Edelman

Tying Google Affiliate Network
September 28, 2010

In one of the few areas of Internet advertising where Google is not dominant – where just three years ago Google had no offering at all – Google now uses tying to climb towards a position of dominance. In particular, using its control over web search, Google offers preferred search ad placement and superior search ad terms to the advertisers who agree to use Google Affiliate Network. Competing affiliate networks cannot match these benefits, and Google’s bundling strategy threatens to grant Google a position of power in yet another online advertising market.

http://www.benedelman.org/news/092810-1.html

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Sony’s Crackle Partners Invisible Traffic

by certifiedbug on April 29, 2010

in News

Ben Edelman, Sony’s Crackle: Invisible Traffic Galore

Advertisers buying display ads from Sony’s Crackle.com rightly and reasonably expect that users can see the ads. After all, a visible ad is a basic and crucial condition for effective display advertising: If a user can’t see ad, then the impression is wasted, as is the associated spending. Nonetheless, in a surprising series of incidents, numerous Crackle partners are loading the Crackle site invisibly — thereby overcharging advertisers for worthless invisible impressions.

Edelman presents three recent examples: http://www.benedelman.org/news/042710-1.html

http://certifiedbug.com/blog/tag/edelman/

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Edelman on Upromise

by certifiedbug on January 21, 2010

in Internet Security

Benjamin Edelman
January 21, 2010

Upromise Savings — At What Cost?
Upromise touts opportunities for college savings. When members shop at participating online merchants, dine at participating restaurants, or purchase selected products at retail stores, Upromise collects commissions which fund college savings accounts.

Unfortunately, the Upromise Toolbar also tracks users’ behavior in excruciating detail. In my testing, when a user checked an innocuously-labeled box promising “Personalized Offers,” the Upromise Toolbar tracked and transmitted my every page-view, every search, and every click, along with many entries into web forms. Remarkably, these transmissions included full credit card numbers — grabbed out of merchants’ HTTPS (SSL) secure communications, yet transmitted by Upromise in plain text, readable by anyone using a network monitor or other recording system.

Article here

http://certifiedbug.com/blog/tag/edelman/

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Google Click Fraud-Advertisers Overpay

by certifiedbug on January 13, 2010

in Internet Security

Benjamin Edelman
January 12, 2010

I’ve repeatedly reported improper placements of Google ads. In most of my write-ups, the impropriety occurs in ad placement — Google PPC ads shown in spyware popups, in typosquatting sites or in improperly-installed and/or deceptive toolbars. This article is different: Here, the impropriety includes a fake click — click fraud — charging an advertiser for a PPC click, when in fact the user never actually clicked.

But this is no ordinary click fraud. Here, spyware on a user’s PC monitors the user’s browsing to determine the user’s likely purchase intent. Then the spyware fakes a click on a Google PPC ad promoting the exact merchant the user was already visiting. If the user proceeds to make a purchase — reasonably likely for a user already intentionally requesting the merchant’s site — the merchant will naturally credit Google for the sale. Furthermore, a standard ad optimization strategy will lead the merchant to increase its Google PPC bid for this keyword on the reasonable (albeit mistaken) view that Google is successfully finding new customers. But in fact Google and its partners are merely taking credit for customers the merchant had already reached by other methods.

In this piece, I show the details of the spyware that tracks user browsing and fakes Google PPC ad clicks, and I identify the numerous intermediaries that perpetrate these improper charges. I then criticize Google’s decision to continue placing ads through InfoSpace, the traffic broker that connected Google to this click fraud chain. I consider this practice in light of Google’s advice to advertisers and favored arguments that click fraud problems are small and manageable. Finally, I propose specific actions Google should take to satisfy to prevent these scams and to satisfy Google’s obligations to advertisers.

Article here

http://certifiedbug.com/blog/tag/edelman/

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Google continues to charge Advertisers for Conversion-Inflation Traffic

January 5, 2010

Benjamin Edelman January 5, 2010 When an advertiser buys a pay-per-click ad and subsequently makes a sale, it’s natural to assume that sale resulted primarily from the PPC vendor’s efforts on the advertiser’s behalf. But tricky PPC platforms take advantage of this assumption by referring purchases that would have happened anyway. Then, when advertisers evaluate [...]

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Post-Transaction Marketing Deception

November 23, 2009

Benjamin Edelman Post-transaction marketers Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion have attracted criticism for solicitations that tend to deceive consumers. Their services typically entail recurring billing programs that promise a savings or discount, but actually charge users on an ongoing basis. They promote these services while customers are finishing the checkout process at trusted e-commerce sites — [...]

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Edelman proposes five rights to protect on-line Advertisers

September 21, 2009

Benjamin Edelman I offer five rights to protect advertisers from increasingly powerful ad networks — avoiding fraudulent charges for services not rendered, guaranteeing data portability so advertisers get the best possible value, and assuring price transparency so advertisers know what they’re buying. I explain the need for these rights by presenting specific practices causing particular [...]

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Edelman:Google and its partners inflate advertisers’ conversion rates

May 13, 2009

Respected Spyware Researcher Ben Edelman gives four examples: WhenU – adware SmileyCentral – toolbar Typosquatting Chrome – browser suggestions Detailed article: How Google and Its Partners Inflate Measured Conversion Rates and Increase Advertisers’ Costs http://certifiedbug.com/blog/tag/edelman/

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Ben Edelman on “False and Deceptive Display Ads at Yahoo’s Right Media”

January 14, 2009

Long article, make a nice pot of tea and settle in. Benjamin Edelman Yahoo’s Right Media ad marketplace features widespread ads exactly designed to deceive. I present ten examples of these deceptive ads, and I critique their unwelcome characteristics. To estimate the prevalence of deceptive tactics, I examine Right Media’s own analysis ad characteristics — [...]

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Zango now

May 2, 2008

Zango is in the news again. The Register: Zango’s adware fox desperate to guard net henhouse Last month, it asked the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a decision by a lower-court judge that held Kaspersky was immune from such lawsuits. Sunbelt Blog: Zango partnerships Zango reacts to Sunbelt blog posts PCMag: Must [...]

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