Advertisers should raise their voices against arrogant Google
In this guest post, Harvard Business School’s Benjamin Edelman argues that Google’s dominance of the online ad ecosystem leads to a bad deal for advertisers and arrogance from the web giant.
When it comes to web search, Google dominates. The crux of an online advertising service is the place where ads are shown. Historically, Google has offered highly-desired placements, namely ads adjacent to users’ search results. But these days, search pages are just one of many places showing Google ads. And that’s where problems creep in.
For example, if a user searches for or enters “www.qnatas.com” (s.i.c.), a slight misspelling of the airline’s domain name, the user receives a page of Google pay-per-click advertisements — most prominent, a link to the genuine Qantas site. To any reasonable user, that link is incredibly tempting, providing quick access to the site the user intended to reach. But down that road lies peril for the advertiser: Measuring apparent advertisement performance, the advertiser will conclude that such clicks often yield sales – grounds for raising its bids when purchasing advertisements from Google. In fact it’s all a ruse: Had a Google partner not registered the typosquatting domain, the user’s browser would have presented a suggestion that led the user to the desired site without Qantas incurring any advertising expense. Far from offering a good deal, these typosquatting domains can be the worst deal. So too for various toolbars, spyware/adware popups, click fraud, and other scams that trick advertisers into overpaying.
Concerned advertisers could reject all traffic from Google’s “Search Network” – instead, buying placements only on Google’s own properties. But then advertisers lose access to Google’s best partners – sites like the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald. By bundling the bad with the good, Google makes it hard for advertisers to escape Google’s bogus placements.
Uncovering these problems, a concerned advertiser might try to hold Google accountable for bogus ad placements, unfair prices, and other infractions. But Google’s terms and conditions say Google “disclaims all warranties [and] guarantees … regarding … costs per click, click through rates, … clicks [and] conversions.” Furthermore, any advertiser wishing to pursue a dispute with Google must accept a tortured procedure: Google’s contract (provision 10: “Miscellaneous”) requires all Australian advertisers to send their formal complaints to Google’s Dublin office – one of the few places further from Australia than California! And when advertisers complain to Google, they must do so by “confirmed facsimile with a copy sent via first class or air mail or overnight courier” – even as Google claims the right to reply with a simple, ordinary email.
Google’s treatment of Australian advertisers smacks of arrogance, but Google can afford to be arrogant: Google serves 88% of Australian searches, so Google knows advertisers cannot easily take their business elsewhere. However, advertisers can raise their voices to oppose Google’s unsavory terms. If your site is being penalized, your ads de-prioritized, or your prices inflated, you should let your legislators know. Only speaking out can restore balance to the online advertising marketplace.
Benjamin Edelman is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School. He’s in Sydney this week for the International Advertising Association’s Digital Download event, which runs from 8:30am until midday on Thursday December 2.
DECEMBER 2 UPDATE: Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne has offered the following response:
After seeing Professor Edelman’s guest post yesterday I wanted to provide a response from Google, since many of his claims are patently false. In fact, many of these claims have been proven inaccurate in the past by several reporters in the US and in Australia.
Fact: Advertisers have complete control over where their ads appear on Google’s network of publisher sites.
Prof. Edelman contends that Google makes it hard for advertisers to control on what sites their ads appear. This is absolutely false. Advertisers can specify sites where they wish to show their ads using placement targeting, — and specify sites where they don’t wish to appear by excluding sites or categories. Advertisers can even choose to opt out of parked domains — the exact type of webpage that Prof. Edelman refers to in his post. For ads that appear on other sites through Google’s AdSense network, advertisers can review their Placement Performance report, which lists the specific domains and URLs where the ads have appeared.Fact: Advertisers do not pay for invalid clicks. Google has the industry’s most stringent policies on invalid clicks.
Prof. Edelman claims that advertisers pay for clicks on their ads that are fraudulent or the result of deliberate deception. This simply isn’t true. At any time an advertiser can see in their account which clicks have been classified as invalid and are therefore not charged to them. In fact, Google leads the industry in developing technology that protects advertisers from click fraud, and we’re innovating on and improving it all the time.Google also has a zero-tolerance approach to publishers who engage in click fraud. If we determine that an AdSense publisher may pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we will disable that account to protect our advertisers’ interests. Publishers whose AdSense accounts are closed because of invalid click activity are not permitted to have another account.
Fact: Advertisers can leave Google and take all their campaign data at any time if we’re not helping them meet their business goals.
Prof. Edelman claims that advertisers can’t take their business away from Google easily. Not true. On the web, competition is only one click away. We want to earn people’s loyalty by building good products and constantly improving them, not by locking them in artificially. Our policy is that advertisers own their data. They can export data from AdWords into CSV files and utilise the data as they see fit in a matter of minutes, which includes importing it into Yahoo, Bing, or other search advertising systems. There are no restrictions on how advertisers can use the data that they enter into Google’s ad system.As the online advertising market has grown, so have advertisers’ choices. The vast majority of our top advertisers also advertise on other search engines and in a range of other on- and off-line media. They will stay with Google as long as they continue to get a high return on their investment. Just as there are no costs to users to using another search engine, there are no costs or contracts to prevent advertisers switching from Google.
Fact: AdWords advertisers in Australia get prompt support online.
There are tens of thousands of AdWords advertisers in Australia and they have the same support resources available to them as advertisers anywhere in the world. If they have questions about their accounts or their terms and conditions, they can go to the AdWords Help Centre to search and browse hundreds of articles and post a question to the AdWords Help Forum, which is monitored constantly and answered directly by Google experts. Google also offers a number of other types of online support, such as email, live chat, or phone support.
Finally, I believe your readers deserve to know the full story behind people writing guest posts on Mumbrella. We absolutely welcome discussions about making it easier for advertisers to use online advertising and online media with confidence, but it’s important that these discussions are based on accurate information and that the motivations of the participants are clear. Professor Edelman is a paid consultant to Microsoft and other major corporations. He says as much in his own biography. A number of reporters have drawn the connection between Professor Edelman’s criticisms of Google and his financial support from Microsoft (AdAge, 10/13/09; Washington Post, 6/4/09). It seems reasonable that this information would be included in your disclosure about Professor Edelman as necessary background for your readers.
Sic is not an acronym. It’s Latin for “as it was” or something. Or perhaps our esteemed professor is using “American” English, for which there are no rules.
User ID not verified.
Could Google ‘Frankenstein out’?!
Has a monster been created?
Relevance is key for me as a Google search user. If I feel that results are biased and skewed towards Google’s own assets then I will hop over to Bing or an equivalent.
Having said that; if Google’s assets are total quality then I might not care at all. Quality and relevance is what I want to see in SERP’s.
YouTube vid’s certainly seem to dominate the vid’s in Google search results and I click on them…
If the Groupon deal goes through and the offers are the best, then I might not care if Groupon dominates…
Travel deals etc
It will be very hard for all the sites who have built their businesses with Google seriously factored in, if they start losing their SOV because Google owns their competitor…
User ID not verified.
@Anonymous I think you will find that SIC is a modern hardcore/thrash metal band from Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands!
User ID not verified.
I’ve run Google campaigns for a while and this just didn’t read right. A quick look at Ben’s bio on his own website and surprise: he consults to Microsoft.
As to his arguments, they aren’t even logical:
1. It’s not Google who registers typosquatting websites – it’s opportunistic small companies or individuals, and they can use whatever ad publisher they want to get those links on the page.
2. If Ben had ever run a Google campaign, he’d know that you can exclude these types of sites as well as any specific site you want in the settings.
User ID not verified.
Qantas could have registered or bought the domain, as they’ve done with the far more typo’d quantas.com.
Atleast with google ads on this sqatting domain the user can potentially get where they want to go, instead of some dodgy phising or porn site.
Why should an advertiser expect to get free traffic from a piece of media they do not own? If Qantas think their trademark has been infringed then they should initiate legal proceedings and get the domain.
User ID not verified.
mmm… these grapes are sour
User ID not verified.
Hi, folks. Ben Edelman here. Sorry for not responding faster — on a flight.
Ian: You’re right that Google does not itself register typsoquatting domains. Then again, Google is the sole source of funding of most typosquatting domains. See http://www.benedelman.org/typo.....atting.pdf . Were it not for Google’s payments, typosquatters wouldn’t have economic incentive to register infringing domains. Google’s role as funder puts this scheme in motion
Ian, you’re right also that advertisers can now exclude domain parking sites from their Google campaigns. (That option hasn’t always been available, but it is now.) That said, I don’t think the opt-out offers a real solution to this problem. If Google is liable for its role in funding typosquatting domains (as one US court has said it is — see Vulcan Golf v. Google, in which, full dislcosure, I served as cocounsel), it’s no defense that advertisers can decline to participate. And continuing with the example in my piece: If Qnatas refuses to pay Google to place Qantas ads on Qnatas dot com (sic), then Google will send that traffic to competitors. It looks a lot like a shakedown: Pay us, or we’ll send traffic to competitors. When that demand is predicated on an infringement of a company’s trademark, it has quite a negative feel.
Charlie: Nothing guarantees an advertiser free traffic. But in many countries, certain uses of a company’s trademark — e.g. to promote competitors — are unlawful. In the US, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is exactly on point. Qantas may not have any guarantee that Qnatas.com will like to Qantas at no cost. But it’s entirely possible under many countries’ laws — and the standard result under US ACPA — that no other company may permissibly register or use that domain name.
User ID not verified.
Ben, if Google didn’t supply the ads to the typosquatting domains, someone else would. There are plenty of options out there for someone wanting to put advertising on their sites. Google just happens to be the easiest.
You seem to be over-eager to blame Google for the advent of typosquatting, when as far as I can see it it’s the opposite. As anyone involved in marketing web sites will tell you, very few people actually enter domain names into their browser, far more predominantly they search for a term and use the first link. In this example you’re pushing of ‘qnatas’, any search of that term will point the user towards the Qantas site. In this, Google are helping Qantas to address any issues of typos by customers.
The only real solution is for domain names to be blocked if they bare a similarity to brand names, but there is huge overhead here for administering disputes (and a huge potential market for court cases – did you say you were a lawyer?). Your use case of qantas / qnatas is cut-and-dry but what about, say, qantas/quants? Quants is currently typosquatting, but why couldn’t it be a site for Quantitative Analysts?
There are too many variables in what you’re suggesting, and Google are providing a service in this situation that many others would be happy to replace.
User ID not verified.
Ben, I totally disagree. You’re saying that these guys aren’t smart enough to find another way to monetise their domains? People were buying typo domains For potential gain long before there was a business model o support them.
Legislative protection is a valid point, but if this was a balanced article it would have included discussion of all the ways typosquatters exploit trademarks, instead it’s just Google-bashing by a Microsoft shill.
Do better, Mumbrella.
User ID not verified.
And Ben, can you please answer the “he consults to microsoft” comment? If that is correct, then your comments are biased (and seem to be incorrect).
User ID not verified.
Ben I see you were also behind the misguided ‘Hard-Coding Bias in Google “Algorithmic” Search Results’ article that completely failed to understand the difference between Google’s organic search results and their embedded widgets. I highly recommend you do a bit more research into your subject matter before continuing to make a fool out of yourself to the technical-savvy internet public.
User ID not verified.
That was quite a prompt and thorough response from Google…
User ID not verified.
Snap.
User ID not verified.
Fantastic!
I love how the google person says “fact”.
I would have preferred “scientific fact”.
No substantiation of facts just re-iteration that they are facts.
Fact: Google releases Jetpack for all people. Only $500 a pop.
Yay
User ID not verified.
Tom, You’re right that others might supply ads to typosquatting domains if Google didn’t. But Google has a unique ability to build advertiser relationships: Advertisers systematically come to Google to buy ads. If Google rejected typosquatting placements, typosquatters would receive far less payment; no other ad service could offer the high payments Google provides. Indeed, the scope of typosquatting grew dramatically as Google entered this arena.
As to the scope of typosquatting, Tom, available evidence is inconsistent with your suggestion that “very few people actually enter domain names into their browser.” If that were the case, why would domain parkers find it profitable to register literally millions of domains? Domain parker Frank Schilling bought a jet with a portion of his profits from domain parking. “Very few” indeed!
Tom, you also mentioned my Hard-Coding piece. I stand by that piece as written. As I quote and cite in that article, Google has offered firm and unqualified claims that its listings “are solely determined by computer algorithms”, “fully automated”, and “unbiased.” Google specifically indicates that these promises apply to the breadth of its services: Google offers claims like “no manual intervention” without limiting that promise to only a portion of Google’s search results. And Google says it is “the answers” — not just a portion of the answers — that enjoy the lack of bias the quotes promise. Fact is, there’s no plausible legitimate explanation for the patterns I presented in my hard-coding article; the best interpretation of available evidence is that Google has intentionally adjusted and overridden its standard systems so that, for certain predetermined searches, certain Google results appear first.
Finally, as to a few of Courtney’s replies: I don’t agree that advertisers have “complete control” over where their ads appear. The controls Google provides 1) haven’t always been available, 2) don’t always work, 3) are less than forthright. Even then, of course, those are advertiser-focused controls — offering no defense to Google’s liability (ACPA and otherwise) for impermissible use of others’ trademarks.
Furthermore, as to data portability, see http://www.benedelman.org/news/062708-1.html — still as timely today as it was 2.5 years ago when I posted it. If Google is so committed to letting advertisers control their own data, Google should immediately remove these improper restrictions on where and how advertisers copy the campaigns, keywords, and other account details that advertisers themselves created. Note the European Commission’s recent interest (announced just this week) in exactly this area.
User ID not verified.
Typosquatters provide a service for fat fihgered typists.
User ID not verified.
It seems obvious that the writer of this knows very little about Google AdWords.
‘Concerned advertisers could reject all traffic from Google’s “Search Network” – instead, buying placements only on Google’s own properties.’
Actually, what you mean in ‘Display Network’. AdSense for domains falls under the display, not search network.
And, if this was a concern of any advertiser they could:
1. Exclude this particular site from their display campaign.
2. Launch a dispute against the owner of the domain.
User ID not verified.
Morris claims that all Google typosquatting domains are in display network. I emphatically disagree. Google’s own statements are consistent with my view, and not Morris’s. See http://adwords.google.com/supp.....swer=50002 : “Depending on the design of the site, a parked domain site will be classified as either a Search Network site or a Display Network site.”
Morris, your two proposals also miss the point entirely. If an advertiser excludes a given site from its campaign, users who stumble into that site are referred to the advertiser’s competitors — hardly a satisfactory option. And the dispute you propose costs US$1000+ per domain. Neither is satisfactory.
This problem is substantially of Google’s creation: Google put in place the economic incentives that give rise to the problem, and applicable law in many countries (e.g. US ACPA) says Google is liable. Hence my strong and continued view that Google ought rightly be criticized for its role in these typosquatting practices.
User ID not verified.
I don’t see that your link confirms that it is either the display or search network – it actually says that it can be either.
Qantas, and any advertiser, should protect themselves from these instances by buying the domains, firstly, or disputing them if they’ve missed it already.
Sure the domain dispute process is not smooth, and is expensive, and I don’t nearly agree with domain squatters – particularly those that focus on misspellings. The process is in place for companies to protect themselves – it’s not up to Google.
I also found this page, from the link you posted. http://adwords.google.com/supp.....swer=50003 – It indicates that there actually is a no-cost avenue for advertisers such as Qantas to dispute something like this.
As an AdWords advertiser, I do see your point, to some degree, but I still don’t feel it’s the full responsibility of Google AdWords.
User ID not verified.