Overture "Click Protection" Negligence

Executive Summary

Overture claims to provide "Click Protection" for their pay-per-click advertising service. In reality they fail to prevent the most basic and easiest to detect non-authentic clicks - that is competitors clicking on competitors. They do not even filter out a customer clicking on their own links from within the Overture manager. Nor do they provide a method for an advertiser to test their own ad rendered URL's - a necessary function as a means to test the validity of an entered URL.

Since filtering out such clicks would be simple and straight forward using established cookies or session id's - I can only speculate the reasons for not patching this obvious flaw and question the "sophistication of Overtures "Click Protection".

The rest of the story

Overture is one of the big two in pay-per-click search engine servers. If you are on the Internet and marketing a product or service these days than you are probably familiar with the service. As you start to increase your bid price to $.30 to $.40 and on up you probably begin to wonder how many times does your competition clicks on your link? And what if they just click over and over and over.

Overture tells us to rest assured they are on the job and their "Click Protection" program will filter out fraudulent and suspicious click activity. They will not expound how their filter is put together and what activity they are looking for - just rest assured.

My wife's store hot sauce store www.SamMcGees.com spends around $10 per day on Overture services. So being a curious fellow and being concerned with the high cost of advertising I started looking into Overture's "Click Protection". The other day as I was logged into Overture manager for my wife's store account. The bid for the key word hot sauce was sitting around $.63 per click (it was Christmas time). www.SamMcGees.com was sitting way down the list and I momentarily upped the bid price to the top of the index for the keyword "hot sauce". While still in Overture manager I then click on the "more bids" button to see where www.SamMcGees.com was sitting. Sure enough we where sitting at the top. I then click on the link once to be sure the link was working. Immediately afterward I changed my mind and lowered the bid price back down.

The next day I downloaded the Overture report to see if the click was registered and if we were charged. Sure enough, to my amazement, Overture registered 1 impression and 1 click. So I fired off an e-mail to what they had to say for their defense.

1st E-mail to Overture

It appears that your "click protection" scheme fails to detect clicks made from within the manager. Yesterday I upped the bid for the keyword "hot sauce" momentarily to $.64. I Then click on the "more bids" link from within the manager to see where my add would appear. I then clicked on my link to be sure that the url works (since at $.64 you want to be sure it works). I then changed my mind and reverted the price back down.

Today looking in the reports that click was logged against my account!!!!

Amazingly clicks made from within the manager are counted. I have on occasions clicked on my competition with the manager to see where the link goes and to evaluate their site. I did this with a clear conscience believing that such clicks would not count if done within the manager. No where does Overture document this click "feature". I am sure competitors often click each other bidders for the same reason.

Also, I have clicked my ads (from within the manager) many times in past to test my url but did not check before if it was counted. Therefore I have to question the value of your "click protection" filter if it does not catch clicks from within the manager which is very simple to detect.

Steve Troxel
Perlworks.com

Overture's 1st Reply

We've received your inquiry regarding unusual click activity and we're happy to address your concerns.

Please note, the Click Protection system does not guard against you clicking on your own listings or from you clicking on your competitors. The Click Protection System is designed to catch repeated clickthroughs and detect if the click was a bot or an actual searcher. The Click Protection System will then validate the traffic by the searcher. If at anytime we are unable to validate the click traffic received, the charges for the clicks are credited back to your Overture account before you are billed for the traffic. The validated qualified traffic will then appear on the next days billing reports from within the DirecTraffic Center.

I can understand why you a bit confused as to why you were charged. To realign the expectations; we ask that you do not click on your listings or your competitors; as you will get charged for this activity. If you wish to review the listings to see if they are functioning properly, we ask that you copy the hyperlink you wish to review (either yours or your competitors) and paste the hyperlink in a new browser.

As you may already know, Overture has a dedicated team of Loss Prevention specialists and a Click Protection System that vigilantly monitor click activity. Comprised of very sophisticated click review software, the Click Protection System prevents unqualified clicks from being charged to our advertisers by using a variety of proprietary techniques to review clicks on a near real-time basis. Protecting our advertisers against unqualified clicks and preserving the integrity of our marketplace are among the most important issues we face at Overture, and we continuously monitor click activity across our entire network as a result.

Additional information about Overture's Click Protection System is included in the attached Word document. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance.

My 2nd e-mail reply

You said
"We ask that you do not click on your listings or your competitors; as you will get charged for this activity. If you wish to review the listings to see if they are functioning properly, we ask that you copy the hyperlink you wish to review (either yours or your competitors) and paste the hyperlink in a new browser."

Is this the official Overture policy? I did not see this anywhere in the help section. You do know that the full url is not posted on the search results page? Only the domain is shown and therefore it is impossible to really test the url, or investigate your competitors url, that is assigned to a keyword without clicking on it.

As a matter of clarification in the first sentence above you indicate that an advertiser will be charged for clicking on their competitors, is this true? or is the sentence poorly written?

You said
"As you may already know, Overture has a dedicated team of Loss Prevention specialists and a Click Protection System that vigilantly monitor click activity. Comprised of very sophisticated click review software, the Click Protection System prevents unqualified clicks from being charged to our advertisers by using a variety of proprietary techniques to review clicks on a near real-time basis."

I have to question the sophistication and dedication Overture has in verifying that a click is really from a 'searcher'. Since advertisers have cookies in place (and/or a session id inside the manager) how hard is it to filter out clicks in a result list that is a click either by an advertiser clicking on themselves or a competitor who also has a keyword in the result list? You really have all the information necessary to make that determination.

Does Overture have any measure on the percentage of clicks that originate from competitors clicking on each other?

Steve Troxel
Perlworks.com

Overture's 2nd e-mail reply

Thank you for your reply.

You can review the complete URL for your listing in the Manage Listings section of the DirecTraffic Center on the Listing Information Page. You can copy and paste any of the URLs shown into a browser to review their functionality.

With regard to your competitors' listings, a competitor is charged when any user (whether it is another advertiser or not) clicks on his listing just as you are charged when a user clicks on your listing. Once you have clicked on a listing and you reach the desired Web site, you can then bookmark the page in your Favorites, so that you do not have to click on the listing again.

As stated previously, although we cannot prevent anyone from clicking on your Overture listing, if our Click Protection System determines that the click is unqualified, our Click Protection System marks the click in our billing system, and the advertiser is not charged for it.
Our Click Protection System uses search and click data to make both rules-based inferences and pattern recognition-based inferences about which clicks are qualified clicks. Each click is evaluated along 20 to 50 data points. Some of the data points evaluated are:

* IP address
* User session information
* User cookie information
* The network to which an IP belongs
* The user's browser information
* The search term requested by the user
* The time of the click
* The rank of the advertiser's listing
* The bid of the advertiser's listing
* The time of the search
* The time of the click

Lastly, we do not offer a report for the percentage of clicks that originate from competitors, as it varies greatly among search terms. We do however, suggest adding a tracking URL to your existing listings to help determine the source of the traffic you are receiving to your Web site. With tracking URLs added to your listings, you will be able to view the amount of traffic you've received from Overture listed on your Web logs (regardless of where the click originated) and compare this information with your Overture click charges in the Reports section of our DirecTraffic Center(R). You will also be able to verify that you have not been charged for any excessive click activity.

You may easily add tracking URLs by clicking the ?On? button from the Account Set Up page within the DirecTraffic Center®. Your existing URLs will be appended three additional parameters (and their corresponding values). Those parameters are as follows:

- OVRAW will show the keyword (or phrase) a search user entered, e.g., Honda Used Cars - OVKEY will show the keyword (or phrase) you entered, e.g., Used Car - OVMTC will show the Traffic Type used to match your keyword with the user?s search term - Content, Standard, Phrase, and Broad

Please review your Web logs after adding tracking URLs to your listings. Once you have this information, you will want to compare it to the reports available to you in the DirecTraffic Center(R). You will likely see more hits to your site than charged clicks from Overture due to our Click Protection System.

We hope this clears up any confusion for you. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance.

Conclusion

Incredulously Overture admits they have no mechanism to test your own url's (unlike Google's adwords program) and first recommends "cutting and pasting" the url of your competetors into the location field. However when it is pointed out this is inadequate they back track and then recommend to "click once" and then bookmark it. Yeah right!

There a very legitimate reasons to click on competitor ads as a way to see what they are offering, the methods used (ie are they link to specific product pages or predefined search string, etc. I believe that their failure to do so is gross negligence at best and deceptive and fraudulent at worst.

The claim to be looking at "20 to 50 different data point" but I content they are not trying very hard.

Steve Troxel

If any other Overture customer have similar experiences or more information to add e-mail me at troxel{NOSPAM}@perlworks.com