Reddit readers manipulate AdSense

mashable.com

11 points·gabrielleydon··7 comments

"Redditers are calling everyone to click on Rudy Giuliani's paid ads simply because they cost him money."

Conversion tracking will show a drop from 10 percent to .001 percent and the ad will be turned off. Daily budgeting prevents serious loss. Google puts more thought into this sort of thing than reddit and its cute little arrows.

Google doesn't do conversion tracking for you.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=google+conversion+trac...

We're talking about CPC ads here and you know it.

Okay, you might want to actually look at some of those links. Just in case anybody else doesn't know what conversion tracking is, basically:

1. User clicks on ad.

2. User does something advertiser considers significant, aka a "conversion", like going to a download site or a credit card entry page.

3. Google tracks that occurence and crunches the numbers.

4. Advertiser can make decisions about what ads to run based upon how many conversions they get. Thus, if political ads never "convert" to donations, it's obvious they should be removed.

You can, however, block an adversary of using the medium. If your mob sabotages the ads everyday - or most days - the ad will always be off. He won't lose money, but opportunity.

I doubt this is as big of an issue as the article makes it seem, either for Google or candidates.

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