Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Boomers or Bust? Clue: "We Don't Call Ourselves Boomers...!"

 
World's Largest Baby Boomers Domain Portfolio Will Be Released to the Public in 2007; Over 300 Niche Targeted Domains to Be sold

The Boomers & Seniors World Network is releasing its Domain Portfolio of Baby Boomers, Boomers, and Seniors Domain names in 2007. The value of these domains continue to grow as millions are spent on marketing to the 78 million Baby Boomers. Over 300 niche targeted domains will be available.

Vero Beach, FL (PRWeb) December 19, 2006 -- "Domains have and will continue to go up in value faster than any commodity known to man." Bill Gates Microsoft Corp.

The Boomers & Seniors World Network is releasing its Domain Portfolio of Baby Boomers, Boomers, and Seniors Domain names. The value of these domains continue to grow as businesses spend millions on marketing to the 78 million Baby Boomers. Over 300 niche targeted domains will be available in 2007.

"We knew years ago that the Baby Boomers and Young Seniors marketing phenomenon would be the HOT BUTTON in board rooms, sales meetings, and mlm strategies. Revlon, IBM, Ameriprise, Gap, ING, Cadillac, Harley Davidson and many more large corporations will spend a fortune on targeting the Boomers and Young Seniors. That is why we created over 300 Baby Boomer Domains," said Larry Eulenfeld, CEO Boomers Seniors World Network. (http:/www./boomerssenior.com)

Along with their Boomers and Seniors City Sites, the marketing consultants over at Boomers & Seniors have been creating domain names that are targeted to niche markets that relate to the 78 Million Baby Boomers in America.

MSNBC has created The Boomer Nation just to keep up with the ever evolving Boomer Market. CBS, NBC, ABC all have special programing that is geared to the Boomers Health, Financial, Travel and Elder Care subjects. Commercials on TV are continuously playing the Beatles, Mamas & The Papas, and Stepenwolf to catch the boomer's eyes and ears.

"If you wanted to corner the market on the Boomers credit card market it would be a coup to own the name bayboomerscredit.com or boomerscredit.com. If you were in the health industry the domain boomersmd.com or boomersrecipes.com would compliment and enhance your business sales. Babyboomersretirementplans.com, babyboomerstocks.com, boomerscash.com, boomersmile.com immediately conjure up the exact products or services that businesses offer to the Baby Boomer which is very searchable and clickable."

"We are constantly getting calls from Internet developers wanting us to sell our boomersinternet.com and babyboomersinternet.com domain names to create an incredible Internet portal for the Millions of Boomers on the net. Every business category and service has been covered," Mr. Eulenfeld explained.

The company has also cornered the political Boomers market with domains such as boomersvote.org, boomerrepublicans.com.org, babyboomerdemocrats.com,org. boomers4hillary.com.org, boomerspoliticalparty.org and so on. The persons or groups who own these domains could put these domains to work for fund raising and other endeavours.

Mr. Eulenfeld said: "We are extremely excited about the future of our Baby Boomer domains. We also own babyboomers.fm and babyboomers.am. That is how strong we believe in this market place. The Baby Boomer will be here for the next 30 to 40 years and they like to spend money. For those businesses who are cultivating the Boomer Market and wisely purchase these valuable domains, the future will be very prosperous."

The portfolio can be purchased in its entirety or by category. SEDO Inc will handle escrow and domain transfer. This is an incredible opportunity for Corporations and Service who are looking to gain the competitive edge in this hot market.

The Baby Boomers Domains can be viewed at http://www.webdomainconsultants.com.

###

Press Contact: LARRY EULENFELD
Company Name: Baby Boomers Domains
Email: email protected from spam bots
Phone: 305-505-5204
Website:
http://www.webdomainconsultants.com

Friday, December 15, 2006

Domain Name Owners Play In Traffic

 
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Announces New York City Show for Domain Name Owners

The World Association of Domain Name Developers Inc has announced it's first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in New York City, a new sponsor and live domain name auction.

(PRWeb) December 15, 2006 -- The World Association of Domain Name Developers, Inc. has announced it's first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in New York City starting June 19th and running until the 22nd. The "by invitation only" domain conference and trade show includes such giants as Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and over 300 other companies.

Rick Schwartz, CEO and Co-founder, has also announced that TrafficZ.com will be the overall sponsor of all 3 shows in 2007 that include Las Vegas in March at the Venetian Hotel & Casino and in South Florida in October at the famous Westin Diplomat Resort. This is the 7th T.R.A.F.F.I.C. event and by all accounts one of the most important. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2007 will focus on development of domain names, Madison Avenue participation and Wall Street investment opportunities. Attendees of each T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference have combined domain assets in excess of 10 million domain names and provide the major search engines with 10%-15% of their overall traffic.

Moniker.com will again be sponsoring the 3 live domain auctions held exclusively at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. - the largest such auctions in the world. The last auction held at the Westin Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Florida, in October, saw over $5 million in domains change hands in just 4 hours. Cameras.com sold for $1.5 million and the new Tld (top level domain) extension for mobile phones, .mobi, sold flowers.mobi for $200,000. More info can be found on their website at http://www.targetedtraffic.com or by contacting Rick Schwartz at email protected from spam bots

###

Press Contact: RICK SCHWARTZ
Company Name: World Association of Domain Nme Developers Inc.
Email: email protected from spam bots
Phone: 561-997-6286
Website:
http://www.targetedtraffic.com

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Google's Side Of The Click Fraud Story

The Elusive Click Fraud Issue: Google's Side Of The Story

by Gord Hotchkiss, Thursday, December 14, 2006
THERE ARE FEW ISSUES IN search marketing more thorny and convoluted than click fraud. It's the elusive problem, the industry scourge that seems to defy definition. Everyone wants to know the extent of click fraud, but to date, there seems to be no credible numbers to attach to the problem. A recent BusinessWeek "investigation" called it the "dark underground" of the Internet, "a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes." The article pegged the occurrence of click fraud at "10% to 15% of ad clicks... representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings." Unfortunately, the reporter used some questionable sources and math to come up with this number.

Even experienced search marketers can sometimes jump to wrong conclusions. Noted search marketer Andy Beal thought he had a scoop earlier this week when he did a little rough calculation on a presentation made by Google click fraud point person Shuman Ghosemajumder and pegged the actual occurrence of click fraud at 2% on Google. There was actually a little miscommunication between Beal and Ghosemajumder (since corrected on Andy's blog). I chatted with Ghosemajumder this week and here's Google's side of the story, largely ignored by the mainstream press.

Where Do These Numbers Come From?

BusinessWeek's article said "most academics and consultants who study online advertising" agree with the 10% to 15% number. Yet there has been no independent study done with reliable methodology to accurately scope the size of the issue. The study most often cited is a particularly damning one done by Outsell in May of 2006. In the study, 407 companies were asked what percentage of their search buy they believed to be fraudulent. They then averaged the responses and extrapolated it across the industry. Many of these advertisers weren't even tracking ROI, definitely a prerequisite for accurate identification of actual fraudulent behavior. As Ghosemajumder pointed out, "it's like asking a random group of people what they estimate the average salary in the U.S. to be, when they have no numbers to judge it on, and they don't even know what their own salary is." Yet, this is the number that seems to be accepted as fact by reporters determined to blow the issue into cover story status.

What's Fraud, and What's Attempted Fraud?

One fact that seems to be easily overlooked is what actually qualifies as click fraud. Fraud is only perpetrated when damage is done--in this case, if money passes hands. If no money changes hands, it's attempted fraud. Yet this simple distinction seems to be overlooked by many "investigators" into the question of click fraud. Everything tends to be included in the same bucket, usually accompanied by a whopping percentage designed to scare the hell out of online advertisers.

The 2% number quoted on marketingpilgrim.com came from Andy Beal, not from Google. It was computed by looking at the relative size of some graphics on a slide deck that was prepared to show Google's click fraud filtering systems.

Google has coined the term "invalid clicks" to refer to all those that advertisers are not charged for. This category also includes more benign examples, such as multiple clicks on the same ad that can happen when a visitor "pogo sticks," or clicks on an ad, hits the back button, and then clicks through on the ad again. Ghosemajumder does confirm that the number of invalid clicks represents a "single digit" percentage of all clicks across the network,

The "vast majority" of these clicks are proactively filtered out by Google in real time before any money passes hands, he says. It's as if the clicks didn't happen. The advertisers don't pay, and the publisher where the click originated doesn't get paid. The invalid clicks that slip through the real time filter then go for offline analysis, primarily focused on the AdSense network. Advertisers here are affected, but get refunds from Google without their having to take any action. In this case, Google does have a procedure for going back to the sites where the clicks originated. If anyone is out of pocket for these clicks, it's Google, not the advertiser.

Now we get to the 2% number. It refers to the clicks that make it through the proactive filters that the advertiser has to bring to Google's attention. The official word from Google is that this number is a "negligible percentage" of the total number of invalid clicks. My sense is that it's probably much less than 2%. Remember, this isn't a negligible percentage of all clicks, but a negligible percentage of "invalid" clicks, which in turn is less than 10% of all the clicks happening on Google.

The Impact in Dollars and Cents

So, let's talk about actual fraud, where the advertiser is the one out of pocket. Let's assume there is an advertiser with a $100,000-per- month budget. Let's further assume that the clicks this advertiser receives are representative of the total Google network.

Using the assumed 9% number as the number of invalid clicks, this means about $9000 of the budget falls into this category. From this, the "vast majority" are filtered out in real time, so there is no impact to the advertiser. A smaller percentage is refunded to the client without its having to take any action. Finally, there's the percentage that slips through the proactive filters. Even if we go with 2%, that would make the amount that would impact the advertiser $180. If you're doing your math, that's 0.18% of the total monthly spend, a far cry from 10% to 15%.

But It's Not that Simple

These are the estimates from Google, which has invested heavily in fighting click fraud. The same diligence in policing click fraud is probably not present in all advertising networks. Click fraud is definitely more prevalent in some sectors and on some networks than others. Finally, everyone acknowledges that we don't know what we don't know. If click fraud goes undetected through Google's filters and the advertiser never challenges it, it won't be identified. Google uses the ROI and conversion data that some of its advertisers share with it as an overall indicator of click fraud activity throughout its network. Its executives feel confident that there's very little slipping through all of these cracks.

Yes, this is Google's side of the story, but as the mainstream press seems to be more interested in focusing on a couple of egregious cases rather than providing a realistic picture of the issue across the entire network, I think it's important to pass it along. In the absence of real numbers for the short term, shouldn't you at least balance the numbers being touted by the press with those coming from the people fighting click fraud on a daily basis?

Gord Hotchkiss is the president of Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm. He loves to explore the strategic side of search and is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies and Ad:Tech. Check out his blog at
http://www.outofmygord.com

Search Insider for Thursday, December 14, 2006: http://publications.mediapost.com/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this issue was forwarded to you and you would like to begin receiving a copy of your own, please visit our site - www.mediapost.com - and become a complimentary member.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We welcome and appreciate forwarding of our newsletters in their entirety or in part with proper attribution.
(c) 2006 MediaPost Communications, 1140 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001


  1. Chris Nielsen from Domain Incubation says:

    The problem is not overt clicking on ads, competitors clicking on ads, or double-clicking on ads. The problem is with large-scale concerted efforts that are massive enough to to have enough variety of IP address, user agents, etc. and pose as “valid” user click activity.

    Of course this activity varies some with the bid price of the clicks, but it’s really the old idea of stealing a penny from a million people. If anyone notices, who’s really going to care? The problem is that in some areas, there are hundreds or thousands of people stealing pennys, and it is noticible and it is a problem. The only real indication is the lack of bona fide conversions, and that’s hard to say for sure if it’s fraud or real factors with the marketing or web site.

    There is an answer, if everyone on the search engine and publishing side has to guts to tackel it: Flat-rate advertising. Remove the incentive to click for fraud and charge advertisers for showing the ads, not the clicks. You can still bid for placement and jack the prices up, but site owners and crooks can’t easily scam a game like that.



 

Marketing | directories | Search | search-engines | search engines | seo | Search Engine Optimization