A (theoretical) FireFox plugin to ensure click-fraud on popups

This blog entry comes up with a theoretical idea of how to get rid of popups. There have long been pop-up blockers which stop it from loading - but as we have mentioned before, the advertisers are finding ways around that.

The idea this person has is that a FireFox plugin (he is saying FireFox because it is the browser he is using, but theoretically it could be a plugin for any/all browsers) would see that there is a popup, block it from being visible, but send clicks to it to load the site it is an ad for, and then randomly click around that site - mimicking a "sticky" user and showing user agent data which would look like a real user. But none of this would actually display in your browser, it would be going on in the background.

The idea is stems from the concept that 90% of pop-up ad clicks are accidental anyway. So this makes 100% of the clicks that way, so that the site would be getting traffic and usage, but the traffic would not be getting them any sales. Therefore not worth the payout of setting up the ad (technically not only not worth it, but actively increasing their costs with no return).

The good part - if you could create this plugin and many people used it (and I think they would), it would drastically change the pop-up style ad market and likely kill it (or at least cause them to work out a way to get around it).

The bad part(s):
1) A pop-up is in a small window. When you click on it, it opens a new window - sometimes done through a "_blank" HTML reference in the "A" link tag, but far more frequently via JavaScript. This spawns a new window and routes that browser to the ad company who is hosting that popup ad. This allows them to track that the ad was clicked on. From there, it forwards you on to the site who is paying for that ad and it is tracked that a click has happened and a charge is incurred for the ad. (I haven't purchased pop-up ads ever before, but I am guessing that there is a setup fee, and then a fee for each click - I could be wrong)
In order for this plugin to work, it would either have to work graphically and hit the links that way - which is a really bad/stupid idea, or it will have to pass know/find the URLs to follow and pass them properly through. The graphical approach would be easy to get around by the ad people by moving links and active areas around so that they are not always in the same place. It would also have to rely on the windowing system of the browser/OS to be able to "see" items without them actually being rendered to the screen.
The other approach could be bypassed by changing what data needs to get passed along each time (including a Javascript watch on events so that actual clicks take place). This would require updates to the code so frequently that either only certain ad types could be blocked, or it would need constant supervision for a developer to feed in changes.

2) You can't just tell a site "hey, this was clicked", it actually tracks what is downloaded. Plus, for this to really be a problem, you want them to see wasted bandwidth which isn't getting them more sales. So that means the pages actually have to be downloaded in the background and that means anyone using this plugin would have greater bandwidth usage themselves. That is fine if you are not footing the bill and have a large pipe. It is not so good if you are paying for your bandwidth yourself and/or have a very small pipe (slow connection).

I think it is a very clever idea and exactly the sort of innovation that the internet is perfect for - mass idea collectives and people to organize and build it.

Although I hate to be a nay-sayer - but I really don't think that this could work in practice for a broad scale or time period - there are just too many easy ways for the ad companies to get around it with simple changes on their ends.

Posted by Eric at March 18, 2005 11:42 AM | TrackBack