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Seth Godin Advocates Click Fraud

August 22, 2008 by Shawn Collins

Seth Godin posted a message to his blog today, “Ads are the new online tip jar,” where he encourages site visitors to click on ads when they enjoy content on a site.

If every time you read a blog post or bit of online content you enjoyed you clicked on an ad to say thanks, the economics of the web would change immediately. You don’t have to buy anything (though it’s fine if you do). You just have to honor the writer by giving them a click.

That’s all fine and good, except that it screws the advertisers who end up paying for empty clicks and get a poor ROI.

Ultimately, those advertisers get priced out of PPC advertising and there is less demand to run ads on the sites with great content that are getting all the thank you clicks.

Yes, “the economics of the web would change immediately,” as Godin states. We’d go from a system that works to one where everybody would lose.

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