In Storm 1, the turbulence is relatively mild. Bid prices
(and hence the cost per click) are going up, but this can
be explained by the rising awareness of PPC's potential effectiveness.
Likewise, Storm 2 looks typical enough. Search properties like
Google are increasingly using affiliate sites to serve up more
ads than they could on just their own search sites in order
to extend their reach. So far, there's nothing to get terribly
excited about.
But when you toss in Storm 3, the brew gets a bit headier.
It seems that ad click traffic is continuing to grow, but
fewer visitors are clicking through to either take some kind
of meaningful action or actually transact business. In other
words, clicks are increasing, but conversion percentages are
declining.
At first glance, the anomaly seems to be tolerable, much
as the turbulence in Junger's North Atlantic initially appeared.
However, further investigation reveals a subversive undercurrent
in the form of PPC affiliates employing "pay to click" personnel
to artificially bolster PPC hits, and ultimately, revenue.
Needless to say, that's certainly not the way it's supposed
to work, and it appears that the latest round of search engine
affiliate programs may be to blame.
Overture Services has made its living by providing the technology
that underpins the PPC ads on such giant sites as parent company
Yahoo, MSN Search, InfoSpace and AltaVista. Google's more
recent AdSense program is designed to one-up Overture by covering
a broader spectrum. AdSense affiliates the owners of high-traffic
Web sites, including many that you probably have never heard
of.
At first glance, everyone wins. The PPC providers get more
exposure and more revenue, the Web site owners get a percentage
of the cost per click, and the advertisers get more eyeballs
and, presumably, more traffic.
But recently, there's been a growing crop of Web ads and
low-level spam offerings targeted at recruiting people to
surf the Web and click on ads, using their own computer and
an Internet connection.
With just a small coterie of such people using a variety of
individual Internet Protocol addresses, it is almost impossible
to determine which hits are real and which are "paid to play."
Admittedly, there is no direct evidence linking Google to
such practices, but those disturbing spam ads are still out
there, threatening to undermine the PPC environment and ultimately,
if the storm becomes big enough, the future existence of PPC
advertising.
Unfortunately, it seems that whenever a new medium is introduced,
there are invariably people who seek to circumvent its conventions
and subvert its intent for short-term gain. One only has to
think of the payola scandals in the early days of rock 'n'
roll or the floods of current e-mail offers for body part
enlargements and shady refinancing deals.
Of course, self-policing is the first line of defense, and
obviously, some affiliates are more reputable than others.
Likewise, some PPC vendors are more circumspect about choosing
their affiliates than others. But as we've seen with the enormous
proliferation of music online, once certain floodgates are
opened, they cannot easily be closed again. As with the Andrea
Gail at the end of its journey, the realization only belatedly
dawned on the sailors that the storm that had been willing
to let them in would no longer let them out.
We do not want to get to that point with PPC. It is a very
effective medium to advertisers and, in an Internet advertising
environment known for annoying banner advertising and pop-ups,
a welcome source of promotional relief.
There are precious few fish to be harvested from today's
troubled economic waters, and it would be a shame to see another
medium sink in the swirl of uncontrolled controversy. But,
left unchecked, advertisers will, at a point, abandon PPC
if they lose their trust in the process and begin to feel
like victims in waiting. And if that happens, the first to
go down will be those too shortsighted and obsessed with immediate
gain to play the game fairly.
