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Dreaming of Pay Per Click Sausage
By Jim Hedger (c) 2007

The problem might have been that Jeffrey had heard the same set
of questions once too often or it could just be the night noises
one hears when traveling in strange cities. It could have been
an undigested slice of deep-dish pizza from the evening before
or a phantom blues-riff floating in his head. Whatever it was,
it was 4AM on the morning of the last day of the Chicago Search
Engine Strategies conference and Jeffrey K. Rohrs was wide
awake.

At 9:00AM he was scheduled to moderate a panel titled In House:
Big SEO. Two hours after that he was to moderate another panel,
the one that was keeping him up at night, In House: Big PPC
panel. Five hours before presiding over two long sessions, and
Jeffrey wasn't able to sleep.

He wasn't nervous. Jeffrey is an SES veteran having appeared on
or moderated large-attendance sessions for several years. The
day before he had moderated for panels: Search Arbitrage,
Dealing with Affiliates, Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud,
and Search and Regulated Industries. So what could be running
through his head at a time when he clearly should have been fast
asleep?

Jeffrey was thinking about PPC, Von Bismarck, Garlinghouse and
sausages in that lucid but dream like state that comes when you
wake from your sleep with a start. Jeffrey had had a revelation
that jolted him awake so he pulled up his laptop and started
writing what would become known as The Sausage Manifesto
(http://www.sausagemanifesto.com/the-sausage-manifesto/).

As legend has it, nineteenth century German Chancellor Otto Von
Bismarck once remarked, "Laws are like sausages. It is better
not to see them being made."

That's the sentence that was running through Jeff's head. It
reminded him of the way the pay per click market was going.
Lower quality clicks, decreasing returns for some advertisers
and increasing participation from bottom feeding garbatragors
added irregular end-bits to the meat PPC advertising was
producing. Even if you love the output, it's often not nice to
witness the process.

Jeffrey spends a lot of time thinking about PPC, partially from
an insider's point of view and partially from an agency point of
view. Having been around the marketplace for so many years and
having moderated countless SES and industry conferences Jeffrey
knows the folks who work at the largest PPC vendors. He has
heard their stories over dinner and drinks and played official
referee/timekeeper when they speak on conference panels. Jeffrey
is also the president of a fairly significant search marketing
firm, Optiem LLC (http://www.optiem.com/).

Having handled several sessions about PPC and search the day
before and heading into another, Jeffrey was thinking about the
apparent disconnect between advertisers and the PPC programs
they participate in. Of the comments from the audience in his
years moderating or sitting on panels about pay per click,
questions relating to click fraud tend to come up most
frequently.

The search engines themselves tend to downplay issues associated
with click fraud at one point suggesting that outright fraud
accounts for only one half of one percent of all click activity.
If that estimate was in fact true, why would so many people
think click fraud is a problem?

Every problem has a solution and, since most problems can be
traced back to differing perceptions, perhaps the solution to
the multiple issues presented by the current pay per click model
could come from clearer communications.

Now, this is all coming to him in a rush of realization, a
self-described Jerry Maguire kind of moment when absolutely
everything makes sense with a stark clarity. What came out was
an open letter from himself to "... Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask,
LookSmart, Miva, Kanoodle, and other paid search networks."

His open letter starts with fourteen questions of his own,
including;

   - How do you define an invalid (i.e., non-billable) click?

   - What is the true size of the click fraud problem?

   - With all the publishers you have purportedly kicked-out of
     your publisher networks–and the click bots that you claim
     to stop at your gate–why hasn't there been ANY criminal
     prosecution of someone for activities related to click
     fraud?

   - Why is the burden on advertisers to prove clicks are
     invalid rather than you, as the advertising network, to
     prove that they are valid?

   - When you cut off a distribution partner for fraudulent
     activity, do you retroactively refund questionable ad
     revenue to all effected advertisers—not just the ones whose
     complaints generated the inquiry?

   - When you discover a new fraud technique, do you
     retroactively review your billing records and refund for
     all clicks generated by that technique?

These and the eight other questions he poses are very real. The
problem is they can never be adequately answered because the PPC
providers are unable to turn over the data they claim provides
the proof without also giving away vital clues to how their
ranking algorithms work. That knowledge is more critical to
Google and the other engines than are the secret formulas for
Coke and Kentucky Fried Chicken put together.

Advertisers with complaints about their accounts have a similar
problem. They are not allowed to know exactly where all clicks
billed to them originate from because to show them that data
could literally spell suicide for the sanctity of their sorting
codes.

With that classic Catch22 as a backdrop to the most successful
advertising model online, Jeffrey tried to outline an 11 point
plan of action, a manifesto to improve the quality of the clicks
and the level of communication between PPC providers and their
customers, the advertisers.

The manifesto opens with a simply stated request. Talk to us,
don't lecture us.

"We are not children. We are professionals who spend billions of
dollars on tiny text ads. To misquote Jefferson Starship, "We
built this city on ten cent bids." If we think there's a
problem, there is a problem."

Next, Jeffrey suggests the PPC providers appreciate that small
advertisers don't have the budgets or expertise found at larger
corporations. "We'll set up our conversion tracking and manage
our bids, but we expect you to do the heavy data lifting when we
raise a concern—not throw everything back at us with a giant
to-do list. We pay you—not vice versa."

Perhaps his strongest suggestion is for PPC providers to invest
in security in direct proportion to the problem. "Warranted or
not, a lot of us have a sneaking suspicion that you pocket more
money from invalid clicks (including third-party click fraud)
than you invest in its prevention. Don't get us wrong, we
appreciate that you have grown your click quality teams;
however, we believe they need more resources. If your data shows
that click fraud is actually in the single digits, then please
invest at least that much in its prevention."

The manifesto goes on to mention improving click quality
customer service, sharing data with other engines, helping
organize a trusted third party auditor, the creation of a
registry for captured click fraud artists, the actual
prosecution of click fraudsters, and, most importantly, the
provision of data proving what is and is not a billable click.

Jeffrey has close relationships with the people in charge of the
largest PPC engines, Google and Yahoo. Shuman Ghosemajumder from
Google and John Slade from Yahoo are regular panelists in his
sessions and, in the course of his professional work, Jeffrey
and his staff have close contact with Google AdWords and Yahoo
Search Marketing representatives.

He recognizes that there is a great deal being done by search
engineers to detect and prevent click fraud however he also
acknowledges that many of his colleagues, clients and contacts
believe there is a growing problem. Though he doesn't seriously
believe his early morning revelation will cause a revolution in
the practices of the PPC providers, he figures his goal of
generating discussion in the search marketing industry has been
more than accomplished. Not bad for some 4AM notes.

Hear Jeffrey K. Rohrs on the Alternative on WebmasterRadio.fm
(http://media.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/audio/2007/ALT011807.mp3)
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Search marketing expert Jim Hedger is one of the most prolific
writers in the search sector with articles appearing in numerous
search related websites and newsletters, including SiteProNews,
Search Engine Journal, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

He is currently Executive Editor for the Jayde Online news
sources SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com) and SiteProNews
(http://www.sitepronews.com). You can also find additional tips
and news on webmaster and SEO topics by Jim at the SiteProNews
blog (http://blog.sitepronews.com/).
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