Advertisements

[Polare]

I realize this is for WOW, but still, here's the best ad I've seen so far:

"1-70 Alliance Leveling Guide. Any class to 70 in 9 days"

WOW! I've played 12 years and my primary is only 27th I feel weak!

 

[Saephis]

Alliance Leveling Guide
1-70 Alliance Leveling Guide. Any class to 70 in 9 days /played
http://www.mmoguides.biz

Yep. I share your sentiments exactly.

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Hope you clicked on it!

I'm rethinking these ads. So far we have made a grand total of $29.84. :roll:

 

[obcidian_bandit]

I assume that that is enough to pay for some of the hosting, at least a month or two's.
With the quality of service we've seen thus far, it can't be particularly expensive.

 

[roycifer]

I just clicked on the Alliance Nebraska Holiday Inn ad! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

 

[Robb G]

so.. you get paid per click? i have ALOT of spare time at work.. and I work on the internet.

 

[Gee-Perwin]

so.. you get paid per click? i have ALOT of spare time at work.. and I work on the internet.

x2

I work for the devil, err...Comcast. Same thing, right?

Alliance Holiday Inn FTW!

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Paid by the click, but they have safeguards to prevent stuffing the ballot box. So don't try it, because then they'll lock your IP out for a while and not give any credit or something.

 

[Frank Wiccan]

still wont stop us from say clicking once a week

 

[tieran]

I try and click one a week from the three different IP addresses I access from...

 

[Robb G]

i own about a hundred IPs... tee hee.

 

[jpariury]

There's a word for trying that sort of thing...

"fraud".

 

[Robb G]

Online marketing is a difficult game. You contact companies like google who have these sorts of advertising prgrams, and pay them to be included in these banners. Why? because you want traffic to your site. Now, these banners aren't exactly state of the art marketing here, just a few words and a link with a hope that someone, anyone, clicks on them to load your site, so that on the off chance they do, your site can do the real marketing (remember you only have 7 seconds to sell the average site on the net before the visitor loses interest). So, all they are banking on is your visit, so they can attempt to sell the product. If you get involved with SEO and Adwords campaigns expecting anythign more, you don't understand how this works.

If I have 100 IPs, and click the ads and allow them to load (which is typically what has to be done for google to register the click as successfull) the person who paid for the ad, is getting exactly what they wanted. a visitor. They might not get the 7 seconds they wanted to sell me crap since none of these products interest me, but they still get the click and visit counted in their web stats. So when Joe marketing guy at X company.com goes to the big cheese, he can report that they used up the google ad budget they had alloted for that month/quarter/whatever successfully with the pie charts and IP addresses to prove it.

They paid for clicks/page visits, they got them. How is that fraud?

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Well, "fraud" has a sepcific legal term which I don't think applies here. It may not be what the advertiser wanted, but it's not "fraud" which requires the intentional use of deceit, a trick, or some dishonest means to deprive someone else of their money, property or a legal right.

I'm sure all advertisers are aware that not every click consists of someone going "Wow, that looks great, I'm going to buy that now!"

At the same time, I am not encouraging its use. If players click on an ad every now and then, that helps, especially if it's an ad they want to read.

 

[jpariury]

Well, "fraud" has a sepcific legal term which I don't think applies here. It may not be what the advertiser wanted, but it's not "fraud" which requires the intentional use of deceit, a trick, or some dishonest means to deprive someone else of their money, property or a legal right.

I'm sure all advertisers are aware that not every click consists of someone going "Wow, that looks great, I'm going to buy that now!"

At the same time, I am not encouraging its use. If players click on an ad every now and then, that helps, especially if it's an ad they want to read.

The fraud would be scripting something to use multiple IPs to hit the link in order to generate untrue views on the webpage. That is the trick by which you would deprive the advertised company of it's money.

One or two, or even a dozen "I clicked it to help support the people" isn't something that would likely cause a big issue. Using a script to click links through a hundred IPs each week would.

Wiki article, good links to actual lawsuits in the sources.

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Ah, not being a programmer I wasn't thinking along those lines. For some reason I had an image of Robb walking down a line of separate computers in some office complex somewhere, and clicking once from each terminal.

 

[Robb G]

Actually, one of the things I do at work is remotely manage a small 100 IP network where all of the IPs are mapped to specific ports in a series of routers. This allows me to do with them whatever we want (assign them to servers, users, or assign them to myself) with just a few key strokes. No nafarious scripting to fool the ads involved (google has a pretty big defense against that anyway, so what's the point). So I could pretty easily click the ad, switch ports, click the ad, switch ports, and so on.

Regardless, it was just a joke (notice the "tee hee") so we can all rest soundly knowing I am not defrauding the mighty google with my nerd skillz :roll:

 

[Gee-Perwin]

Just face it, Robb--you are a thief and a liar.

(I still <3 you)

 

[jpariury]

Online marketing is a difficult game. You contact companies like google who have these sorts of advertising prgrams, and pay them to be included in these banners. Why? because you want traffic to your site. Now, these banners aren't exactly state of the art marketing here, just a few words and a link with a hope that someone, anyone, clicks on them to load your site, so that on the off chance they do, your site can do the real marketing (remember you only have 7 seconds to sell the average site on the net before the visitor loses interest). So, all they are banking on is your visit, so they can attempt to sell the product. If you get involved with SEO and Adwords campaigns expecting anythign more, you don't understand how this works.

Actually, the company I work for is highly involved in pay-per-click as part of its business operations, so I'm pretty familiar with it. And I understood your intent, I'm just heading off any "brilliant" ideas people might infer from your post, jesting as it was.

They paid for clicks/page visits, they got them. How is that fraud?

Intent, execution, and relationship. You are clicking on the ads with no reason other than to give the false impression of creating unique traffic for a friend's website.

I understand it was a joke, and I while I doubt anyone would knowingly intentionally cause Mike to be at risk, it's better to nip it in the bud early on.