ChasNote

Wired News on Google’s — and our whole industry’s — problem with click fraud:

“Google’s $6 billion-a-year advertising business is at risk because it can’t be sure that anyone is looking at its ads. The problem is called click fraud…..

But the overarching problem is both hard to solve and important: How do you tell if there’s an actual person sitting in front of a computer screen? How do you tell that the person is paying attention, hasn’t automated his responses, and isn’t being assisted by friends? Authentication systems are big business, whether based on something you know (passwords), something you have (tokens) or something you are (biometrics). But none of those systems can secure you against someone who walks away and lets another person sit down at the keyboard, or a computer that’s infected with a Trojan…..

Standard testing doesn’t work online, because the tester can’t be sure that the test taker doesn’t have his book open, or a friend standing over his shoulder helping him. The solution in both cases is a proctor, of course, but that’s not always practical and obviates the benefits of internet testing.”

Bring back the humans! Look, I’m a big fan of technological innovation when it both creates efficiencies (higher productivity, lower costs) AND it does the job as well or better than a person could. Like Excel or email, for example. But too often we hand over the reigns to the bots because they’re way cheaper and only a little worse than the staffers who used to do the job. Think of that automated voice system (Simon?) you talk to when you call United’s reservation line: It’s pretty good when you need find your exact departure time, but it’s terrible if you’re trying to book a trip to New York with a stop-over in Denver to drop your kids with their grandparents. Advertising — especially when the goals are brand-oriented instead of transactional — isn’t ready for a fully automated system.