After speaking at the recent TRAFFIC conference on standards and transparency I thought that I'd give a little time to collect my thoughts before I took up the banner once again. In the previous articles in this series I've endeavoured to define a process towards transparency and also what the standards should be for clicks, views etc.
In the next few articles I will attempt to shed some light on why both Google and Yahoo are the ultimate culprits when it comes to a lack of transparency. I'll follow up by tryng to ascertain why both of these companies behave in this manner and what we can do about it.
What we are all (including parking companies) wrestling with is the fact that both Google and Yahoo are fundamentally NOT transparent. When asked, both Google and Yahoo indicate that if they reveal their numbers then it will allow fraudsters to further exploit their systems. I do not believe that there is a link between fraud and transparency. In every other industry that has adopted standards (including Internet advertising) fraud has NOT grown when transparency and standards have been introduced.
In fact, both Google and Yahoo are members of the “Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)†and agree to the code of conduct which clearly states outlines the IAB's views on transparency:
The "Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)" and agree to the code of conduct which clearly states the following:
The goal of the IAB and the entire interactive industry is simple: to achieve transparency in audience counts and to revise out-of-date methodologies.
For the interactive industry, one that is committed to delivering accountability, integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity.
The IAB believes that all companies involved in audience measurement should be audited for their processes. These audits are intended to establish the source of any measurement discrepancies and to find potential solutions.
All measurement companies that report audience metrics have a material impact on interactive marketing and decision-making. Therefore, transparency into these methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers' confidence in interactive media, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to the platform.
The major issues that are addressed in the IAB statement are transparency, accountability, auditability and a recognition that transparency is key to maintaining advertisers' confidence. These points are what is sadly lacking when it comes to the domain industry.
How is it that both Google and Yahoo can ascribe to the IAB position on standards and transparency and then only provide the bare minimum of information to the domain parking companies? Google's mantra of "do not evil" seems to be flexible on this point. In reality I think that there are a number of reasons for this behaviour.
Although the domain industry has been rapidly growing it only represents about 3% of Google's revenue. This is despite the fact that our whole industry turned over $1.1b of revenue last year. There has been a lot of backslapping and congratulating how big we are but in reality we are very small based solely upon the 3%. More on this point later.
In the next articles I plan on opening up some of the numbers surrounding why Google/Yahoo's attitudes towards transparency is not merely a blind policy decision but rather an economic one.
Source: Posted by Michael Gilmour — Original post on on
Whizzbangsblog — March 14, 2008
