My mouse is a FRAUD!!!

My mouse looks so innocent sitting next to my keyboard... it's been a great "pet" to have. It goes where I want it to go, and clicks on what I want it to click, and I have never had to clean up any of its messes. If I told that goofy analogy to a business, they would straight up laugh in my face... because that particular business may be a victim of click fraud. Click fraud is basically a bunch of scammy clicks on an ad that run up businesses' advertising bills for advertising agencies. That means that these businesses, no matter how large or small, are getting screwed. Martin Flesichman, who was the victim at hand in the Business Week article, was one of the many business who have suffered. Mysterious clicks from Mongolia and Syria sent up the red flag, and the mystery was investgated. And who might you think was the main criminal? That would be Google and Yahoo!, who hold the titles as the number one and number two search engines in the online world. Google and Yahoo! may have been using Clickbot software to automatically and anonymously click on ads on their sites, which then charges the business for the click on their ad, which in turn gives Google and Yahoo! a share of the profit for the crime they have committed. Click fraud is supposedly the biggest threat to online advertising, with about $300 to $500 million a year flowing into this deceptive industry... so if powerful sites like Google and Yahoo! are benefitting from this crime, how will there be any incentive to stop it? Well they might want to think about their future, because due to extensive click fraud, some businesses are having to cut their advertising budget to compensate for the charges of click fraud.

How can click fraud criminals get caught? Easy (well, kind of). The answer is web analytics. Wikipedia defines web analytics as a study of the behavior of website users. For a business, web analytics is a useful tool to help the company keep track of which parts of their website work towards their objectives and which landing pages encourage a purchase of their product or service. For a suspicion of click fraud, web analytics can mean that the business can access their web traffic report to see where geographically their clicks are coming from. On a web traffic report, the site manager can see the number of visitors to the site, how long the visitor was actually on the site, how many new visitors come to the site, which web application the visitor is using, and the bounce rate of the visits. That's a heck of a lot of information, not to mention valuable information.

To the left is a picture of my web traffic report, with a small sample of my data from the click fraud that I committed (innocently). I asked some friends and family to help me out, and with their help, my blog has generated 20 visits, 18 absolutely unique visitors, and 34 pageviews... and all of this happened in just a couple of days! If I kept generating about the same number of views and visitors, I'm pretty sure that advertisers would love me. Whateverlife.com is a perfect example of that. Web analytics is a great tool for every website... to keep track of your numbers, test which parts of your site work best, and to stay aware of click fraud.

I have learned my lesson.

You want it? The Internet's got it!

Our grandparents' generation grew up on print and radio advertising, our parents' generation grew up on television advertising, and what form of advertising are we growing up on? The clear answer to this question is online advertising. Anything and everything that we want to view can be found with a click of the mouse, be it a simple static ad or an elaborate, entertaining, or even interactive video.

Pretty much any Internet user can create content, but the key to generating buzz, awareness, and success for a brand is to create stuff that intrigues and interests the viewer. It can pretty much all be found on YouTube, where anything from awesome commercials and viral videos to lame homemade music videos and rants can be found. You have some idiots, like this guy, who go on for two minutes and eleven seconds whining, crying, and scolding anyone who ever muttered a negative comment about the infamous train wreck Britney Spears... and then you have geniuses like the Dove company, who displayed a video promoting their Campaign for Real Beauty. Since October 2006, the video has gotten millions and millions of pageviews... while the "Leave Britney Alone" video has gotten nearly 8 million views in just a week! Both videos are interesting (and definitely intriguing!), and have gotten views that would make any advertiser jealous. The moral of the story? Create online content that will pull in your consumers... give 'em the stuff that will generate the buzz!

Some companies invest their money in good things, others do not. For example, when SecondLife began in the virtual world, it was big news in the advertising business. It was hyped to be the "next big thing" online, so brands began to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get their name promoted on this amazing and life-changing site. As it turns out, not too many Americans lives are being changed, nor are they amazed. Only about 100,000 people are using Second Life on a weekly basis, and out of 320+ million people in the United States, the site is a definite bomb. I'm thinking that these brands should transfer their advertising dollars to a site that can drive in a bit more success.

Speaking of success, how about Chanel? This hundred year old brand has taken themselves to the next level by creating an appealing, engaging, interactive, AND awesome online campaign. Why an online campaign? The brand is aiming to target the online generation of consumers... OUR generation. Thus far, they have had all of the elements to be a successful campaign. This entire campaign is tailor-made to target the online generation of female consumers. Chanel created a new scent, Coco Mademoiselle, as a younger, more youthful version of the classic Chanel No. 5 and Coco scents. Chanel has also hired popular, classy, young actress Keira Knightley as their spokesperson, which is a smart move to keep the Chanel image young. A special website has been created, and is complete with video clips and a virtual tour of Coco's glamourous apartment in Paris. Chanel has also been communicating to some 200 bloggers and V.I.P Chanel customers to generate buzz about this website, and these lucky people have received awesome offers, and exclusive password to early access of the new commercials, and 12 bloggers received an actual tour of Coco's apartment! Maureen Chiquet, who is Chanel's global chief executive, states that the goal of Chanel is to keep the fragrance around for a hundred more years, and that this online campaign is the way to do it. She says that Chanel "can't afford" to not advertise online... she couldn't be more right.

Banner Banter

Banner ads: you know, those sometimes annoying things that clutter every webpage when you're browsing? They flash obnoxious colors, play irritating noises, and sometimes even enlarge when you accidentally roll over them. To me, they mean "annoying," but to advertisers they mean traditional and time consuming to create a successful one. The goal of a banner ad is to get a click-through, but I know that if a banner is annoying as many of them are, I'm most likely going to either A) ignore it, or B) click on something else in the site to get away from the annoying banner!
I am an advertiser's worst nightmare... I HATE banner ads (well, the annoying ones at least). BUT, I do think that there is no gray area for online banner advertisements; they are either awful and annoying or intriguing and just plain genius!
After thinking about the topic of banner ads long and hard, I have some some personal criteria for what makes a banner ad work for me:
1) The banner works if it is related to the website that I am browsing;
2) The banner works if it my cookies are used for behavioral targeting;
3) The banner works if it is interactive and remotely engaging;
and last, but definitely not least,
4) The banner works if the design is appealing.

When reading this article about banner blindness, I have given myself a personal hypochondriatic case of it, which most Internet browsers have. Most banners are placed at the top or sides of the webpage, but the Nielson Norman Group studies found that those are the least viewed areas on the page. To get these gray areas viewed, an advertiser better try their darndest to make sure that their banners are noticed- WITHOUT the horrible blinking colors and obnoxious noises. The viewer needs to get involved in the ad, not just see it.
I know that unless I hear a lot of hype about a particular banner ad, I'm probably not going to click on it. But I do know that if I actually am going to click on a banner, it better be worth my time. After viewing some of the award-winning banner ads, I have found that the CokeZero banner ads are my favorites. They're funny, engaging, and have a prominent non-annoying logo to click on. Actually, they don't even really seem like a banner ad. I actually enjoyed viewing this list of award-winning banner ads.





The moral of the banner advertisement story: let your viewers laugh, interact, and most importantly, engage in your ad!

I'm just blousing... er... browsing.

With the Internet being our "way of life" these days, the idea of behavioral targeting seems genius to me. Behavioral targeting, which uses ad networks and cookies to track our browsing, is ideal mainly for the fact that it is so personal. Since we have talked about it in class, I have noticed traces of behavioral targeting in my daily online browsing. I have noticed that Amazon and eBay are tailored reflect my past searches; the homepage shows items that I would have an interest in based on things that I have browsed for in the past! Not only is behavioral targeting personal, but it is also somewhat subliminal, which seems to make these ads less annoying. It sounds pretty cool, right?

To follow a user's browsing patterns, a company can hire an ad network to track cookies that are left behind to find out the consumer's interests. One of the cookies on my list was for digitalsaver.com. I have been browsing the Web for a new digital camera lately, so when I am browsing other sites online, there may be more pop-ups and banners advertising digital cameras. I also check my e-mail, myspace, and facebook accounts multiple times a day, and I have also done a fair amount of browsing on apple.com, as well as priceline, amazon, and ebay. This is really valuable stuff for advertisers, because they can loop these sites together to advertise my interests- such as advertising a digital camera on amazon or a plane ticket sale on Yahoo! mail.

As far as cookies goes, I understand the point of them from an advertiser's standpoint. They help to track our browsing, which in turn makes behavioral targeting possible. I think that behavioral targeting is an awesome advertising strategy, but I find the cookies really bothersome and annoying. I will admit that I am not extremely computer savvy, and I haven't deleted my cookies in a long, LONG time. Some of the obvious ad networking sites on my cookie list were AdRevolver, Adsonar.com, Servedby.advertising.com, Ad.Yieldmanager.com, and Ad.DoubleClick.net. I found this list to be kinda creepy, as well as alarming that all of this crap is the reason that is making my computer run so slow! Also, after seeing this extensive list of cookies, I am also a bit fearful of my online privacy. How much do these ad networks REALLY know about me? I am sure that this list has provided them with quite a bit of information. Programs such as SpyBot can be downloaded and cookies should be cleared out on a regular basis for personal protection, but at the same time, it seems as if we are hurting the ad industry by deleting our cookies. I think that cookies turn behavioral targeting into a fairly bittersweet strategy that takes the annoyance from our browser and puts it right into our computer's hard drive.