Adon Network Full of Clickfraud?

Oct 17th 2006 View Comments




We have a client at my dayjob who recently purchased a little over 7000 clicks from the “keyword-targeted ad network” AdOn. They were initially impressed by the sheer volume of traffic generated and then subsequently underwhelmed by the performance of said traffic. In the process of some conversion analysis using Clicktracks today I discovered that of the 7200 clicks that came from AdOn properties, 99% immediately left the site with an average time on site of 1 second or less. This screams clickfraud to me. I scanned the raw logs to make sure these weren’t all from the same IP and they weren’t, but still, a 99% bounce rate?
I’m not yet sure how much our client spent on these clicks but whatever it was it was a complete and total waste. Does anyone else have any experience working with these guys?

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  • http://www.clicktracks.com Michael

    Dan – If you have access to the ClickTracks Click Fraud report, generate a Click Fraud Forensics report and look at the referring pages (if any) for the short sessions. If the referring page is non-existent or has no content, then you have a likely case of fraud.

    -Michael

  • http://www.adonnetwork.com Kory Kredit

    Dan,

    AdOn Network takes click fraud very seriously and we make every effort to personally work with our advertisers to address concerns of this nature.

    While we have several automated and manual methods in place to identify potential click fraud and remove it from the network, AdOn Network also offers advertisers a Traffic Source Selection tool which allows you to remove poor-performing sources. This tool give you the ability to evaluate the ROI of each individual traffic source so that you can keep only the best performing sources and optimize your campaign.

    You can contact myself or one of our account representatives (866.258.9245 or adservices@adonnetwork.com) to review your account and resolve any issues you may have.

    - Kory Kredit
    Director of Marketing
    AdOn Network

  • http://Response Geoff

    Dear Mr. Zarrella,

    My name is Geoff Gieron and I am the Director of Advertiser Management & Services for AdOn Network. I came across this posting and felt necessary to address your concerns.

    We oversee approximately 2000 advertisers currently that use our array of product offerings for driving traffic (Search, Pop-Under and Text). Our goal is to connect our advertisers with consumers, to help create a positive Return On Investment. We take quality very seriously and always encourage our advertisers to provide us any feedback necessary to help us continually improve. At any point in time should someone raise concerns over specific traffic, we simply ask for whatever information can be provided (ip logs, referer logs, etc…) so we may research internally to help identify any areas that our fraud prevention tools and filters may not identify. Once a review has been completed and we identify that there is indeed an issue we are always more than happy to extend a credit for the money spent on the traffic, as we would prefer that any advertiser working with us acheives success in meeting their marketing goals and objectives.

    Realizing that click fraud is an industry issue, we have gone one step further in giving our advertisers the control to deselect themselves from any traffic source in our distribution network. Coupled with our Reporting/ROI Tools – we find that giving this control to our advertisers helps them better identify and turn off any traffic source that isn’t delivering the desired quality necessary for conversion. We acknowledge that providing this to our advertisers as a resource allows us to combat this battle together.

    I would certainly like to speak with you further on the issue seen by your client so we can review the information and assist in any way we can. You can reach me through the phone number located on the AdOn Network web site (www.adonnetwork.com).

    I look forward to hearing from you and correcting this impression of our network.

    Thank you

  • http://www.matchwise.com Greg Marlett

    We at http://www.matchwise.com found a similar extremely high rate of bounces (over 96%) from AdOn Network clicks. It was a TOTAL waste of money. We didn’t get a single subscriber from the investment. We tested it over a few months with several tracking URL’s and finally shut it down and demanded a refund. We told them which of their partners were obviously just running robots to click through to our site and add up the click fees. But we only got the “We take click fraud seriously” reply like the message above and no refund and no explanation. This really needs to be covered by federal fraud law. They should go to jail.

  • http://www.onveon.com Eric Meadows

    I tested they’re system after receiving info from the SanFran AdTech this year and after receiving 351 clicks I reviewed the stats. No conversion and a 98.5% bounce rate. :( I’m glad I only tested a hundred bucks. The only ad network I’ve seen with lower performance is RedZee.com. I’m not going to accuse AdOn of click-fraud as I did analyze the log data and nothing jumped out as immediate red flags but at the end of the day it all comes down to performance. When my site average is over two minutes per visitor and a traffic source has 98.5% of the traffic immediately bounce something just doesn’t add up.

  • Not the sharpests tools in the shed are we?

    You guys are all retarted.

    AdOn is a pop network. NOT a ppc network like adwords. Therefore when doing CPV (cost per view) ads your not paying for a text ad to be displayed, your paying for a pop-up. That is why the bounce rate is so high.

    It is not click fraud since nobody is clicking!

  • http://danzarrella.com Dan Zarrella

    sgadvertising:
    did you see the bolded part of my original post?
    “of the 7200 clicks that came from AdOn properties, 99% immediately left the site with an average time on site of 1 second or less” i wasn’t talking about views of a popup, i was talking about actual clicks to the site, recorded in the server’s logs (hence the mention of clicktracks) I don’t particularly care in this case what the payment model is, although if there was no chance of clickfraud, it seems odd that the guys from adon network would be so quick to talk about how they take clickfraud seriously, now doesn’t it?

  • sgadvertising

    Dan,

    #1 The guy from AdOn is protecting his brand. Contextual networks (there are many others) like to hide the fact that they are popping directly to the landing page.

    #2 Direct quote from someone at AdOn “We no longer use pop-overs, we have changed to pop-unders only.” This is because of the intrusiveness of pop-overs and the bounce rate.

    #3 Have you ever heard of a concept called “forcing clicks.” Thats probably why you saw your traffic as clicks in your server logs. People didn’t click through, AdOn network popped your landing page (or whatever URL you gave them) which may show in your reports as clicks.

  • moebius8

    Ad on networks is using the virtumonde trojan and rootkit to generate traffice that you are paying for.
    their affiliate mygeek.com hosts cpvfeeds.com. they go to great to obstufacte their whois info but ips dont lie.

  • http://ctcmagazine.com highjudo

    has anyone tested this traffic lately? also, are the sources of this traffic still the same?

  • http://www.apokerexpert.com Mitchell

    Avoid at all costs! I just used this site and it was a total fraud on the clicks. I just blew $100 on this service. What a waste.

    I wish I found this site before I signed up and committed the money.

  • http://AdOnnetwork.com Matt Papke

    AdOn Network has some tremendous strengths, that when used correctly can generate a significant and positive ROI. I personally do not run any CPC campaigns, but the Pop Under Campaigns; when proper tracking and optimization initiatives are in place can perform quite well for many verticals. We offer a robust and customizable reporting interface and the option to opt out of any traffic sources. AdOn Network does have very high volumes of traffic there are no guarantees of success. However a typical campaign should be run and optimized over a 10 period at the least. highjudo, I’m sorry that your experience was bad, if I can help analyze the data and offer any advice please let me know.

    Matthew Papke
    matt@adonnetwork.com

  • http://www.apokerexpert.com Mitchell

    Here is my advice to those looking at PPC:
    1. Google is number 1–and has over 70% of total web searches. If they are too expensive, with their “Google slap” try…
    2. Yahoo ads. They are priced like a real auction so you only pay 1 cent higher than the lowest bid for your keyword and you never pay more than your highest bid.
    3. MSN ads. They are also legit.

    Overall, these three are your top choices. Does click fraud occur there as well?

    I’m sure it does, but these companies work the hardest at eliminating click fraud since they don’t want the hassles or fines which cost them millions.

    The other ppc firms could also work for you, but test them out first. Use Google Analytics to track them.

    And if Google Analytics show that you get 100% bounces with no one on your site for more than a second or two of time, like ahh, let’s say AddOn, run for the hills. It may be a strong indication of click fraud.

    P.S. I have heard that Facebook has been delivering good results as well.

    Good luck!

  • Louise

    I have used Adon for over 2 years and it delivers excellent results for most of my clients. From experience anyone testing $100 here and there are not going to get results back immediately, you need to invest a bit more than that to get a return.

  • Custer

    I would strongly recommend you stay away from Adon. I learned the hardway and it has cost me big time. Turns out the account manager Adon assigned to my account was a convicted felon. Not only that, he was still on probation and he had to petition the court to get approval to use computers at work. His conviction was for theft and forgery. It sure gives me a warm fuzzy feeling knowing he had access to my credit card info. What is even more astounding is that Adon was aware of his conviction when they hired this joker. It’s encouraging to see Adon sets the bar so high when hiring employees. I wish the story ended there, but unfortunately, it’s an ongoing battle. Suffice to say, don’t fall victime like me and stay away from them. Find a company with some ethics.

  • JB

    Adonnetwork ROCKS!! I love to hear stories like those above. This means there is less people competing with me and my PPV (CPV) campaigns. I get great ROI, sometimes over 1000%. But it comes with testing, testing, testing, then tracking, tracking, tracking. Not every campaign is a winner. You have to spend money to make money but you have to do it wisely. The great thing about adon is the fact you control your traffic sources. If you are doing what you should be doing and tracking every target you should easily weed out the traffic sources that are not converting.

  • zimbobway

    Adon is a joke…The majority of their traffic is adult masked content. They take your banners and serve PPC junk search to your click through URL to beef up the numbers. In addition a large amount of the traffic is unresolved. Their pop unders are served through desktop adware. The reason the bounce rate is so High is probably due to use of Bots with rotating Url’s. Then they tell you that each click came from a Unique Ip. In addition if you look at the keywords that were targeted my guess is that you will find that they forced random adult keyword into your campaign, in turn generating a large amount of clicks. The issues are to numerous to address…The best bbet is to stay away.

  • http://pay-per-install.org/ Adware Maker

    Yes, I am adware maker and I do sale my traffic to them. Their old name is MyGeek
    and they do really love my adware popups :-)

    Btw Dan – you do have nice blog

  • http://pay-per-install.org/ Adware Maker

    Yes, I am adware maker and I do sale my traffic to them. Their old name is MyGeek
    and they do really love my adware popups :-)

    Btw Dan – you do have nice blog

  • Matt

    Hi, do you know if your client purchase pop unders or clicks?

  • gdusing

    What do you mean by “they do really love my adware popups” – is it click fraud? I heard that such bogus traffic could be just a side effect of their privacy controls software, but it still looks fishy to me, a 99% bounce rate.