back to article US Supremes won't halt class-action legal battle against Google Adwords

Google has failed to convince the US Supreme Court to derail a long-running ad-fraud class-action lawsuit. Proceedings will therefore continue against the advertising goliath. Look under "certiorari denied" in Monday's Supreme Court listings [PDF] and you'll find Google, Inc. v. Pulaski & Middleman, et al, meaning the supremes …

  1. AndyS

    Aren't adverts normally tracked (and charged?) by number of impressions and/or click-throughs?

    If it was shown on a 404 or parked domain which nobody ever saw, would that not lead to a very low impression or click-through rate?

    Assuming the impression/click-through rate was OK, does that not imply that it doesn't really matter what page the ad was shown on?

    I suspect I'm missing the point, as the courts have clearly decided there is merit in the case.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Sounds right to me

      Does seem odd - you have a choice of 2 pricing models - clicks or impressions. Might be an issue on parked domains if there was some sort of holiding page. Not sure how Google would detect that though.

      I found the content network advertising a complete waste of money - £2 per click from a sudoku website when I'm advertising business services. Most of the clicks were probably accidental too.

      Gave up with the whole of adwords, now just focus on improving search performance, but that's a moving target.

    2. Donn Bly

      Since advertisers were charged by click, not by impression, the bottom line is that they suffered no MONETARY loss by having their ads displayed on low-traffic or "junk" pages. They only paid when someone actually clicked on their ad.

      Loss by having their brand diluted because their ads were showing up on junk pages? Maybe. However, the fact that the ads were displayed on such sites was fully known and disclosed at the time and the advertisers chose to advertise via the network anyway.

      This is just another case of someone trying to abuse the court system to raid the deep pockets for another, and they don't come much deeper than Google.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Parked domains? Pointless?

    Hmm... there are parked domains and parked domains.

    Let's suppose just for a second that TrumpIsAnIdiot.com is parked. That is a prime advertising spot.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Parked domains? Pointless?

      Why would anyone go there? That would be like visiting "wateriswet.com".... mind you we're talking about a country which elected Ronald Regan.

  3. The First Dave

    And surely the click-through rate from a 404 page is going to be pretty good - what else are you going to do?

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