Now get rewarded for Spamming!

The blogosphere is now speculating a new form of ad network that Google is coming up with. This is after a series of patents have been filed by Google in that direction. The key points to note in the new patents filed are:

User-Distributed-Search: From what I infer from the patent statements, Google provides an interface through which you may input the links that are useful to you in a particular context and Google shall determine the corresponding search query that shall provide all the links that you provide as the search result. This shall also come with advertisements. You may use this interface to email your links, post it on your blog or forums.

User-Distributed-Advertisements: This one looks the more evil of the patents. According to Google, users may individually select which ads are to be shown alongside an email message or a blog post. This will make ads closest to the actual content.

The methodology as such is not innovative. This is how referrals and affiliate links work. But it is the way that the advertiser is charged that makes it debatable. The UDA ads are not charged with the traditional CPC/CPM charges. There shall be an initial automatic arbitration that shall decide how much the advertiser should pay, but as and when the ads are being served, depending on how the ad is served (whether served alone or in combination with other ads), the prices are likely to change.

Spam Proliferation:

With UDA, It is not just the bloggers who are now making money. Every internet user is now in a position to make money out from emailing. Introduction of UDA will see a spurt in the bulk-emails and chain-mails. Imagine a group of hundred made specifically to send and receive mail-with-ads. Unlike the conventional Adsense ads, Google cannot ban users who it sees have a pattern of clicks from same users/IPs. This is because such a ban will defeat the very fundamental under which this ad-network is built, a friend-to-friend ad network. Even a genuine user of this ad network can expect clicks from only the same people he normally emails. So, detecting a spammer is all the more difficult.

Next time you get an email forward that ends with, ‘Each click on the adjacent ad will help one starving child..’; don’t forget to reward the spammer.