Yahoo Search Marketing Click Fraud? Yahoo issues Pepperjam Client $10K as “Courtesy”
One of our clients spends about $2,500 per day on Yahoo Search Marketing. In this particular instance, the client is opted into the Yahoo Content Network and spends about 20% of their daily budget or $500 per day in content. One of our senior SEM’s was reviewing daily click activity and noticed that the account, which the previous day was funded with $10K was offline and the entire available balance depleted. After further investigation we found that two particular keywords within the content network accounted for almost the entire $10K previous day deposit in less than 12 hours (rough estimate of time).
This kind of unusual click activity created a spiral of events within the Pepperjam Search Division, which initiated an immediate internal investigation by our senior team of the cause for the activity and likelihood of click fraud.
Interestingly enough we were able to run some reports and find that on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis the keywords in question never represented a significant source of traffic from Yahoo’s content network. In addition, we were able to verify that these particular keywords were not being managed by our analytics software, which includes an automated bid management module. Furthermore, we were able to verify that for this particular client that at no point did our daily ad spend from the Yahoo content network equal more than roughly 40-50% of the entire ad spend. On the particular day in question the ad spend from two keywords within the content network represented over 90% of the budget before the entire account went offline because the available balance went to $0. By the looks of it if we had $100K in the account it may have been spent based on the volume of “activity” that took place.
Based on our internal investigation, we concluded that this particular account experienced click fraud from Yahoo’s content network. I personally contacted our agency team at Yahoo. Here is an edited (to maintain confidentiality of client) version of the first e-mail we received where we were told that there was no unusual activity:
FROM YAHOO (e-mail #1):
We have reviewed your account activity for [XXXXX Keywords XXXXX] and we were unable to locate any questionable activity.
The traffic you receive from Content Match will fluctuate greatly as this depends on relevant content across our affiliate network, depending how popular that content is dictates the number of impressions you received. For the term [XXXXX Keyword A XXXXX] you received 674,701 impressions and [XXXXX Keyword B XXXXX] 618,479 impressions but your click though rate for both terms was 0.003, which means only a very small percentage of these impressions resulted in clicks.
If you happen to have any questions regarding this, please feel free to give us a call, our number is 866-YAHOO-SM (866-924-6676) or 626-685-5700.
OK - Clearly, this boilerplate e-mail was unacceptable and didn’t address our concerns, which included evidence based on historical patterns of very unusual click activity. Therefore, I sent a follow-up e-mail requesting an escalation and a thorough investigation from Yahoo’s Click Activity team. Here is the e-mail I received about 15 minutes ago notifying me that they have decided to credit our client’s account almost $10K - the amount that was in question due to the unusual click activity. However, note that they don’t admit click fraud; instead, they say they are issuing the credit as “a measure of goodwill and appreciation for your [Pepperjam’s]business.”
FROM YAHOO (e-mail #2):
Thank you for your patience while our Loss Prevention team reviewed your activity….
In response to your concerns about the click activity your account has received, we have issued a goodwill credit to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account balance in the amount of $X,XXX.XX for clicks that were billed to your account during the period of November 19, 2006, to November 27, 2006.
Please note that we have issued this credit as a measure of goodwill and appreciation for your business. Please allow up to five business days for the adjustment to appear in your account. Once adjusted be sure to review your billing history in the Reports section of the Manage My Accounts Page under Billing Transaction Detail to confirm your adjustment.
Well…the purpose of this e-mail is not in anyway to bash Yahoo. In fact, we are very pleased that we received the credit and that Yahoo conducted an investigation into the unusual activity. Why was the credit issued? Yahoo says goodwill - our historical data suggests something much different.
By the way - another one of Pepperjam’s senior SEM’s informed me earlier today that after approaching Yahoo with a similar problem for a different client he (the Pepperjam account manager) was shocked to receive an e-mail sometime yesterday notifying him of a multi-thousand dollar credit. In this case, as well as the above example we are talking about some pretty major clients that spend a lot of money with Yahoo and there was pretty clear unusual click activity.
The moral of the story. Be persistent if you or one of your clients experience unusual click activity. Conduct your own investigation internally before you contact Yahoo to complain of click fraud or unusual click activity. I do believe that both Yahoo and Google realize that click fraud exists and they are very interested in identifying it and providing advertisers with credits when appropriate. It doesn’t hurt that Pepperjam is a major SEM firm and that we have a relatively powerful voice in the SEM community, but I strongly believe that if you make your case with evidence and you are persistent, you stand a good chance of getting issued a credit for unusual click activity. If you have trouble getting your money back, start a personal blog at wordpress or something similar and blog about it until you get the attention of the search-engine in question.
click fraud google google adwords internet marketing search engine marketing Uncategorized yahoo yahoo search engine marketingclick fraud google google adwords internet marketing search engine marketing Uncategorized yahoo yahoo search engine marketing
December 16th, 2006 at 12:24 am
[…] So how did they get the credit? Well you can read about the full story here. I HIGHLY recommend you read the full post. […]
December 16th, 2006 at 8:37 am
[…] One of the worlds biggest Search Engine Marketing agencies Pepperjam was recently issued $10,000 for click fraud. So how did they get the credit? Well you can read about the full story here. I would recommend you read the full post. […]
December 16th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
[…] The PepperJam Blog has an interesting account of a recent interaction with Yahoo over a potentially fraudulent situation involving unusual click numbers. I suggest reading the entire account there, but here’s an interesting snippet… FROM YAHOO (e-mail #2): Thank you for your patience while our Loss Prevention team reviewed your activity…. […]
December 17th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
[…] The #4 reason I hate Yahoo Panama is the quality of Yahoo’s search partners. It seems to me that ever since MSN stopped using Yahoo for their paid search results, the quality of the Yahoo traffic has plummeted. Could it have been that the real value in Yahoo’s system was in fact the MSN traffic? And now that MSN has their own ad system, Yahoo is willing to take on more low quality partners to replace the lost revenue? Some of these new search partners are nothing more than click fraud farms. More than one advertiser has come public with their experiences with click fraud on Yahoo’s network. One of the bigger claims was from Pepperjam which had a client that ran through $10k worth of clicks in one day with Yahoo. I first read about the story when reading Shoemoney’s blog, who has a strong relationship with Pepperjam. Yahoo responded with a $10k “goodwill” credit to the advertiser without admitting that there was fraud involved. Everyone that doesn’t reside in corporate la-la land can see right through their “goodwill” bullshit. It was click fraud and everyone knows it. […]
December 18th, 2006 at 5:45 am
[…] The Pepperjam Blog has a very occupying account of interactions with Y! over the fallacious situation which involves unusual numbers of clicks. […]
December 18th, 2006 at 10:20 am
[…] Nice play on words from the Yahoo Search Marketing team as PepperJam reports on the back and forth requests for credits due to apparent ‘click fraud’ or fraudulent clicks on a YSM contextual targeting account. […]
December 18th, 2006 at 11:01 am
[…] If you need help identifying if you’re a victim of click or impression fraud, please send an email, I’ll take a look. Anyone is search has heard of pepperjam another great search firm that had recent issues with yahoo marketing and click fraud. -B Posted by thebigthree Filed in Search Engine Marketing […]
December 18th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
[…] Entire story here […]
December 19th, 2006 at 1:54 am
[…] The Pepperjam Blog has a very occupying account of interactions with Y! over the fallacious situation which involves unusual numbers of clicks. […]
December 20th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
[…] http://pepperjamblog.com/?p=78 […]
December 21st, 2006 at 1:29 am
[…] While Google has it’s head firmly in in the sand denying click fraud exists Yahoo is playing a semantics game refunding Pepperjam $10,000 for “Goodwill” not click fraud. […]
February 7th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
[…] As you could imagine if you read my previous post on getting a $10K courtesy credit from Yahoo for “click fraud,” I sent a pretty scathing e-mail back to Dana, which included a request for a credit based on the trashy traffic they sent us. In fairness to Dana and Adbrite, here is the response she sent me to the second e-mail: […]
February 27th, 2007 at 5:15 am
[…] Well here is my opinion as alluded to earlier. Blogs are good but a lot of times people can be wishywashy because of there relationship with companies. I personally like companies that tell the good and the bad. Pepperjams blog for instance points out stuff like Yahoo Search Marketing giving them a refund of 10,000$ for invalid clicks or how AdBrite sends them shitty traffic. Now if I would have saw this on a forum I would have probably not even given it a second look but since its on the company blog of the worlds largest Search Engine Marketing agency and recently named to the INC 500 Top Fastest Growing Companies… its not like they are going to lie. Shoe I saw last week your friend daveN announced he is going to have Seo Training conferences around the world. What is your thought on that? […]
May 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
[…] Clickshield - I have been offering services to very few select people to detect clickfraud. I registered clickshield.com many years ago and have been using that as my company name for this product. One of our initial tests was with pepperjamsearch and they got back over 10,000 the first month we tested it from Yahoo alone. While a lot of people have requested our services unfortunatly at this time we have to be very selective and make it worth our time. Now I see a company called ABCsearch has launched there own click fraud detecton product called clickshied… pretty interesting! […]
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 am
[…] As you can see they don’t come out and say we agree with you that you received foreign traffic, they did offer me a nice credit. With that said I was making a profit on the campaign even with this amount of foreign traffic being sent. So the credit is just icing on the cake, but this is something that is deserved by me as I am paying for US traffic not foreign traffic. This is just one example of why you need to track your campaigns by a third party software that tracks IP addresses etc. to monitor it for foreign traffic or even click fraud that you are billed for. One other instance you can read about is from PepperJam Search and their $10,000 “Goodwill Credit” . var bz_url=’http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cpa-affiliates.com%2Fwhy-not-tracking-your-campaigns-can-cost-you-money%2F’; var bz_num_comments=0; var bz_comment_date='’; […]
February 10th, 2008 at 11:18 am
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May 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
While I haven’t yet encountered this problem with Yahoo or Google (or perhaps I just haven’t effectively been able to identify it…), it DID happen to me with an Australian PPC service (Sensis).
While the dollar amounts were nowhere near as high as yours, it was almost an exact duplicate of your situation, including their staff saying there was nothing wrong, yaha yada yada.
I had to get real hard nosed with them, but in the end they did credit the amount in question, but (of course) didn’t admit there was any click fraud occuring…
Guess I had better take a MUCH closer look at my big Google clients now…
Eran Malloch
Perth, Western Australia