Detecting click fraud collaboratively and in real time should be quite a feat. I suppose it would mean much less relative arbitrary auditing, and probably much more transparency about why any given click would be approved or not.
If it succeeds, it should make quite a difference.
Just in case the Googles of the world ain't paying attention:
This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will provide a commercial solution to click fraud identification and prevention. The current existing solutions can not detect the so-called software click. This STTR project proposes a real time collaborative click fraud detection and prevention system to detect these software clicks. The approach draws on data mining techniques for fraud identification using detailed user activities. An accurate and efficient classification method based on association rule mining and data stream mining will be formulated to identify the click frauds.
The system will protect Pay-Per-Click advertisers from click fraud and improve their return on investment. The new data mining techniques discovered during the course of this research will be applied in multiple fields related to online business marketing, user analysis and other fraud identification processes.
The Guardian (UK) has put out a new list (and commentary) on the 100 Most Useful Web Sites. I might argue about some of their choices, but I am not really mainstream ... I am pretty much immersed in several areas of what is sometimes called Web 2.0.
Scrolling down the list, it is considerably more Web 2.0-ish than in previous years, meaning that the list is crammed full of web sites where users interact, participate, and either (or both) take content to remix and publish or upload content for others to use.
While many people have complained about the term, the Web is clearly becoming a vast arena for copious amounts of "user-generated content".
And while content has long been considered "king" (it's what attracts the mainstream metric of eyeballs), this relatively new report from Bear Sterns (The Long Tail: Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment) concentrated on television / video suggests that increasingly context and the aggregation of material will play critical roles. Thus, Bear Sterns concludes that a key part of creating value is how content is packaged (Slide # 29) ... for distribution and use (use being a term that covers many forms of what people do with content).
Anyway, back to the 100 Most Useful Web sites. i think that this is an irreversible trend pointing us to an environment where people will eventually move back and forth seamlessly between two worlds, and in many cases sites like those on the list play an essential role in many peoples' daily activities (if they don't already).
Two years ago most Britons didn't have broadband and Web 2.0 was barely a twinkle in a developer's eye. Things have changed - as our cream of the crop for 2006 shows
In 2004, the internet was a different place: there was, for example, no YouTube, and most Britons online didn't have broadband. That's changed dramatically: now, more than 75% of users have broadband, and the arrival of Web 2.0 has brought sites where the interaction is as fast as if it were on your machine. So we've revisited the "cream of the crop" that we brought you two years ago.
Some of the crop is brand new; some has stood the test of time. As before, we have 100 sites in 20 categories.
It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.
Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.
Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.
Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.
Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.
Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.
Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.
While we're working on making Qumana compatible with the new Blogger, I'm wondering about other features. New features. I use Qumana all the time. Couldn't live without it really. I have to, on occasion, use our competitors products for specific blogs and for testing, but I always come back to Q. But I was thinking today that we're due for a new feature. Something bloggers want and need. I'm not talking about a built-in egg timer or something to remind you it's time to blog, I'm talking about something really useful.
I'm open to suggestions. Of course we can't put everything in. We want to keep Q simple and easy.
Ok .. so we've rearranged our priority list to move to the head of the list making Qumana 3.0 operate smoothly once again with the newest version of the Blogger platform.
None of us here use the Blogger platform.
Would any of you out there who used to use Qumana with Blogger (and hopefully still use it if you operate blogs on other platforms) mind giving us a hand by helping us zero in on what doesn't work, what Qumana does poorly, rudely, or not at all when attempting to publish to Blogger using it ?
Your help will be invaluable .. we want to modify / repair Qumana as quickly as possible.
... for bloggers not to download and try the new Q-Ads tool and service, other than a blogger exercising a complete ban on advertising.
There are many many bloggers who put up Google advertising on their blogs and then basically forget about it ... or if they are really serious about advertising on their blog will expend a lot of effort creating interesting content but just leave the delivery to Google without any means of controlling what they receive as advertising, since Google's algorithm's deliver what they are designed to deliver.
Using categorized keywords tailored to your audience(s) is an effective way to begin developing an advertising strategy and tactics for your blogging that allows you to control what advertising you choose to expose to your readers, and this ability to choose and control advertising has always been at the heart of Qumana's tools' ability to insert advertising with the selection of a keyword and a click.
2. Signing up for a Q-Ads account is free, and only takes 5 minutes
3. The Q-Ads revenue-sharing program is generous and fair.
4. There is a powerful and easy-to-use ad design function available in both the Q-Ads tool and the Qumana editor. We intend to add templates and other ad formats just as soon as humanly possible.
WE WILL BE ABLE TO CREATE AND DELIVER MORE INNOVATIONS SOONER IF WE GET MORE AND MORE USERS ... IN OTHER WORDS, HELP A FRIEND OR THREE TO DOWNLOAD AND TRY QUMANA AND THE Q-ADS TOOLS.
5. Once signed up, you don't HAVE to use advertising all the time, or in every blog post .. it's completely up to you as to how often you insert an advertisement.
6. If you download the Qumana editor, you can choose to advertise or not .. if you don't want to, just don't use the Insert Ad function. You still get to use a powerful, feature rich and versatile blog editor, whether you blog using a Mac or a PC.
Here's where I try something i have been wondering about for a while .. in principle it should be relatively easy to give users a default ad presentation setting that would result in an ad displaying in their blog post as follows ... probably an issue depending upon template chosen by user, but sometimes those things can be made adaptable.
But for now to make an ad look more clickable on a site using Qumana and Q-Ads, I would ...
1. Use shift__underscore to create a line across the window of the editor
2. Pull and place a Q-Ad
3. Center align the ad
4. Copy-and-paste the line from Step 1 below the ad
UPDATE: Trying out the addition of a second advertisment
San Francisco and Vancouver (Nov. 29, 2006) -- Qumana Software Inc today announced availability of the Q-Ads tools (http://tools.typepad.com/get/qads) and the popular Qumana offline blog editor (http://tools.typepad.com/get/qumana) for users of the TypePad blogging platform. Users of Six Apart's popular hosted blogging service can now quickly and easily insert keyword-based ads directly into their blog posts, whether they use the Qumana editor or not.
"Qumana is thrilled to be offering the industry's easiest ad insertion tool to this important blogging community," said Fred Fabro, CEO of Qumana. "Q-Ads puts TypePad bloggers at the center of the explosive growth taking place in online advertising," said Fabro.
"TypePad bloggers deserve creative and powerful ways to earn money from their blogs. Qumana offers bloggers a unique approach, and we're happy to introduce their tools to our customers." said Michael Sippey, VP & GM of TypePad at Six Apart.
"With Q-Ads TypePad bloggers can choose which keywords best represent the editorial message of the blog post and then with one click pull an ad from our network that best relates to that content," added Fabro. "The result is a matching of TypePad bloggers' content to an ad message, which can give the ad message greater relevance to blog readers. Greater relevance means higher click-throughs and happier advertisers," said Fabro.
Qumana's Q-Ads tool is a browser extension that works as an Internet Explorer plugin or Firefox extension that enables users to "pull and place" text-based advertising based on the keywords they enter. The Q-Ads Tool works with all major blogging platforms, including TypePad. There is also a Q-Ads plug-in for Windows LiveWriter.
Qumana also offers Typepad users the leading off-line blog editor in the blogosphere. Qumana allows bloggers to create media-rich blog posts in a familiar WYSIWYG interface and with simple button clicks insert the keyword-based ads, Technorati tags, and multimedia (e.g. YouTube videos) through the innovative Insert HTML button.
The insert ad interface is designed to allow users to enter the keyword of their choice and then customize the size and colour of the ad before inserting it into their post.
About Qumana Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides content providers and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana's mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple. For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/
About Six Apart, Ltd. Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services that change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and corporations connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded in 2002 by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, Six Apart has grown into a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco, CA, and offices in Europe and Japan. The company continues to lead in the blogging and social media industry with the Movable Type publishing platform, the TypePad hosted blogging service LiveJournal, an online community organized around personal journals, and Vox, a free personal blogging service for friends and family. For more information, visit http://www.sixapart.com/
For more info: Fred Fabro - CEO and President, Qumana Software Inc. e: fred AT qumana.com Tel: 604.837.0400
For the last 8 weeks or so we've known about and have been searching ways to resolve the problems which showed up the most recent Mac version of Qumana, with OS X 10.4.7+ ...
I think we are just about there in terms of being able to offer users a new release for the Mac that operates pretty effectively ... so far I have found just one instance of quirkiness (a previous post that did not fully refresh) on one of the various blogs I maintain for testing purposes.
Thus far I have tested posting to Wordpress, Typepad and Blogware platforms ... mixed results. Typepad fine, Blogware fine, and I knew Wordpress would not publish the Q-Ads I inserted ... but I was not prepared for it to ignore the YouTube html.
So, with a bit of fair weather following the pretty substantial snowfall here in Vancouver, we should be able to post a link to the new version of Qumana for Mac within the next 24 hours.
We will also update the download link on the Qumana website.
UPDATE #2: We are tracking down the issues reported in our comments section. It seems that a crucial step in the uploading of the new version to the Qumana web site was not carried out yesterday due to power outages off the coast of British Columbia (the joys of a decentralised organization ;-)
We have people working on the problem(s).
UPDATE #3: We think that all that remains to do is refresh the server upon which the Qumana site is hosted ... unfortunately the person who can do that is located on an island 30 kilometres to the west of Vancouver, and it seems the power is still off over there.
More news re: the live updated Mac OS version as we get it.
UPDATE #4: It should be correct now ... the download will appear on your Desktop, and then just drop it into Applications.
It's probably a good thing to do to uninstall any previous application of Qumana, just for the hell of it.
We are happy to announce that we are releasing two new tools to make it even easier for you to pick and place Q-Ads ads into your websites and blog posts.
A new version of the Q-Ads tool for Firefox (including 2.0) and Internet Explorer will allow you to insert ads while still using your familiar web-based post editor, but now it can do more—now you can insert YouTube and other video clips too! Just like the award-winning Qumana editor we have integrated an Insert HTML function into the Q-Ads tool that lets you insert videos (and other HTML code) right into your posts. This will let YouTube users put their own videos into their own blogs and publish an advertisement along with the video clip.
Because of the security limitations within many web-based blog editors YouTube insertion may not work for all users. Each blog platform handles this kind of code differently, and so we can't guarantee this function will work for all blog platforms.
Second, we added new ad category and keyword pick lists to the Q-ads tool. We combed through over 10,000 keywords in popular categories like Computers, Real Estate, and Home/Garden to give you 10 top-performing keywords in each category. We will refresh this list periodically to make sure you still have the best keywords available to you at all times. Don't like one of the suggestions? No problem, just choose Custom Keyword and enter your own.
This is also useful for content providers who may want to partner with Qumana to offer these capabilities to their users. We can tailor and mirror categories that are important and relevant to their audiences, so as to provide them with customized advertising inventory that means something to their audiences or users. The content providers can offer their users free easy-to-use content and advertising publishing tools along with the ability to access quality advertising and make money.
Lastly, we are officially releasing a Q-Ads plugin for Microsoft's Live Writer offline blog editor. While we think Qumana is the best editor out there (and if you are looking for a powerful blog editor that has all the functions and more of the Q-Ads tool, Qumana is for you), some of you might like Live Writer. We don't take this personally, so we are giving LW users Q-Ads too! The Q-Ads plugin for Live Writer contains the same ad insert as the Q-Ads tool (with category pick lists and ad customization) and the easy Insert Video (and other HTML code) functions too!
All of these are available for download now from the Qumana website.
Another sign o' the times, via the NY Times ... this news nicely reinforces the trend we reported on last month in our post No Surprise ...
Help speed up the changes to the publishing and news and advertising industries .. sign up for a Q-Ads account, download the free ad insertion tool, and help accelerate the changes that are underway.
Help make it easier for the little guy or gal to advertise post by post, right where your readers are paying attention.
A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.
In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads. But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.
In that way, local news — one of the pillars of the newspaper business — would become part of a large information network that would increase usefulness for readers and value to advertisers.
“Now the industry has religion about the Internet, based on what has happened to the business in recent years,” said the executive, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak for his company. “So there is a lot more genuine enthusiasm today.”
A little more than a week ago Dave Sifry posted Technorati's most recent snapshot of the (continuing) growth and maturation of the blogosphere, including a number of analyses about how blogs continue to penetrate the media scene, the frequency of posting, where posts come from, and how Technorati is mitigating the scourge of splogs (or more accurately, taking steps to not count them).
Here's the concluding summary:
In Summary:
1. Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs. 2. Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates. 3. Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days. 4. About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts. 5. About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days. 6. There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking. 7. The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized. 8. Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.
The last two points are of significant interest, and here's a pie chart that gives us a sense of the spreading globalization of blogging:
I remember two or three years ago having conversations with colleagues about the eventual penetration of social software and web services into the work-o-sphere of organizations ... I called it something vague, like "blog-like derivatives".
As I and others have noted before, it's very likely that the use of such configurations will lead to interesting changes to the design of work, and lead to a greater need for organizational development initiatives ... coaching, moderation, workshops addressing corporate blogging (external and internal) and the use of wikis, etc. Ley's call it eOD for now.
This fulfills Andrew McAfee's vision of Enterprise 2.0. In a box. Made simple for Small-to-Mid-sized Enterprises. Extensible because we've all supported open APIs. Enterprise 2.0 is freeform social software adapted for organizations. SuiteTwo is the first offering to realize the SLATES paradigm:
