Miva Response to PPC Click Fraud Story

After my blog post “A True 2nd Tier PPC Click Fraud Story” last week did I get contacted by Miva and had some email conversation and a phone call will them. I offered them to respond to the items stated in my post and also to the comments made by readers of Search Engine Journal. They accepted the offer and provided me with a statement I am posting on their behalf.

 

Comments for this post are disabled as per Miva’s request. This is not to be understood as that they don’t want your feedback. The people at Miva I talked to did admit that blogging is something they are not too familar and comfortable with. The following question in one of their emails shall be the proof of this fact: “Would that date coincide with your posting deadlines?”. Hehe.. sorry Tiffany, I could not resist 😉

 

Fair enough, but they included a phone number and email you are free to use to contact Miva with any questions, comments and concerns regarding my previous post and their statement.
Here it goes:

 

Mr. Cumbrowski,

 

I wanted to reach out to you in regards to an email you sent on October 24th 2006. I would like to convey my sincerest apologies for not responding to you earlier. We appreciate you reaching out to us prior to posting your blog, as we too believe that MIVA’s position does stand out amongst the 2nd tier engines. We appreciate your feedback and value your ongoing cooperation and commitment to MIVA.

 

I can assure you that MIVA’s focus is on delivering ROI for our advertisers. Ultimately we see our job as conversion and ROI management, and we work with our advertisers to ensure we are doing a good job of that. We are very aware that traffic which works for one advertiser many not work for another and we will never knowingly deliver a click to an advertiser that we know won’t work for them. If traffic from a particular publisher is not working for a particular advertiser, we will ensure their Ad does not appear on that site. We recognize that each scenario is unique and will review each separately and act accordingly.

 

MIVA’s pro-active traffic measures

 

To give you some insight into the pro-active measures we have in place to ensure the validity of click-throughs, we have proprietary automated screening applications that are backed by a rigorous and methodical human-screening process – we have a dedicated Traffic Analysis Team – that proactively investigates and takes action to resolve any irregularities in traffic patterns. Understandably we do not disclose all of our security measures (as that would play in to the hands of any violators) yet we would like to give you a sense of what they include:

– Unique Search ID. A unique number is created for every search, which is used to identify the search per user. This ID is encrypted and passed through when the user clicks on a paid result. All subsequent clicks using this ID are filtered out, and our advertisers will not be charged more than once in a specific period of time.

– Spiders. MIVA will not record click-throughs from known spider IP addresses. This list is continually updated as new robots and spiders are detected.

– User Detail Tracking. Information such as IP addresses and user agent are stored in case of fraudulent activity.

– Trend Analysis. Each distribution partner’s traffic is compared to their historical data, and any abnormal activity is investigated.

– IP address. MIVA does not limit traffic to the IP address of the user as there are a large number of users that connect to the internet using Proxy server gateways.

 

MIVA issues refunds if appropriate

 

MIVA will not tolerate fraudulent behavior of any kind. We will thoroughly investigate any suspected fraudulent activity and if warranted, promptly remove our network feed from the offending partner and/or their sub-affiliates. Equally, we will thoroughly investigate any advertiser traffic concerns, and take the necessary action to resolve any issues, including, as you know, issuing a refund if appropriate.

 

MIVA’s commitment to combating click-fraud

 

As we know ‘click-fraud’ is unfortunately an industry-wide issue. MIVA is dedicated to addressing this issue at the industry and we are active participants of the IAB’s Taskforce on click-fraud.

 

MIVA’s publisher policy

 

We check and approve placement of our ads on our partners’ sites and properties before we allow them to go live in MIVA’s ad network. The specific processes we use here are confidential however we are aware that some publishers may try set up accounts under a new name and we take specific steps to combat it.

 

I am unable to share with you in-depth details about any of our publishers as this would violate our agreements with them.

 

Again, thank you for reaching out to us on this matter, your feedback is very important to us and we value your concerns.

 

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We can be reached by phone, toll free on (888) 648-2237 (1-888-MIVA-ADS) or by email at adsupport.us@miva.com

 

Best wishes
The MIVA Team

As I stated above, comments for this post are disabled.

 

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving Holidays,
Carsten Cumbrowski
Learn more about Carsten Cumbrowski and his professional background. See his contact information and contact form.