Seth Godin recommending Click Fraud?
Seth Godin fired off a missive today on his blog encouraging us to click on ads when we are on websites whose content we appreciate - even if we aren’t interested in the offering.
“I never click on ads.”
It’s almost a badge of honor to say that. The subtext is, “I’m too smart/busy to waste my time doing that,” or perhaps, “I don’t want someone to sell my attention.”
But the real effect is that you’re starving great content.
I’m a Godin fan, but on this one I have to disagree. As Mike Fruchter pointed out in a FriendFeed discussion, where is the value to an advertiser if the person clicking isn’t responding to something that is relevant to them?
In the same FF discussion, others have claimed that this constitutes click fraud. I’ll have to give that more thought before I agree or disagree. I tend to think of click fraud in the narrower sense of an organized, rewarded effort to defraud an advertiser. In this case it seems more of a by-product than the objective.
If adopted widely, it would clearly lower the value advertisers are willing to pay. In fact, if adopted widely, it just might end pay-for-click as a revenue model.
And I wouldn’t loose any sleep over that.
What do you think? Click fraud or not?
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David G. Johnson