What Seth Godin should have said about click fraud

Since we’re on the topic of invalid clicks and click fraud, I’d like to join the blogosphere’s discussion on book author and marketer Seth Godin’s statement about clicking on website ads.

It seems Mr. Godin made a major blunder by apparently promoting click fraud when he wrote in his blog:

If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click. (emphasis added)

He tried to defend his position in a follow-up post but no matter how you look at it, his first post ultimately encouraged site visitors to commit click fraud.

What is click fraud?

In our article Google Adsense, click fraud and invalid clicks, we defined click fraud as a type of invalid clicks that artificially inflate the cost to advertisers and revenues to Adsense publishers. This usually occurs when a site visitor clicks on an ad with no genuine interest on the ad.

That exactly was what Seth Godin was advocating in his post. He basically encouraged everyone to click on the ads as a show of support — “tip the online jar,” in his own words — to the author of a blog whose content the visitor found interesting.

Without a doubt, that is click fraud. If the clicks were motivated by “support to the author” and not “genuine interest on the ad,” the clicks can artificially inflate advertisers’ cost. The advertiser then pays for the ad clicks which do not translate to any lead or sale.

Not a win-win situation

At the end of the day, the advertiser gets to suffer because the ad campaign was ineffective. More importantly, though, the publisher gets hurt too because advertisers may then decide not to advertise on the content network anymore because, anyway, the clicks don’t translate to sales.

In his follow-up post, Mr. Godin explained that he was not advocating click fraud but simply encouraging visitors to click on the ads. The problem, according to him, is that site visitors “never click on ads.” This does not justify his proposal, however, because it still is a direct violation of Google Adsense’s program policies.

What Seth Godin should have said

Instead of recommending visitors to “tip the online jar” by clicking on the ads, he should have told visitors to simply stop being ad-blind and to start paying more attention to website ads. Instead of simply telling people to click on ads as a show of support to a site, Mr. Godin should have encouraged them to look at and read the ad first — and to click on it, if and only if it interested them.

That way, he could have relayed his message across without sounding like he’s supporting a revolt against Google Adsense. Good for him, his blog does not carry Adsense ads. But for others who might follow his “tip the jar” proposal, they run the risk of having a blog author’s Adsense account banned because of click fraud.