This past week in New York during the Search Engine Strategies conference, we sponsored a VIP dinner for the Click Quality Council.  Attendance was robust.  Although the food and drinks were excellent (thank you, McCormick & Schmick’s) I think the enthusiastic response to the CQC invite was more about the guest list than the menu.

In attendance were a wide variety of senior executives from large ad networks, online publishers, and agencies, including at least three CEOs and a dozen VPs.  Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics, served as host and MC for the evening.  Some of the special guests included Dr. Alex Tuzhilin from NYU, a recognized authority on click fraud and online traffic quality, and author of the famous Lane’s Gifts v. Google report, as well as Joe Lazlo, Director of Research for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Joe was an especially welcome guest in light of the imminent Click Measurement Guidelines that the IAB will be publishing very soon.  Both Click Forensics and the CQC have been active participants in the discussions and debate that have formed the proposed guidelines.  Joe updated the Council on the fact that the guidelines were currently open for public comment, and provided a brief overview of what the guidelines (and the IAB itself) were designed to accomplish: ensuring advertisers get what they pay for.  Since that’s a core tenet of the CQC, the message was well received.

We thank Joe for his participation and hope to see him again at future events, perhaps even the next CQC Dinner in San Francisco on April 21 during Ad:Tech?

The remainder of the evening was filled with lively discussion about click quality and plenty of war stories having nothing at all to do with click quality.  I hope everyone found the evening as productive and enjoyable as I did.  Kudos to Laura Wolf for organizing and executing yet another successful event!

The problem of botnets is getting worse, not better.  In fact, over 30% of all click fraud comes from botnets, maybe even YOUR computer!  Ever wonder how botnets work?  The BBC has acquired control of 22,000 computers and have been demonstrating how it works.  The videos are easy to understand and  very interesting.

Cyber crime risk exposed
How cyber criminals attack websites
Is your PC doing a hacker’s dirty work?

Click fraud is costing advertisers millions of dollars a year.  So how can you protect your computer from becoming a party to the crime?  Again the BBC site has an excellent article with practical steps called, “How to keep your computer secure“.  Take time to read it and be sure you are doing your part to reduce click fraud.

Last week I wrote about the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s release of the Click Measurement Guidelines. This document is extremely important for advertisers, agencies and ad providers. It defines the process that will be used to measure and deliver clicks to advertisers. The Click Quality Council is hosting a call to discuss the guidelines, describe the process used to develop them and the impact for the industry.

The call will be Wednesday March 18th at 4 PM ET/ 1 PM PT and is open to all members of the online advertising ecosystem. We will have George Ivie of the Media Rating Council as our speaker. George worked directly with the IAB in facilitating discussion and building the guidelines. Registration is available by clicking here.

On a recent trip to New York, I was asked by an ad provider executive, “Which side are you on?” At first I didn’t know what he meant, but he clarified it for me by saying that in the world of advertisers, ad networks, publishers, and ad providers, it’s important to know whose side you’re on.

When I told him that we are on the side of the advertiser he paused, thought about it and then the light bulb went off. What’s good for the advertiser is good for our entire industry. 100% of the over $22B spent on search advertising comes from advertisers. They pay the bills for search engines, ad providers, parked domain companies publishers as well as those of us that are working to provide tools to improve traffic quality.

Despite our diverse client base, the lens Click Forensics looks through for every decision we make is that of the advertiser. While Click Forensics works with a number of advertisers and agencies, we also have many clients that are ad providers. This list includes search engines, ad networks, publishers and even parked domain companies. The reason these companies choose to work with us is that we provide insight into the traffic quality they are selling to advertisers. They are able to use this information to route, block, price and value the traffic to help advertisers get a better return on their ad spend.

Smart sellers look through this lens too. Companies like Yahoo that asked advertisers how they could improve communication. The result was the cooperative development of the FACTr system enabling advertisers to communicate concerns to Yahoo. Companies like Lycos, who realized early on that “quality matters” and began working to enhance their quality using traffic insight tools. And industry organizations including the Click Quality Council, while made of all parts of the ecosystem, is always advertiser focused.

Advertisers drive our industry and that reality will become even clearer in the future as mobile grows more important and display begins to look like search. We are proud of our involvement and the work of the Click Quality Council. The CQC is an example of an industry organization that is not dominated by one constituency. The over 100 members include companies from every corner and every perspective of the eco-system. They sit around the virtual table as equals, all understanding it is the lens of the advertiser that matters.

So this week, as the IAB releases the Click Measurement Working Group Guidelines, it is important that they are reviewed through the lens that matters, that of the advertiser. We should be asking, are these guidelines fair? Do they have enough substance to improve traffic quality and help ensure advertisers get what they pay for? Do the guidelines improve transparency and enhance trust between buyers and sellers?

I attended the IAB’s annual conference in Orlando this week and have a clear picture of their lens. We applaud the IAB’s leadership and the work of the Media Rating Council and task force members who produced a foundational document. Our hope now is that we can work together to build on this foundation to build trust, enhance transparency and accelerate the growth of online advertising.

tRight off the bat, you need to know that quality traffic is NOT a commodity.

I am attending the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ecosystem 2009 conference in Orlando.  There are over 500 attendees at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress hotel and of those, I have found five advertisers.  There is no doubt, nor is the fact hidden, that the IAB is a publisher driven organization.  But it has struck me just how narrow that view is as I heard Wenda Harris Millard speak.  The title of her presentation was titled, “Am I in the Wrong Class? Why Advertising Isn’t and Shouldn’t Be (Just) Math and Science” . It could have easily been titled, ‘Too Much Emphasis On Data Is The Problem, Not A Solution’

Wenda is very smart and has obviously been quite successful, but to me, she seems to be missing the obvious.  It is the science aspect of online advertising that differentiates it from traditional media.  Online is much more measurable, has easier to access data that is more accurate and can be enhanced from a performance standpoint by leveraging the data wisely.  Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, noted, ”We need a creative renaissance in interactive advertising, the business has lived under the tyranny of the click for too long”

The tyranny of the click?  Isn’t it the “click” that has driven the growth of online?  While traditional media flails in the wind (or gets blown away completely, think print…) online has lots of upside.  The renaissance we need to better leverage data to improve traffic quality.

I was part of an agency for eight years and understand the value of good creative messaging and branding.  But I deliberately moved into online because of the measurability and accountability it can create.  At Click Forensics, our goal as a company is to enable advertisers to get what they pay for.  That is delivered through transparency, accountability and measurement.  The successful seller of digital media will embrace these ideas and work to demonstrate their commitment to quality.  They will look through the lens of the advertiser to deliver traffic that meets the goals set out in the campaign.  The IAB is doing a great job in developing standards to enhance measurement and we continue our efforts as part of the Click Measurement Working Group.  I applaud their work and am pleased to be a member.

But now is time for us to find better ways to communicate the value of online advertising.  Let’s give the people what they want.  Let’s prove to them that quality traffic is NOT a commodity.   Instead of trying to “tame the data dragon” we should should work together to unleash the beast.