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Harvard professor accuses Google of ad fraud |
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Written by Peter Scott
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 13:28 |
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Turning free traffic into paid traffic
Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard
Business School, is boldly accusing Google of defrauding its advertisers.
In a report, Edelman says Google and its partners are systematically inflating advertisers' conversion
rates by interceding in transactions advertisers would otherwise have
received for free. In layman terms, it's charging them for thin air.
He claims the fraud overstates the true effectiveness of Google ads,
and leads to overcharging. Edelman also points out Google's Chrome
browser is designed to encourage users to search, rather than navigate
directly, thus yielding more ad-clicks and revenue for Google. Although other browsers behave in a similar fashion, Chrome is more aggressive.
Google has not commented the allegations.
More here.
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