Thursday afternoon I’m receiving this email from Google itself:
Dear Google AdWords advertiser:We are writing to notify you that we have processed your claim for Account Number {hidden} under the Lane’s Gifts v. Google class- action settlement. We are issuing credits to the AdWords account identified in your claim. To view your credit award, log in to … Credits are awarded on a pro rata basis, taking into account these factors:– The amount you paid Google for advertising
– Google’s revenues from online advertising since January 1, 2002, and your claim percentage
– The total amount of credits available in the settlement, which is US$60M.If you have any questions … Thank you for your continued support of Google.
Oh, I slept so sweet that night… I need to wait one more day to find my dreams comes true. Driving new Eddie Baur Explorer SUV, New Kitchen, new home at Tenafly, Real Tiffany diamond pendant jewelry to my wife, not a faked one,… One more day left to log in my Google account and find all those millions of $ waiting there silently. The expected day and hour finally came. My fingers are nervous shaking, one more click on the Billing Summary page and there you are…
This is an account with $50,000 per year click spending! I thought my eyes are illusive me, so I logged in to other accounts and asked around. True, my dreams blows out. After digging even deeper I’ve found a treasure – $76 reward in … cancelled (banned) account!
What is the reward you got?
Sent a comment to us if you have experience with similar frustration.
acroterion
Hi Neo,
Thank you for your comment. At SEMPO we (I’m a member in the research committee) are establishing now comprehensive research on click fraud:
http://www.sempo.org/news/releases/fair_isaac_sempo_pay-per-click
Send us e-mail to [email protected] if you like to share your data with Fair Isaac researches. Fair Isaac credibility and non-disclosure practices are the highest possible, as you can read they holding credit cards data.
Neo
I have experienced much the same, my accounts with google cost me over £200,000.oo each year. Can you imagine when I find a credit in each of my accounts today one for £56.10 and the other for Just £14.11. This is less than 1% of 1% of our total spend over the last 4 years. By googles own reconning they say that click fraud could have been between 8% and 10% and on one group tested over a ten day period it could have been as high as 30%. In our case if google had paid us only 1% we should have been credited with at least £8546.00.
10% would have been £85,460.oo.
It seems unbelievable that the lawyers take out 30 million for themselves and leave us small fish gutted on the river bank with no place to go.
Its amazing what you can buy when you have a key to everyones bank account. The real truth of the matter is that we have all been stitched up and we can’t do a thing about it. The real value of the click fraud will never be known. I suspect it is in the Billions.
I would expect that everyone will be more careful in future about who they advertise with online.