Web Analytics & Click Fraud

Information about customers is very valuable to companies. The best way for companies to find out facts about their customers is to use Web Analytics. Wikipedia states that, "Web analytics is the study of the behaviour[sic] of website visitors."


Above is the screen shot of my Google Analytics report for my blog.

Since our assignment was to commit click fraud, I emailed all the people I knew that I thought would click for me. This resulted in 23 visits, 71 page views, and people spent an average of 4 minutes, 17 seconds on my blog. I had a bounce rate of 43.48%. If I were a company and my blog was my landing page, I would need to work on making greater depth and providing more links for users to click on. Because this is just a single-page website and the only links I've provided are to the outside, this bounce rate is not bad.

My traffic was from 52.17% direct traffic and 47.83% referring sites. The Google Analytics page describes the difference as, "'Direct Traffic' is visits from people who clicked a bookmark to come to your site or who typed your site URL directly into their browser. 'Referring Sites' shows visits from people who clicked to your site from another site." I interpret this to mean that 52.17% are a result of my click fraud, and 47.83% are visits from the class website.

If I were a professional blogger, I would definitely make some changes. I know I would want more people to visit my website and I know I would want them to spend more time there. I think a good strategy would be to link with many other blogs that were similar so we would both benefit from more exposure.

Business Week's article, 
"Click Fraud"
 highlights the underground crime of
click fraud and how far-reaching a problem it has
become. The biggest surprise for me in reading the
article was the fact that there are actually "PTR,"
or "Paid To Read" sites out there that are designed
to specifically rip-off competing sites. This is a
completely unethical business practice and I hate
to read that Yahoo, and especially Google, are
involved. Letting this practice of click fraud
go on is a major disappointment because Google is
a highly trusted company. Companies are catching
on, which is good because somebody needs to, but
that means that online advertising dollars are going
elsewhere. When methods of measuring online ads are
not reliable, I would expect the companies to do nothing
less. I hope that Google and Yahoo, and any other
search engine companies that may be doing the same
thing will learn from their mistakes, because even
if they stand to make more money as a result of
companies buying more clicks, they will surely lose
more money, not to mention credibility in the end
by not taking care of the click fraud situation properly.

Online Content

Everything imaginable is available on the internet, yet what is popular can change in an instant. No company can advertise in all places at once, so it is a huge decision as to where to place online advertisements.

My advice to clients would be to generate your own unique content, rather than relying on the flavor of the week to gain attention for you. Although this is a big undertaking, if well done, can be very effective.



Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty caused quite a stir when it first debuted, mostly thanks to the Dove-generated YouTube Video. However, Dove has also integrated an entire website with the same philosophy: That not every woman is "perfect" but that every woman is beautiful.

Other companies have caught onto the trend as well, tweaking it to suit their own needs. For example, Georgia Pacific, the maker of Brawny paper towels, produced its own reality show that could be viewed only in "webisodes" available on the Brawny website. Note: Brawny Academy is no longer available on the website, but the description is available on this article.



Yet another company that is jumping on this wagon is American Eagle. Its teen mini drama,Mall World has developed somewhat of a cult following. American Eagle hit the bull's eye in marketing to their target audience because not only are the 5 minute episodes available readily online, they are also premiered every Wednesday night on MTV during Real World.

There are times when a companies efforts do not go as smoothly as the aforementioned examples. In visiting BudTV, I was very disappointed and frustrated. Budweiser has the extra hurdle of age requirements to jump through, but the process can make it difficult for the audience. You have to sign up in order to enter the site, and I was unable to do so, even though I am 21. You have to fill out personal information, which takes extra time, and not everyone is willing to do that. If people can't easily look at your content, it will obviously not be a successful campaign.

Still, I believe that company-generated content is more reliable than expecting crazy people, who are only in the spotlight for a week, to give you results. That is most definitely not something that most companies want to associate themselves with.

Alternatively, no one can force good ideas to be popular, as is the case with 2nd Life. Sometimes you have to take risks, and I don't think that investing in 2nd Life was a bad idea. It was just unfortunate for the advertisers that the reality was not as successful as the concept.

Chanel is doing itself a big favor by starting an online campaign, and I predict that more high-end companies will follow their example. After all, who wouldn't want a piece of the internet pie? It's delicious!

Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is all about gaining attention. Companies want to make their banner ads stand out and appeal to the people reading the information on the host site and encourage them to "click-through" to the advertiser's site. Each time a page containing an ad is viewed, that is called an "impression." According to Scrub the Web, "Minimum ROS [Run of Site] Order: 50,000. Impressions; $360.00."

Below is an example of a banner ad for Wikipedia.




My personal experiences with banners are pretty typical. If I am on a high-quality website that I trust and I see banner ads that are relevant to me, I am somewhat likely to click-through. However, if I'm on some shady site that I don't normally frequent and there is a poor-quality banner ad, I will never click through. Alternatively, I will not click on a banner ad if I don't know what the ad is actually advertising.

A banner ad is effective and will make me click through when I am actually interested in the product or company and the ad is well done. I am likely to notice ads that are colored differently from the rest of the page.



I think that the Career Builder skyscraper banner to the left is well done. You know what it is for and where it will take you. It is bright and colorful. It is humorous because of the monkey ~ no one wants to do monkey's work!




I think the ad to the right, although not technically banner sized, is bad. I don't know what the company or product is. It seems pointless. That is something I would never click on.


Banner blindness is the phenomena in which readers looking at a web page rarely look at ads or anything looking like ads. We mentally block them out so it makes it that much harder to gain an audience.

Behavioral Targeting

It might seem a little on the creepy side that our every movement on the internet is tracked and recorded for advertisers to use, but I don't believe it's all bad news. With behavioral targeting, the ads can actually be useful to consumers. Internet users who have searched for a certain product in the past will be traced anonymously and then relevant ads will be presented to them on other sites within the network.

According to BehavioralTargeting.com
, "When used correctly, behavioral targeting can greatly increase the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns by finding your target users in a more efficient manner than basic Run of Network advertising buys."



Above is the screen capture of the cookies that are currently saved on my computer. Among others, here are 5 that I think are ad networks:
1. specificclick.com
2. tacoda.net
3. zedo.com
4. fastclick.net
5. advertising.com


Advertising.com
's website states,"Our network reaches nearly 90% of all Internet users in the U.S., making us the biggest ad network in town." Obviously they reached me, and I have only had my computer for a few weeks!

As for my personal browsing history, here are some examples of sites that I have visited recently (within the last week or so):
-wikipedia.com
-webmd.com
-usps.com
-siuc.edu
-dictionary.com
-northface.com
-apple.com
-oneclub.org
-fandango.com
-facebook.com
-google.com
-imbd.com
-fredflare.com
-urbanoutfitters.com
-amazon.com
-writing.com
-adage.com
-dailycandy.com
-etsy.com
-mtv.com
-ae.com
-weather.com
-bankofamerica.com

You might notice that on my list of websites are 2 movie-related sites: IMBD and Fandango. Behavioral targeting at work, someone else noticed this as well. As I was sitting here typing up my blog, I got a pop-up ad for NetFlix, (shown below). This is certainly not a coincidence. Everything in advertising is more planned out than the average person can even imagine!



I am also one of those dreaded shoppers who adds things to the cart but then almost never actually goes through the check-out process. I visit many clothing sites, but it is just to dream. If I were a retailer trying to gear towards someone like myself, I would have a feature like a mailing list or a wish list so that around holiday time when people are looking for gift ideas, the site would be remembered even though they can't always afford to purchase.

After all is said and done, people will always worry when it comes to their privacy. In actuality, the information that is collected by ad networks is all anonymous. They don't know our names or SS numbers. They only know what patterns of sites we visit and use that to try to guess what might be helpful to us. As
Revenue Science
puts it, "Behavioral targeting is the most effective way to reduce online waste."