Here's the situation: on the one hand you have your customers, insisting that there is a problem and that you do something about it. On the other hand, you have your engineers, insisting there is not a problem. Further complicating the issue is that your customers, unsatisfied with your…
Here’s the situation: on the one hand you have your customers, insisting that
there is a problem and that you do something about it. On the other hand, you have your engineers, insisting there is not a problem. Further complicating the issue is that your customers, unsatisfied with your insistence that their concerns are, in fact, not a concern, have gone and hired third party firms who then validate their concerns (and turn click fraud detection into yet another industry – see the ads on
here). Then, of course, the press whips those concerns into a major
frenzy, threatening your $100+billion market cap.
And all of this is due to one thing: you aren’t willing to show your cards as to why you believe your customers concerns are invalid in the first place. Doing so would dull the edge of competitive differentiation that made your product what it is in the first place.
This is the situation in which Google finds itself right now with its AdSense advertisers. It’s not a pretty place to be. So to dampen the criticism, Google has responded with a 17 page white paper attacking the methodology third party click fraud reporting firms use. They’ll have to walk a fine line here.
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