There are sites out there that may be selling you ads that consumers aren't seeing. We're not talking about just a lack of traffic to the pages they appear on. There is a lack of traffic because the pages are simply invisible to viewers, making them essentially worthless.
A report from the Wall Street Journal says that even large corporations like Kraft foods, Greyhound Lines, and Capital One Financial are among the victims of such scams.
The sites use code, which makes it look to marketers like their ads have been appearing, but they do not appear to users. The report, based on research from Ben Edelman, cites MyToursInfo.com and MyProfilePimp.com as a couple of offending sites.
"The Web sites can get away with it, he says, because online advertisers don't always audit their campaigns for proof their ads are appearing," writes WSJ's Emily Steel. "It isn't clear how common these ads are or how much they cost marketers."
So how is an advertiser to know who to trust? One solution mentioned in the report is to buy ads based on attaining a certain number of clicks as well as impressions. In such a scenario, a site would have no benefit to pull off such a scam. Another possible solution is to be more directly involved with who you are advertising with.
"Advertisers often buy display ads based on the number of times they are loaded onto a page, rather than the number of clicks they get," says Steel. "Over the past, year, an increasing number of scams have sought to take advantage of that pricing system as advertisers have started buying more of their online ads via middlemen called ad networks, instead of directly from the Web sites themselves. These networks sell ad space at cheap rates across thousands of sites, and they don't always weed out illegitimate players."
Online advertising is having a big year. A number of recent reports show an optimistic viewpoint for the industry. There is no reason why that shouldn't continue as long as advertisers take responsibility for monitoring and stay involved with their campaigns.
News
Advertisers Scammed By Invisible Impressions
Yahoo Expands "It's Y!ou" Campaign With User Yodeling
As part of Yahoo's big "It's Y!ou!" campaign, the company has started an initiative to let users contribute to the famous "Yahoo! Yodel". Yahoo has opened up what it calls the Yodel Studio. The aim is for people to personalize and reinterpret the yodel.
"The foundation of the 'It’s Y!ou' campaign is about making the web more personally relevant to each of our consumers, so it’s important that we engage the world in the creation of our new yodel," said Elisa Steele, Yahoo! executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "It’s essentially a unique form of user generated content that honors the millions of people who visit Yahoo! every day."
Yahoo is even going so far as to hold live Yodeling events featuring celebrities and musical artists. One is in New York City and one is in London. Tomorrow there will be one in Mumbai. New York's event features Kimberly Caldwell, Jewel, LeAnn Rimes, Randy Jackson, Pete Wentz, and others. London's features Pixie Lott, and Mumbai's will feature Shankar Mahadevan, VJ Nikhil Chinappa, and Shaa'ir + Func. The events feature professional recording studios.
"The yodel is synonymous with Yahoo! and we’re ready for people around the world to put their unique expression on it," added Steele. "Whether your yodel is 80s punk or country funk, the Yodel Studio is about self-expression, having fun and allowing all the people who use Yahoo! to be an essential part of our brand revitalization effort."
Based on the number of times an entry is viewed, top yodels will ‘go gold,’ and one submission in the US, UK and India will each ‘go platinum.’ Participants can use built-in social media tools to help generate awareness for their yodels and voting for the platinum yodels will take place from November 9-15. Winners will be announced during the week of November 16, 2009 and will have a chance to be featured on the Yahoo! homepage and incorporated into Yahoo!’s new global advertising campaign.
Users have until November 8th to go to the Yodel Studio and create and submit their yodel. Different genre Yodel samples, check out this page.
New Forecast Downplays Importance Of Mobile Ads
Google and Yahoo may not want to count on their interest in the mobile market paying off anytime soon. A Bernstein analyst has forecast that, even by the time 2013 wraps up, mobile ads still won't generate much in the way of income for either company.
Jeffrey Lindsay believes that mobile ads won't supply even one-twentieth of either company's total revenue at that point. Peter Kafka reported, "He figures US mobile ads could generate $300 million for Yahoo in 2013 - about 4% of revenues."
And that's actually the more optimistic of the two cases if you concentrate on percentages and look at things from a certain angle. Kafka continued, "[H]e thinks Google, who dominates mobile search in the same way it does in the wired world, could generate $600 million - less than 2% of its revenues."
Given all of the energy that Google's poured into its mobile efforts - think search, Android, the My Location feature, and so on - it'd be interesting to know whether the search giant agrees with Lindsay's estimates and is just planning for the long-term, or is counting on things turning out better than he expects.
Anyway, if you're interested in a broader perspective, Lindsay predicted that mobile ads would be worth $2.2 billion all together in 2013.
Page 47 of 47
