Purple Cow” and wasn't remarkable. I truly believe he understands general “marketing”, but perhaps not all the idiosyncracies of performance marketing. Consider lines like “if everyone started clicking, clickthrough rates would go up” (as if this is a new concept, and as if that's always a good thing) and “but then, advertisers would use the landing pages to start converting” (as if advertisers doing anything but CPM advertising aren't already trying to convert traffic to begin with). What he's trying to petition, I think, is bringing a very “offline”, old-world mentality to “online” marketing and promotion – which I'm in favor of. He's in the ballpark, just still sitting in the Upper Deck in terms of the execution he's suggesting. His premise is rooted in the right ideas and aims to benefit the online marketing community; its just the wrong execution.
reply to this commentNot really correct either, I'm not a marketer so I actually don't have a clue about this topic–but I do dare to state that the ones that spend $100,000 on an online ad campaign don't expect 100% of the clicks to be from people that is going to make a buy…
reply to this commentI don't get why he is still running “Adsense”..
it is totally against TOS
reply to this commentI don't get why he is still running “Adsense”..
it is totally against TOS
reply to this comment