It may seem odd to say, but the holiday greetings that I received from sundry and assorted vendors, business partners and acquaintances left me feeling less than cheery, festive, happy or blessed in 2007. It actually bothered me enough that I felt the need to write about it. A couple of my top peeves:

Lack of Personalization – these were the holiday cards that were stuffed into preprinted envelopes, no signature, no note, and the return address did not contain an individual's name. I received a fair number of these from companies whose connection to me, or my business was hazy at very best. These cards left me feeling that some poor salesperson somewhere had been given a Holiday Card Mailing Quota (does that even exist?) and was forced to dig into the bottom of their desk drawer for business cards from trade shows long ago.

Blatant Self Promotion – These bothered me the most, as I am a true blue, dyed in the wool holiday celebrating fanatic. That said, I think that holiday greetings should be just that about the holidays. A marked example came in the form of an eGreeting from company X who provides CRM solutions (I think anyway, I am not sure what my connection is to them) – when I clicked to get my “personalized” snow globe, I was greeted with nothing more than an extended Flash ad for the company – and it didn’t even run properly in Firefox. I will grant that it had snow and my name was in the ad.

Why Should I Care? – I classified into this category those holiday greetings I received that were nothing more than a company’s recital of how successful they were that year – I am so happy for them, but unless I, or my business, was instrumental to that success I don’t think it is really an appropriate holiday greeting.

All said, I did receive some great, personalized greetings from people I knew well, or had just met. One of my favorites was from a company called Acquisio, it was an eGreeting that came with a personalized note. The card itself (which ran in all browsers) was lighthearted and actually allowed me to put faces to the names of people I had never met.

In all, I categorize my holiday card disappointment as one where too many marketers were speaking to themselves as opposed to me – this has fueled one of my New Years resolutions for 2008 – to make sure that my, and my clients’ work speaks clearly, contextually and concisely to the intended audience, and not to our marketing egos…wish me luck:-)

1. Premeditated Abuse: Repetitive clicking on a competitor's paid link to deplete their marketing budgets and lower rankings.
2. Jamming: Intentional inflation of PPC prices to force a competitor to pay an artificially high cost per click, causing them to exhaust their budgets quickly.
3. Competitive Roadblocks: Use of a competitor’s trademark or brand name, thereby diverting visitors to an alternate web site and offering a competing product or service.
4. Made for AdSense (MFA): Creation of shell sites that display PPC ads, which are then clicked on repeatedly to generate income.
5. Negligence: Perceived or real negligence on the part of PPC providers, allowing above items 1 through 4 – or any combinations of these items – to occur.

Examining the Methods, Motivations, and Preventive Measures

• Placing a budget cap on campaigns assure that questionable patterns are identified and serious damage is avoided.
• Working with an SEM provider who can quickly identify changes in overall campaign performance through active management is very effective.
• If a company is at risk for click fraud, purchasing fraud software or services is a good option. A lower-cost option is a line-by-line scan of web logs for suspicious activity which can then be used as documentation to pursue refunds/credits.
  

• An SEM program built around a bottom-line cost per acquisition is the best preventive measure. This assures that keyword bids are placed based on ultimate value to a company, as opposed to rank – effectively eliminating your ability to be jammed.
• For advertisers in high-risk keyword segments, we recommend purchasing automated, around-the-clock PPC bid management software.
  

• Establish trademarked protection paperwork with Google and Yahoo!. Although this is a long and cumbersome process, it will ultimately stop a competitor from using trademarked terms in ad copy.
• Applying best practices in the construction and execution of an SEM program is often the best defense. This promotes the best possible relevancy and quality ratings from the engines themselves and better placement in search results.
• Many companies are often unaware that competitive roadblocks are being used by their SEM provider. A simple phone call to a counterpart at the “offending” company may prove very effective.
  

4. Made for AdSense (MFA)
Exposure: Low to Medium

Methods and Motivations
An MFA is a shell site, which consists of a few deep pages of content on a single topic. The sole purpose of an MFA is to attract and display high-revenue PPC ads. Inherently, MFAs are not fraudulent. They only become fraudulent when the creator of the MFA clicks on his own ads – or sets up a network of fraudulent clickers – to increase revenue. Because successfully setting up this type of click fraud is highly complex, time consuming, and risky, it is not a common practice. Those industries and advertisers with expensive PPC inventory are the most likely targets for MFA click fraud.

Top-Level Preventive Measures
Same as in other areas.

Specific Preventive Measures

• The best defense is constructing a campaign that focuses on bottom-line business objectives and cost per action.
• Ongoing and active management of metrics will quickly identify anomalies. Additionally, analyzing the performance of an SEM campaign holistically as well as locally (e.g. distribution channel) is also a good defense.
• Since this level of fraud can only occur with content matching, choosing not to advertise on those channels is the ultimate protection. Click fraud protection software and services may be able to detect fraudulent click patterns above and beyond what the search engines provide.