The background for my comment: I've been peripherally involved with SEO for a couple of years now, and although I cherish my white-as-the-driven-snow reputation I know some folks socially who, well, don't. It's an open secret that a huge amount of the internet advertising market is a hive of scum and villainy. We often refer to it as PPC, which in this context means "porn, pills, casino", although there are other industries which have varying levels of sketchiness associated with them -- Make Money Online, government grant scams, ringtones and other rebilling fraud, etc etc etc.
Google has, since the inception of AdWords, made billions of dollars off of these. No joke.
Now, the government is often slow on the uptake, but they're not unaware of this. So here's a conversation which has virtually certainly taken place before:
Government: I see you're advertising X.
Google: We are?
Government: See here.
Google: Oh we are.
Government: You can't advertise X.
Google: We'll get right on that.
12 months pass
Government: You're still advertising X. Did you "get on it?"
Google: Oh yeah, we put some new heuristics in place.
Government: What does a heuristic mean?
Google: The computers guess whether that text means X and if it does, we don't advertise it.
Government: The heuristics seem to be missing quite a bit of X.
Google: Yeah, that happens.
Government: What do you mean "that happens"?
Google: No heuristic is 100% perfect.
Government: OK then, you need to have a human review these to make sure they aren't X or Y or Z.
Google: We don't do that.
Government: ... excuse me?
Google: We prefer scalable methods to manage our advertising programs. After all, there are only about ten thousand of us and we only make tens of billions of dollars with 35% margins.
Government: ... what?
Google: So you see, we won't manually review ads.
Government: This account, how much money has it spent on your ads while not being manually reviewed?
Google: SQL query About a hundred thousand dollars.
Government: Your compliance is not optional. Do you know who we are?
Google: Do you know who we are?
Government: You might think that was a cunning retort but, well, not really.
Edit for P.S.
Speaking of which, take a look at Aaron Wall's screenshot of an AdSense interface which allows you to opt out of having various seedy industries on your website.
The government probably had to communicate with Google via an impersonal form that resulted in a form response that didn't address the problem in any way and required filling out the form every single day for 2 weeks until giving up in frustration, then ultimately getting an email from an engineer 7 weeks later letting you know the problem has been solved.
It's sort of disappointing to see the company that has by far the highest standards for ads be the one targeted. There are still so many terrible and scammy ads and ad networks out there, that making an example of Google just because they're the biggest seems too bad.
Also, wow, that's a lot of money. Does anyone know where money generated by lawsuits and fines goes?
How is that relevant? The government is not obligated to make a case against all offenders simultaneously. It has severely restricted resources for bringing major cases, and will bring them in the order that makes the most sense to the DoJ.
The gov't statement makes it sounds like the "rogue illegal online pharmacies" were mostly just Canadian pharmacies? It's ridiculous how the US gov't treats Canadian-approved pharmaceuticals in general; it's oligopoly protection for US big pharma.
The argument for the oligopoly protection goes that, without that protection, the pharma companies would not have invented the drugs in the first place because their ROI would be insufficient without the government-protected price premium. IOW, the Canadian pharmacies can offer so cheaply because they copy from the original inventors rather than doing the expensive research themselves. To what extent the pharma inventors truly need the protection versus to what extent pharmaceutical policing is cartel profit-taking is an open question, but it's worth keeping both points of view in mind.
Can someone explain exactly where this money will go?
Will it go to states, the federal budget, some specific department in the government? Is there a particular person who determines how this $500 million gets spent?
I've seen companies get fined before but its never explained what happens to the money post-fine.
When a company settles with a government (US/EU/etc) where does the money go? Is it just up to the government to spend it, or is it distributed to the plaintiffs or something else entirely?
Why do U.S. laws protect the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of citizens? -- Isn't this the much more interesting question? Does it actually surprise anyone that, in areas where there are big market opportunities, you will find more scams on average.
Other than a supposed incentive for domestic pharma to innovate, is there another reason anyone can point to for classifying Canadian pharmacies as illegal? Personally, I can imagine a scenario where investment in drug research would actually increase if the industry wasn't afforded so much protection by federal law.
Wall's screenshot suggests that for every dollar ad networks earn on pharmaceutical ads, they earn many more dollars on predatory "get rich quick" ads.
After having spent a lot of time researching autism related topics on the web, I have become very sceptical of anything that is marketed through Google Ads.
For several years, if not still, the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue have had Google Ads proclaiming that “autism is treatable.” Jenny McCarthy, a TV entertainer who has been involved with Generetion Rescue, reportedly heard of the movement through Google Ads.
They got off too easy. It's easily billions they earned through this methods. Facebook is the same story. Many of their ad dollars are from scams, and shady schemes, not legitimate businesses. I mean... spending advertising dollars to advertise something pure on a social network where people go to talk with friends and ignore ads..... did you really think it would have a good ROI? it's rare. People often have to resort to making things as shady as possible to increase the ROI and make their advertising dollars worth it.
I can't put what I want to stay in clear words, but you need to be shady in order to make ludicrous money. Examples: Wall Street, casinos, etc. If you want to pure good, you're gonna have to give up some profit to do so.
I know where you're going with this and agree with what you're saying.
I'm just waiting for Google or Facebook employees to chime in on this discussion. They love to talk about the great things they're working on, such as building "better" advertising, but never talk about the content of these ads.
Having run targeted PPC campaigns on Facebook before, I can report back that the ROAS/ROI is typically not very good at all.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
I'm joking, but only a wee bit.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
The background for my comment: I've been peripherally involved with SEO for a couple of years now, and although I cherish my white-as-the-driven-snow reputation I know some folks socially who, well, don't. It's an open secret that a huge amount of the internet advertising market is a hive of scum and villainy. We often refer to it as PPC, which in this context means "porn, pills, casino", although there are other industries which have varying levels of sketchiness associated with them -- Make Money Online, government grant scams, ringtones and other rebilling fraud, etc etc etc.
Google has, since the inception of AdWords, made billions of dollars off of these. No joke.
Now, the government is often slow on the uptake, but they're not unaware of this. So here's a conversation which has virtually certainly taken place before:
Government: I see you're advertising X.
Google: We are?
Government: See here.
Google: Oh we are.
Government: You can't advertise X.
Google: We'll get right on that.
12 months pass
Government: You're still advertising X. Did you "get on it?"
Google: Oh yeah, we put some new heuristics in place.
Government: What does a heuristic mean?
Google: The computers guess whether that text means X and if it does, we don't advertise it.
Government: The heuristics seem to be missing quite a bit of X.
Google: Yeah, that happens.
Government: What do you mean "that happens"?
Google: No heuristic is 100% perfect.
Government: OK then, you need to have a human review these to make sure they aren't X or Y or Z.
Google: We don't do that.
Government: ... excuse me?
Google: We prefer scalable methods to manage our advertising programs. After all, there are only about ten thousand of us and we only make tens of billions of dollars with 35% margins.
Government: ... what?
Google: So you see, we won't manually review ads.
Government: This account, how much money has it spent on your ads while not being manually reviewed?
Google: SQL query About a hundred thousand dollars.
Government: Your compliance is not optional. Do you know who we are?
Google: Do you know who we are?
Government: You might think that was a cunning retort but, well, not really.
Edit for P.S.
Speaking of which, take a look at Aaron Wall's screenshot of an AdSense interface which allows you to opt out of having various seedy industries on your website.
http://www.seobook.com/how-make-easy-money-google
[+] [-] bane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robfig|14 years ago|reply
Also, wow, that's a lot of money. Does anyone know where money generated by lawsuits and fines goes?
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blub|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpadkins|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chubot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RealGeek|14 years ago|reply
I know of a few companies that sold $100 million worth of crap through Google adwords every month. There are at least a few hundred such companies.
Do the math to figure out how much Google made out of this :)
[+] [-] aklein|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T-hawk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonch|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DevX101|14 years ago|reply
Will it go to states, the federal budget, some specific department in the government? Is there a particular person who determines how this $500 million gets spent?
I've seen companies get fined before but its never explained what happens to the money post-fine.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psychotik|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelhaus|14 years ago|reply
Other than a supposed incentive for domestic pharma to innovate, is there another reason anyone can point to for classifying Canadian pharmacies as illegal? Personally, I can imagine a scenario where investment in drug research would actually increase if the industry wasn't afforded so much protection by federal law.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] IvarTJ|14 years ago|reply
For several years, if not still, the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue have had Google Ads proclaiming that “autism is treatable.” Jenny McCarthy, a TV entertainer who has been involved with Generetion Rescue, reportedly heard of the movement through Google Ads.
[+] [-] Hisoka|14 years ago|reply
I can't put what I want to stay in clear words, but you need to be shady in order to make ludicrous money. Examples: Wall Street, casinos, etc. If you want to pure good, you're gonna have to give up some profit to do so.
[+] [-] clobber|14 years ago|reply
I'm just waiting for Google or Facebook employees to chime in on this discussion. They love to talk about the great things they're working on, such as building "better" advertising, but never talk about the content of these ads.
Having run targeted PPC campaigns on Facebook before, I can report back that the ROAS/ROI is typically not very good at all.