Hi all,
Will it affect our adMob RPM ? 
Google hit by class action lawsuit over claimed AdSense fraud ? The Register
cheers
I sincerely hope it will have no affect. It might hurt their stock though. That, I donât mind
so, someone was banned by google because of clickfraud and now they sue them for having a monopole and driving prizes of android phones? What a BS is that? What about the Advertisers, who are paying for their ads? What do they think about clickfraud?
I donât know how google detect clickfraud, but in the end, ADVERTISERS are the paying customers, and they donât want clickfraud, easy like that.
Google has tons of money, they do not need to trick anyone. Also - as mentioned - advertisers are paying and google just gets a cut, so actually publishers are paid by advertisers - google will profit in any way, no need for tricking.
Those guys are the reason, why mankind have to make a written warning about the hot content of a cup of coffee. ridicolous
Hi Reti,
Have you seen this one :
Google AdSense Leak - Pastebin.com
First, it looked like fake but now I think it may be somehow connected to recent lawsuit.
cheers
Think about it ⌠IF google would like to âtighten the beltâ (which it doesnât need to) ⌠they could EASILY do so completely hidden by âignoringâ clicks. But OOPS, than they wouldnât get money for the click either! So if they ban someone those fraud clicks would not be counted for the advertiser as well.
So if they ban someone and set those clicks to illegal (they have to otherwise the advertiser paid for false clicks) they wouldnât get any money at all.
So to make that clear: Google would make MORE money if they ALLOW fraud clicks. But advertisers DO know their conversion rate and if that rate is extremely low (fraud clicks are those clicks who does not convert at all, ppl visiting site and immediatly exit = force to click, accidental click) - those clicks have no value.
btw.: this is the reason, facebook sells for impressions ONLY âŚ
does the clicks value differ in the same country on the same ad? I can always see different fee for click on the same ad block (probably the ad is different right?).
Do you think this leak has anything true or itâs fake?
PS. I remember like Google detected my fraud clicks and banned my adsense 5 years ago. Well clicking your own ads with proxy servers and ask your friends to do the same wasnât good idea. I was happy that Iâve just earned 400$ (which I never got, suprised?) 
Young and stupid. I hope that it wonât impact my current app business which is fair and legal.
@reiti.net - itâs not about click fraud really. Many, many, many web developers - much more than on adMob I suppose - were banned on adSense without any real reason, sometimes big companies managing huge blogs or websites. Read the comments on such articles, there are many people who report that. I donât believe that article, but Googleâs way of dealing with developers is horribly screwed. For one - they donât give you any chance of appeal and ban people for life - itâs a longer sentence than murder gets in many countries.
And for us such suits and leaks are good, because there is a change Google will have to change the way they treat us at least a little. It is sick that we are afraid to answer a call from adMob (there is a thread on this forum about it).
And many, many, many web developers do place their ads in a questionable way. Noone is banned without reasons. The reason itself may be questionable, I know lots of people who know, that they may get banned, so they buy another adsense acc to proceed their dirty business. You never know who is commenting. Could even be, that another ad-firm is doing a hating campaign - I see absolutely no proofs there and it would be still unlogically.
The reason, why they give you no chance is the pure massive amount of fraudly activity, and even the badest guy would ask for re-activation. Shall they build up a whole department for investigating situations, where most of the time it IS actually fraudulent? I donât think so, because then, publishers all over the world would have to pay for that service, meaning: they would earn less money. I do understand why google act the way, they act - which must not mean, that I agree on that practice. Surely not.
There is just one problem tho and I donât know how google handle those things:
Imagine, that I hate one guy, so I use a botnet to fraudclick the ads of my competetion - they will get banned or not? In the end, google HAS TO ban it, because it is not in the flavour of the advertisers ⌠but still there is nothing you can do about it
The problem is that with the secrecy that Google says it requires to protect itâs business processes from fraud or manipulation - that puts Google in a very special position to be beyond audit.
Who audits the correctness of Google billing - or if it bans a developer or an adsense website publisher - if it correctly credits the advertiser. After all it is Google itself which is for the most part monitoring for abuse by website owners etc. Monitoring for abuse by advertisers probably happens as well.
But it seems mostly to be âtrust us with the accountingâ and trust us for fraud detection.
In addition the ban for life is fraught with danger.
It seems also that Google is arguing that because the business model cannot tolerate any expense on real human or detailed scrutiny that they have to rely on automated algorithms.
That may see right for Google - but as a matter of policy it is problematic - after all nowhere in the Google scheme of things is the developer or website publisher considered an entity.
The business model is not just Google and the advertisers - the developers and website publishers are the other end of it.
If the business model cannot tolerate fairness or allow itself to be audited because that would spoil the business model - then that suggests the business model has some serious problems - it only worked as long as developers and website developers donât assert their rights. But if they start asserting it then the business model falls apart.
It seems like Google is asking one party to a business agreement to be forever lax about enforcement of itâs rights - because the rights of advertisers and Google have to be accomodated.
That sounds an awful lot like the slavery business model of the southern U.S. prior to the Civil War.
Someone could esily make the same equation without google.
Having the publisher on one side and the advertiser on the other. Even without any middle man, the advertiser will leave the publisher in no time, when there is no conversion of the clicks (true sight of fraud). I think this is a main equation of the automatic fraud detection and it is easily trackable - at least on advertiser-side it is pretty obvious if you get a lot of valid or a lot of invalid âclicksâ
Itâs pretty ironic to mention slavery model in a time, where good earners pay over 70% gov expenses ⌠(at least in europe, where in a short amount of time 100% of circulating money is converted to tax multiple times)
I meant in terms of that while the business relationship between Google and the advertiser seems to have been recognized - the relationship between Google and the developer has no recognition of the developer as a business entity - whose interactions have protection of some sort.
It would be one thing if it was a one-off thing - but if there is systematic behavior - or there could be executives who have started cutting corners - it could be something âonly Google knows aboutâ. Until of course a class action type of thing forces Google to reveal internal documents as part of âdiscoveryâ in the court process.
That is the only way you find out if there was something fishy being done at Google - even if it means shaving off 10% here or there.
The only reason the Google business model survives is off the back of non-complaining developers and website owners or whatever. I mean the model is essentially flawed if it can tolerate no inquiry.
The only reason it survives probably is because even the developers realize that any other system would incur such costs - that it is better to make something rather than to upset the whole apple-cart - esp. businesses which now depend almost completely on the Google revenue.
Side note: a large Polish technology blog was just banned from adSense for an article about politicians wanting to censor pornography on the Internet. Irony.
PS. Of course almost certainly just before payment, since the payment was issued today for adSense.
âI meant in terms of that while the business relationship between Google and the advertiser seems to have been recognized - the relationship between Google and the developer has no recognition of the developer as a business entity - whose interactions have protection of some sort.â
I agree with adforandroidapps. There is also a sentence on google agreement, that I saw 2 days ago, which was something like: âGoogle can terminate all relationships with developers with or without any noticeâ, and you have to press âI agreeâ, as you donât have any other choice.
Beside the fact, that you find this sentence in nearly EVERY âToSâ ⌠the same would be true if you work with an advertiser directly. The advertiser would act exactly like google does, so I do not see the actual point. Google is just the middle man, giving you a HUGE inventory and an easy interface
Yes, but they actually do what they say. For example, from main networks that we trust (startapp, appnext, appbrain, mc, tapjoy) I have never heard someone being banned. But google bans everyone forever without any chance to solve the problem.
I had an interview app, where I collected questions from internet, and I had an app with it. It had no ad on it, totally with no permission. I just kept it there, because I was getting many âthanksâ mails, so I was somehow helping people, and it was one of my first apps. Google banned it because of copyright issue, and together with that my GP account. What would you say for this? I wasnât earning any cent from that, they could just remove that app, or tell me to remove and etc.
I would say, someone filed a DMCA against your app. Google will put it down immediatly - they have to by law. Thank your government for that. The big copyright holders have their own interface on different sites, where they just hit a button and your content is gone - without google involved at all. Just to mention.
I have to say, that I like google, because all of us benefit a lot from their services, so I am always very cautious before blaming them or at least try to understand their point.
Well, I also like google, and I also use many services from google and I know how much they gave and continue to give to the development of IT. But it is true fact, that their behavior to individual developers (or blog writers) is the worst that you can imagine.
I am with you that they are not very âuser friendlyâ in that behaviour. But - as mentioned earlier - imagine how much work it would be to handle every request by hand, getting in contact, starting a dialog, having 33% percent ppl who have no idea what they are doing, haveing 33% who fraud by purpose and get another acc anyway and having - letâs say a whopping 3% (no real numbers!) of publishers who really have done nothing wrong. So it would be 97% wasted time/money. They had to found a huge team for that, which costs money and in the end, they are dropping the rates for publishers, whereas publishers start to get pecky and roaring around with different publishers, where they get tricked followed by an angry post in some money making forums (hehe, jokin ^^)
I feel actually really bad for those 3% but I also have no idea how it could be done without all the drawbacks
Seriously though if you for one moment think that ANY company who has made it doesnât do and get away with illegal activity then there is no point of debate. Its not just google, its facebook, apple ,microsoft , etc. Check any political figure who said his slate is clean and you will find dirt hiding under the fingernail.
Now back to the subject , the reason google will get away with stiffing people out of adsense checks is there are away new people who will sign up. Plus there are those who used google for 10+ years and never got ban so they will defend google hard. The logic that Google wonât gain from it is silly , they gain money. No other search engine is used as much and top political figures arenât going to police them. Google gets free money which in turn helps them with maintaining their monopoly. Its a sorry state of affairâs when people blindly follow a company and put fault on everyone else. Is there click fraud ? of course !! But if there really is click fraud why does google wait till payment then ban . Oh they donât check till its payment time? Bullsh!t they track impressions and clicks everyday.
Despite all that all of us developers can thank google for giving us a way to make money making apps. But never for a moment think that any big company has gotten there the right way. If you do , then you will never get there. Food for thought , norishment for the soul. Peace.
I had worked with a contact at Google that advised me on placement and approved if everything looks by their terms or not⌠After working with AdSense for over year and getting paid on time, I had my account banned with over $45k in pending payments. One thing Google couldâve done is gave me a notice in advance or at least bothered to get in contact after ban. I am almost 100% sure it was picked up by an automatic bot, and when I tried to get in contact with them it went to an automatic bot for a review, everything is done by an automatic bot and Google are ****ing assholes.
My business was 100% legit and they ****ed me over, now I have to jump through hoops and tricks to keep my new account live which only makes Googleâs job harder. Why do you think there is a whole sub-industry of google play accounts, google has been disabling accounts for no reason since AdSense was born.
I dont give a shit how much work they have to do when I provide them with inventory, we have a deal, and they keep 35% of profits on my traffic.
I would jump in on this class-action suit if this was couple years back but now I just donât have enough evidence anymore. Its a shame, but I hope Google gets ****ed real hard here.