Click Fraud: Tail Between the legs

Adsence, Google’s arm of making money by putting advertisements on blogs, has come under fire from advertisers, yet again. Adsence, is based on the simple, ‘pay per click’ model: advertisers pay the blogger, only if someone clicks on an add placed by them on the blogger’s site. This revenue model has become especially popular, because it guarantees that a consumer has reacted to the advertisement, such a guarantee of ‘eye balls’ or possible consumer attention, is not possible on other forms of media, such as TV, radio or newspaper.

However there is a flaw in the system. The click by a possible consumer, generates revenue for the blogger, but it does not guarantee that the consumer will buy something form the advertiser. This is what has led to click fraud, the blogger (his/her friend, or a computer program) clicks advertisements on his own blog, generating revenue for himself, but no business for the advertiser. Also, certain advertisers place Adsence adds by paying Google a certain deposit amount. Each time someone clicks on their advertisement, a small part of the amount is deducted by google. Thus click fraud, can be done by repeatedly clicking on a competitors add, thus exhausting his deposit with Google. It’s obvious, why advertisers are angry: no one wants to pay for an advertisement that does not increase revenue.

The advertisers are now demanding that they are given information on the clicks on their ads. Google has announced that it will refund advertisers who can prove that their ads were ‘fraud’ clicked. Yet, if Google decides to share click information with advertisers, (Technocrati, a blog directory has already started such a process), the concept behind Adsence may take a beating. This is because; advertisers will only place ads on blogs that generate enough traffic to support their advertisement investment. The result, blogs that deal with ‘non mainstream’ or ‘non popular’ subjects will fall out of favour with advertisers. Revenue generated by blogging will get concentrated in the hands of the remaining mainstream blogs, those dealing with other popular media, such as popular music, books etc. Thus, it is probable (not just possible) that very soon, blogging will also be forced to adhere to market trends, that have already tamed other media.

So, what is the real issue? Adsence was supposed to make revenue from many blogs that catered to niche audiences (long tail audiences) and not a few blogs that catered to the ‘lowest common denominator’ content. The release of advertising click data will ensure that diverse blogs, with uncommon topics of interest, become bottled into already trusted interest areas: more blogging on what celebrities were wearing, instead of ‘hard’ matter.

A new model, ‘pay per purchase’ has been devised, it will generate revenue for the blogger only if the consumer buys the advertiser’s ware after clicking on the advertisement placed on the blog. However this model will not be profitable for majority of bloggers. Also, why must bloggers loose out, if the consumer does not buy? After all TV channels do not refund the advertiser’s money, if their ad campaign does not increase revenue for their company. Unless a new model, which takes the advertisers and the blogger’s concerns, is developed, the first war between Long Tail and conventional advertising will continue.

Link: The Biz of Coding

The Long Tail: Making Sence of Adsence

Ever searched for a particular CD, but realised that no music store carried it? Ever looked for that particular author, but could some how, never find that book he wrote? Ever thought why certain news stands don’t carry the magazines you like? Ever wondered why you never get that particular software, the shops never sold it? It’s not uncommon that during your daily sojourns through market places, the commodity that you want is missing from shelves and ‘popular’ thought.
That’s exactly what Chris Anderson, calls the ‘the tyranny of lowest- cost- denominator fare’. In the of world retailing, a particular product can survive on shelves only if, the revenue generated by selling of the product, can pay for the shelf space. Media, whether its text based, acoustic or visual, suffers the most from this effect. As a result, a theatre shows a movie only if there are approximately 1500 people willing to watch it in a two week span, a CD is available only if two copies of it are sold in a month. As consequence, products that cannot make the required revenue fade away from selves. The consumer is forced to buy products that are available, not the products that he or she would ideally like to purchase.
This is where ‘long tail’ steps in. Purchasing, follows a very common statistical phenomenon, a few ‘titles’ (music, books or software) sell a lot, while a large number of ‘titles’ are rarely bought. This can be seen from the graph, where the red area, represents the titles that are purchased the most, while the trailing yellow part of the graph show the titles that are rarely bought. This trailing part of the graph is called ‘the Long Tail’. In the average physical model of retailing, the store will only carry products that lie in the darker area of the graph, as more people will buy those products and hence the revenue generated through their sales will be able to pay for the shelf space occupied by them.
In a physical store, area is limited; hence the shelf space is limited. The shelves will then be filled by products that are ‘popular’ (or lowest-common – denominator). But what if the self space is made limitless? In that case, the shop will be able to carry almost every title that has ever been released. It can potentially carry ‘popular’ products and ‘niche’ products, that is, products that you want but are not generally available. As a result the shop will be able to cater to all sorts of personal choices and likings. Anderson postulates that, if every one is able to get access to the title he or she wants, then, the number of titles sold in the ‘long tail’, could be more than the number of ‘popular’ title sales.
This reverses the traditional business model, where what sells is sold, instead everything can be sold now. But where can we get ‘unlimited’ shelf space? Unlike traditional shops, the internet does not have any constraint on the ‘shelf space’, there are no physical shelves. All the online retailing sites are an example of this. The site carries titles that are available, the buyer, just has to search and click to get what he wants. The title is physically kept in a warehouse, where the entire area is used for storage. Once the consumer has made his choice and paid through his credit card, then the title is sent to him or her.
This model is still constrained by the warehouse space and till now is being used for physical commodities, like paper backs and CDs. For mp3 music or ebooks, the situation becomes even simpler; the original file is stored on a server from which a copy is sent to the buyer. Server space can hold lot more data (music, movies etc) than a physical shop can. Thus a consumer can get any title he or she is looking for.
Yet one major problem still remains: how do you inform the user that the title that he wants, or one that he would like, is available on a particular site? This what computer programs, like ‘Adsence’, do. Every retail site has a list of titles that is generated once the consumer has selected the ‘title’ he or she wants. This list contains titles ( usually ‘people who searched for the title user has chosen, also chose this’ or simply, ‘other titles’) that the site has, which could interest the buyer. This model of retailing is what has skyrocketed the sales of websites like amazon.com (books) and rhapsody.com (music).As Anderson says “the cultural benefit of all this is much more diversity, reversing the blanding effects of a century of distribution scarcity, and the tyranny of the hit”. Welcome to an era free from market’s dictates of what’s ‘popular’ and available and what’s not.
Link: The Long Tail
Link: Chris Anderson

e-Learning: Adapting to Indian infrastructre constraints

The internet changed information distribution; vast amounts of data could now flow through the digital veins of the internet to the beating heart of India. Paper transformed to silicon hard disk files and plastic cards; zeros and ones now represented your identity and your buying power. Computers moved from the controlled environment of corporate laboratories to the comfort of personal bedrooms. News changed, the websites pumped you with information, updated every second, all the time. Stock markets allowed you to trade from home.

Finally class rooms were transformed to fit on your 15inch screen. The teacher now sits thousands of miles away from you, yet he teaches you the MBA course in your flat. Welcome to world of eLearning: the classroom that is never shut, the school that you don’t have to walk to.

Yet the under neon glare of advertising and the ‘shining’ economy, the promise of education through the IT revolution has failed to materialise. As Dr. V. Nagarajan, ex-head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Madras, and the current head of Radius consultancy, an eLearning service providing company, says “Currently in India, the eLearning sites do not have a comprehensive approach to fulfil learning needs and style. As a result there is very little peer to peer communication and usually only one teacher is present on the site. This approach does not hold the user’s attention and thus is not effective”.

“Main broadband connections are controlled by many players who invest only in urban areas because it is more profitable. For eLearning to be effective it must be taken to rural areas” he adds. For eLearning to move away from urban areas to rural areas, three major concerns need to be addressed: India has very low PC density, the bandwidth needs to be increased and the local language must be used as medium of instruction.

To address these concerns a model called ‘adaptive learning’ is being adopted in the eLearning realm. In adaptive learning the main learning material is stored physically on CD ROMS, and a slow internet connection can be used as medium where students can ask their doubts and can give exams. Unlike eLearning where the user need to be connected to the internet all the time, in adaptive learning the user need to go online only under certain conditions. Since internet is not always required, many students can use the same machine at different times. “This model can be used in rural areas, as it does not require fast connections and the data can be physically sent” says Dr. Nagaraj.

Adaptive learning also solves language problem by using Unicode, an industry standard which allows data to be sent and manipulated in various local languages. Software like ‘Moodle’ is also being used to convert English text into Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalem, Gujrati, Hindi etc. Both these approaches help in converting the text into a form that the user can understand. Thus it removes the need to know English as a prerequisite to using the internet as a learning tool.

Thus although through adaptive learning will be able to reach more people, Dr Nagaraj does not feel that it will replace class rooms. “eLearning and adaptive learning, both can be used as a supportive tool, it can assist the teacher in making understanding of a subject more comprehensive, it cant replace the teacher. The technology can help in content generation and delivery, it can’t by itself teach.”As new players entering the realm of eLearning are realising, the IT revolution can only be effectively used only if it moves away from the confines of cities and moves to the villages, where greater knowledge dissemination is required. With adaptive learning, the IT ‘boom’ may finally reach the heart of India.The internet changed information distribution; vast amounts of data could now flow through the digital veins of the internet to the beating heart of India. Paper transformed to silicon hard disk files and plastic cards; zeros and ones now represented your identity and your buying power. Computers moved from the controlled environment of corporate laboratories to the comfort of personal bedrooms. News changed, the websites pumped you with information, updated every second, all the time. Stock markets allowed you to trade from home.

Finally class rooms were transformed to fit on your 15inch screen. The teacher now sits thousands of miles away from you, yet he teaches you the MBA course in your flat. Welcome to world of eLearning: the classroom that is never shut, the school that you don’t have to walk to.

Yet the under neon glare of advertising and the ‘shining’ economy, the promise of education through the IT revolution has failed to materialise. As Dr. V. Nagarajan, ex-head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education, University of Madras, and the current head of Radius consultancy, an eLearning service providing company, says “Currently in India, the eLearning sites do not have a comprehensive approach to fulfil learning needs and style. As a result there is very little peer to peer communication and usually only one teacher is present on the site. This approach does not hold the user’s attention and thus is not effective”.

“Main broadband connections are controlled by many players who invest only in urban areas because it is more profitable. For eLearning to be effective it must be taken to rural areas” he adds. For eLearning to move away from urban areas to rural areas, three major concerns need to be addressed: India has very low PC density, the bandwidth needs to be increased and the local language must be used as medium of instruction.

To address these concerns a model called ‘adaptive learning’ is being adopted in the eLearning realm. In adaptive learning the main learning material is stored physically on CD ROMS, and a slow internet connection can be used as medium where students can ask their doubts and can give exams. Unlike eLearning where the user need to be connected to the internet all the time, in adaptive learning the user need to go online only under certain conditions. Since internet is not always required, many students can use the same machine at different times. “This model can be used in rural areas, as it does not require fast connections and the data can be physically sent” says Dr. Nagaraj.

Adaptive learning also solves language problem by using Unicode, an industry standard which allows data to be sent and manipulated in various local languages. Software like ‘Moodle’ is also being used to convert English text into Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalem, Gujrati, Hindi etc. Both these approaches help in converting the text into a form that the user can understand. Thus it removes the need to know English as a prerequisite to using the internet as a learning tool.

Thus although through adaptive learning will be able to reach more people, Dr Nagaraj does not feel that it will replace class rooms. “eLearning and adaptive learning, both can be used as a supportive tool, it can assist the teacher in making understanding of a subject more comprehensive, it cant replace the teacher. The technology can help in content generation and delivery, it can’t by itself teach.”As new players entering the realm of eLearning are realising, the IT revolution can only be effectively used only if it moves away from the confines of cities and moves to the villages, where greater knowledge dissemination is required. With adaptive learning, the IT ‘boom’ may finally reach the heart of India.

Link: Radius consultancy
Link: Dr.V.Nagarajan
Link: the learned man

Biopiracy: umbilical cord blood banking in India

Lifecell a company dealing with stem cell banking announced the launch of a ‘public banking’ of blood taken from umbilical cords. The company has been running a ‘private bank’ of stem cells for the past two years. In ‘private banking’, the parents of a child can choose to store the umbilical blood during delivery of the child. The blood is then stored in a bank, from which it can be retrieved, to treat various blood based disorders that the child may develop during the course of his lifetime.

In the proposed, ‘public banking’, the company plans to collect blood from donated umbilical cords, to form a bank. From this blood, stem cells will be extracted and categorised. Anybody in need of a particular category of stem cells for medical procedures can then contact the bank and get those cells for a fee.

Even though the company claims that it can treat up to ‘75’ disorders, the idea of stem cell banking it self is being questioned by the international medical community. According to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, UK, stem cell based procedures can only be used in very specific cases which deal with particular genetic blood conditions that are know to be passed through generations in certain families (called ‘high-risk families’), they cannot be used for all disorders that company claims. Also the Royal College recommends that ‘there is still insufficient evidence to recommend directed commercial cord blood collection and stem-cell storage in low-risk families’. In the Indian scenario, the Indian Council of Medical Research (IMRC) has still not released any guidelines for stem cell banking or procedures based on it. Dr. Puneet Bedi, consultant pregnancy and foetal medicine, with 20 years experience dealing with families with genetic disorders such as like thalassimia and haemophilia, says “people are being told that diabetes and hypertension can be cured through this, though there is no scientific basis for it. Even for families with genetic disorders the quality and quantity of stem cell recovered is rarely clinically useful. Private blood banks have been here for over 2 years, they have no technical skill to preserve cells and the procedures are unproven.”

Apart from the scientific validity of umbilical blood banking and procedures based on it, there are also legal problems. As of now, the law does not recognise the ownership of the umbilical cord; it can be argued that it belongs to the mother or the child. Also the law does not define the liability of the storage bank in case the stem cells get damaged during storage. There are also ethical questions, as improper or ill timed umbilical cord blood removal can jeopardise the mother and child’s health.

Until guidelines from the IMRC are released, it is still advisable to properly understand the implications of umbilical cord blood based stem cell procedures before a donation is made. Meanwhile, a similar process is already in practice in the US, the catch however, is that the cost of stem cells there is up to $18,000, a price which very few Indians can pay. To this, Sumit Chaturvedi, manager marketing, comments “we plan to keep the cost nominal so that every body can afford this service”. As of now Lifecell has not disclosed the price.
Link:See what the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has to say
Link: check LifeCell site

GM crops: seeds of contention

Genetically modified (GM) crops, the technological-agricultural marvel, is prophesized to rid the world of hunger, malnutrition and starvation. Yet in spite the promises of better future, the uprooting of GM paddy from fields near Ramanathapuram by activists and farmers, only points to fact that under the saintly guise lies a darker facet of GM foods. The GM crops and their technology, itself has created a large number of controversies: ranging from those of ecology to the global economy. In India a large part of the population is still dependent on agriculture for survival, as result the GM crops pose a particularly murky scenario here.

The GM crops developed till now, have been created with two basic goals in mind, firstly to increase production output and secondly to provide more nutrition for the consumer. Yet it has failed to deliver on both counts. The genetic engineering used in these crops has led to change in soil fertility and the creation of ‘super weeds’ which threaten to destroy entire fields of crop. Also, most of these GM crops can be grown through seeds that are ‘produced’ by various agri-tech companies, these seeds have to bought every sowing season, because the ‘terminator’ technology used in these crops renders the seeds produced by the crops infertile. However, what even more startling is the fact that, even the varieties that have been augmented to provide more nutrients, especially vitamin A, require that the consumer to eat about 12 pounds of rice to meet the daily nutrient requirement.

Taking the slight benefits of better resistance to crop diseases into consideration, why has GM crop become so important? The answer to this lies in the fact that a large number of conglomerates have spent millions of dollars on developing these GM crops. With the intellectual property rights regimes of the WTO being implemented in India, these companies have a lot to gain from the large agriculture sector of our country, all they have to do is to introduce their seeds into the market. With the government’s current foreign investment wooing spree, it is not surprising that agriculture minister has called the protest at Ramanathapuram, “Trying to block technology, you are trying to ruin agriculture in Tamil Nadu.” Maybe the Secretary should look at the effects of the last ‘great’ technological jump in agriculture, the Green Revolution, and its after effects(loss in soil chemistry, loss in production, loss of biodiversity, loss of water resources to name a few), before prescribing a corporate cure that is more dangerous than ills of our agriculture sector itself.
Link: see the newspaper report on 13/11/06
Link: Grain site

Attack of the clones- India gets youtubed

The acquisition of video sharing platform, youtube.com, by Google for $1.65 billion, suddenly turned everybody’s attention to the possibility that even in India people could make and share videos. Soon Indian clones of youtube.com like meravideo.com and apnatube.com started mushrooming on the internet. Then, meravideo.com’s creator, Kanwaldeep Kalsi, announced that various parties were willing to finance him $1.5 million for the growth of his site. Video sharing had arrived in India.

But true video sharing is still only a possibility of the future. With the low broadband penetration and slow internet speeds in India, the average downloading speed is around 30kbps and uploading speed is only 15kbps, as a result, an average sized video takes about an hour upload. This may change, as Kiruba Shankar, an eminent blogger, says “2007 has been declared the ‘year of broadband’ by the Communication Ministry, if broadband speeds improve and costs fall, then true video sharing may become possible”.

Even now meravideo.com is awash with copy-written content, the same sort of content that landed the ‘original’ youtube.com in a sea of lawsuits. The USP of meravideo.com-- user generated content-- is clearly not working. But as Shankar says “If copy-written content is removed, the site will have very little content left. It will get a blind eye from the consumers”. Though Kalsi says that the content is filtered, the content can only be filtered when new material is uploaded, so it’s not surprising that the most shared video on meravideo.com is a semi-pornographic clip.

The idea that a serious amateur film maker would put his movie on an India centric site is absurd, as such site would cater to a limited audience whereas a youtube.com would provide a wider audience. “Such a site can only be used when either you want India specific content or content in a regional language” adds Shankar.

Yet venture capitalists are willing to invest in video sharing platforms, because they provide a very efficient method of advertising. For a fraction of a cost, advertisers will be able to insert a short promotional film at the end of the user generated video on meravideo.com. Also like youtube.com, people expect that Indian movie houses will soon start advertising on these sites and may eventually buy content from them. Following the trajectory of earlier video sharing sites, meratube.com could evolve into a site where people can watch non mainstream, niche movies.

As Shanker says, “Video is the way to go, it is more colourful, it does not have the limitations of audio or printed text”. People also view video sharing as a natural evolution of expression on the internet. “first came text blogging, then audio podcasts, video is next” he adds.

The thought of video creation and sharing does open new avenues of interaction and, if possible, alternative revenue generation methods for budding movie makers, but till bandwidths and internet speed in India improve, the attack of the clones will barely raise an alarm.
Link: see the clone
Link: Kiruba Shankar