What Stats Do Parking Companies Shave?

[tnitty]

One of the the parking companies I've tried shows an average of 25% fewer visitors than the others. It begs the question: Do parking companies take their cut by reducing the number of visitors they say you get or do they reduce the revenue per click (i.e., they say you get 15 cents per click, but it's really 20) or do they slice off the number of clicks (they say you got 20 clicks, but really you got 25) ... or some combination?

None of the companies I've ever used is transparent. They don't say, "Your domains earned $X and we're taking our Y% cut, so your net payout is $Z dollars." They just act like you earned $Z dollars (based on so many visitors, clicks, etc.) and make it seem like you're getting everything, which I find misleading. And they don't tell you where they shaved off their cut.

I understand parking co's deserve to make a profit, but it would be nice if there was some transparancy and honesty as to how they're doing it.

So is there a typical stat they shave?

Thanks

 

[malibumobile]

They typically take a % rev share back. It can range from 5%-40% depending on your volume. Also, the upstream advertising partner may have a higher or lower rev share than other parking companies. Ie. sedo may have a 80% rev share with google where as namedrive may have a 75% rev share. This difference gets passed along, as you can imagine.

 

[matt_bodis]

I don't think you understand.

Where is the logic when parking companies such as RevenueDirect, Sedo, Bodis.com, etc would take a % of the revenue by not reporting it? Really, where is the logic? I can't speak for the other companies, but I'll speak for Bodis.com. There would be no point in doing that just for the purpose of profiting. It would make more sense to report everything, but at the same time give less.

Psychologically, would you rather see your domain make $0.00 and then just have spikes here and there, or would you rather park with a company where you see a domain make revenue every day, but less than the spikes? Probably the revenue every day.

Anyway, the reason some parking companies report less clicks / or less visitors than others usually comes down to fraud. One company may have fraud filters at the visitor level, which is ideally the right thing to do. And will also soon appear for Bodis.com. I know a few that have good ones at this level -> DomainSponsor. Also, it can be how you count visitors, do they track visitors by cookies, ip addresses, ip ranges, ip address + user agent? Ex: RevenueDirect.

Same thing with the clicks. Every company has different software to tell which clicks to allow and which to not allow. But usually, it is not because they want to profit.

 

[tnitty]

Thanks to both of you for responding, but I'm not sure either of you answered my question. But maybe I'm not understanding...

Let me give a hypothetical example:

A typical parking company might say I got 100 visitors and 30 clicks with an average of 10 cents per click. So I earned $3 this month [30 (x) ten cents].

So they pay me $3 at the end of the month. But obviously they earned some money off me (except for Bodis, that pays/paid out 100%). So my domain(s) earned more than $3 in reality -- from 5% to 40% more, according to malibu's post above. So maybe my domains earned $4, they kept $1, and paid me $3. That's fine. It's business. But when they said my domains earned 10 cents per click, didn't they really earn 12 cents per click, for example? Where is that other 5% to 40% coming from?

Maybe I'm just dense. But I don't see where in the chain their making their money, unless they're under-reporting one of the stats to me.

 

[malibumobile]

No one takes clicks or $ from you, it's the revenue share with the parking the company that you're referring to.

 

[rbedell]

As an example, Google or Yahoo pays the parking company 25 cents a click and the parking company turns around and pays you 10 cents of that. The parking company keeps the difference. So really the click might be worth 25 cents, but you only see 10 cents of that. When the parking company says that you earned x amount, that's what you earned, not what the parking company was paid.

 

[dedekind]

It is not a good idea, IMO, to pass too lightly over the "shaving" issue. Very strong statements were made in another thread of this Forum:

http://www.namepros.com/390293-parking-has-died-long-live-parking-3.html?highlight=Parking+died
post #67!

Domaining activity has passed its infancy and its terminology should be sufficiently well defined to assure understanding in communication. Term "shaving" is used among domainers, in particular in this Forum, and it is legitimate to ask which actions of parking companies, real or immagined, would be considered "shaving".

My modest contribution:

Sedo admits in its FAQ that: "Multiple clicks and views from the same user (IP address) are ... not counted."
Since they do not prevent visitors to move around and click on several links, they cash-in on these additional clicks but don't share this extra revenue with domainers. In my understanding this is "shaving" pure and simple. I am not aware that Sedo distributes this extra income by increasing its EPC, which can hardly be lower. The fact that Sedo describes precisely this action in its FAQ does not make it any more ethical. This is a variant of "click-shaving"!

Which are other forms of "shaving" in domain parking activity, whether real or immagined?

 

[matt_bodis]

You don't understand once again.

Donny from Parked.com has already mentioned that Sedo doesn't count multiple clicks because too many of its users were clicking their own ads multiple times which increases the unconverting ratio.

Even I had the feeling that it was somehow fraud-related from the beginning.

Once again, there is no logic behind this. If a parking company wants to take a % of the revenue, a parking company will take % of your revenue. There is no point in hiding it by taking revenue from multiple clicks, not reporting all the clicks, etc etc. No point.

PS
When I first started in the industry as a domainer, I always believed so many conspiracy theories about parking companies and the industry. Now, I realized 99% of them aren't true.

 

[dedekind]

You don't understand once again.

Donny from Parked.com has already mentioned that Sedo doesn't count multiple clicks because too many of its users were clicking their own ads multiple times which increases the unconverting ratio.

Sorry, but this is a cheap excuse!

Even single clicks on his own parking page are sufficient to expel somebody from the parking programme. Why tolerate those making illegal multiple clicks on their pages?
The key question is - where is the extra income earned by multiple clicks?

Let's not talk logic but numbers.
Here is my own piece of data to illustrate my claims.

My best domain, hand registered, with stable number of type-in visits over the period of several years, was parked at almost all known parking companies, for extended periods at Trafficz, Sedo, TrafficClub and Revenue direct. Here are representative data (per day):

Agregator Period Visits Clicks Rev$ CTR EPC RPM
Sedo (Mar/Apr 05) 341 123 6,78 0,36 0,06 19,88
Sedo (Sep-Dec 05) 304 90 5,37 0,30 0,06 17,66
TC/Skenzo (Jan-Jul 07) 360 237 22,04 0,66 0,09 61,22
RevDirect (Aug 07 ) 362 386 19,53 1,07 0,05 53,95

My questions:

1) How to explain the second line, sudden 11% drop in the number of visits AND additional 17% drop in the CTR, if not by extra ad hoc shaving?

2) Although Sedo accepts international traffic, Sedo CTR is 30% -50% of that seen in other two parking companies. Could this, possibly, be the consequence of not counting multiple clicks?

3) How come that RevenueDirect, obviously, has no problems in crediting multiple clicks, while Sedo and some other parking companies find it impossible? Isn't this, possibly, just a very convenient attitude?

 

[matt_bodis]

It's not a cheap excuse. Each company has different technology. This is not some major conspiracy. One company tracks visitors different than another.

It is extremely technical, and not something I will start writing out here on the forums.

 

[netmeg]

There's also the issue of what the ad provider will pay for. I've seen this myself first hand - Google does not always pay for the same type of click behavior as Yahoo, and probably neither works the same way as Ask.

 

[matt_bodis]

I'll try to keep this short.

1) The reason you have different visitors between companies is because how companies track and filter visitors. For instance, DomainSponsor may not report any traffic that is bot traffic or spam traffic. Other companies may just filter traffic by 1 per ip address, without any additional filters.

2) The reason you have click differences between companies is because some companies may not accept clicks from certain traffic/ip addresses. Each company has a block lists of bad ip addresses based on that ip address's bad behavior in the past on the network. But remember, 1 network may have different visitors than another. If 1 company sees an ip address for the first time, it is a little harder to tell if it is a good visitor or bad visitor, so sometimes they may allow it to go through.

Now, why does Sedo discount multiple clicks? I am not a genious, but I am pretty sure it is fraud-related as they state. Remember, Sedo allows members to join without any approval process. They can easily be scammers joining up at any second, so their fraud-screening protection must be a little tighter. They make it up by having more members and more traffic than most other parking programs. Now it doesn't really matter if they keep your multiple click revenue or not - in reality, if you make less, you make less. You will know if you tested else where. So if they start taking more and more of your revenue, you will just stop using them. I mean think of this logically. But if they allow multiple clicks, they would have a lot of people that would come in, make an account, and click 10 times a month on one domain, and if that domain is somehow high-CPC related, it can cost them $10 for those 10 clicks, rather than giving away $1. Which I guess they have figured out that it reduced the low-quality clicks on their network.

Now as netmeg has stated, different PPC providers also matter. One PPC provider may accept traffic from Indonesia, while another may not - or may have different advertisers, therefore different CPCs.

This is just the base of it. In reality, there is much much much much much much much much much much much more. Much more.

 

[dedekind]

I'll try to keep this short.

1) The reason you have different visitors between companies is because how companies track and filter visitors. For instance, DomainSponsor may not report any traffic that is bot traffic or spam traffic. Other companies may just filter traffic by 1 per ip address, without any additional filters.

2) The reason you have click differences between companies is because some companies may not accept clicks from certain traffic/ip addresses. Each company has a block lists of bad ip addresses based on that ip address's bad behavior in the past on the network. But remember, 1 network may have different visitors than another. If 1 company sees an ip address for the first time, it is a little harder to tell if it is a good visitor or bad visitor, so sometimes they may allow it to go through.

Now, why does Sedo discount multiple clicks? I am not a genious, but I am pretty sure it is fraud-related as they state. Remember, Sedo allows members to join without any approval process. They can easily be scammers joining up at any second, so their fraud-screening protection must be a little tighter. They make it up by having more members and more traffic than most other parking programs. Now it doesn't really matter if they keep your multiple click revenue or not - in reality, if you make less, you make less. You will know if you tested else where. So if they start taking more and more of your revenue, you will just stop using them. I mean think of this logically. But if they allow multiple clicks, they would have a lot of people that would come in, make an account, and click 10 times a month on one domain, and if that domain is somehow high-CPC related, it can cost them $10 for those 10 clicks, rather than giving away $1. Which I guess they have figured out that it reduced the low-quality clicks on their network.

Now as netmeg has stated, different PPC providers also matter. One PPC provider may accept traffic from Indonesia, while another may not - or may have different advertisers, therefore different CPCs.

This is just the base of it. In reality, there is much much much much much much much much much much much more. Much more.

All this is well known to me! And nobody speaks of conspiracy! Sedo and Bodis have declared that they don't count multiple clicks - therefore there are no secret manipulatins in this case!

Also, this is not a thread about Sedo! It serves here only for the illustration of the concept of "click-shaving". There is another thread for Sedo.

There is a wellknown saying: Follow the money!

As long as a parking company benefits financially from non-counted multiple clicks (under whatever excuse) this is for me, by definition, "shaving", be it acknowledged or not!

 

[exponent]

No one takes clicks or $ from you, it's the revenue share with the parking the company that you're referring to.

Sorry to be the first to tell you but you're wrong. If you think parking companies are little angels and perfectly honest about rev share and clicks, I've got some real estate on the moon to sell you.

:hehe:

When a domain goes from 60% CTR over months, to no CTR (and yet increasing traffic the entire time), I've got to say there is something wrong. Also, when you have a "big" day where earnings exceed the norm and then you find that the next week has ZERO reported earnings / clicks, there is something wrong there. How about having $2 clicks reduced to $0.06. RIDICULOUS.

Truth is, no matter how much you like a parking company or the individuals that run that company (that may be descent people on the forum), virtually all of them shave a little off the top.

 

[blaknite]

Not to defend or offend anyone, my understanding of the definition of click shaving is a bit different. If a company comes right out and says "we're not paying for multiple clicks" thats not shaving. They've declared that as non payable behavior so you're not entitled to any revenue from that. They're not shaving anything because you were never entitled to anything.

To me what is shaving is, is if you got 300 unique clicks and they only told you about 200 of them. They have "shaved" the other 100 by not telling you they ever happened. Another scenario would be if they told you you were getting 50% rev and then only paid you 25% while telling you it was 50%.

By not telling us what % rev they are giving us they aren't really shaving. Its an underhanded dishonest loophole but technically its not shaving. If they don't ever promise us a specfic amount, they can't be cheating when they adjust what amount they pay.

 

[dedekind]

If a company comes right out and says "we're not paying for multiple clicks" thats not shaving. They've declared that as non payable behavior so you're not entitled to any revenue from that. They're not shaving anything because you were never entitled to anything.

Thank you for a clear definition of "shaving", although different from the one that I would favor. We are discussing the meaning of words, technical terms that domainers use, and it is important to have consensus about it.

My definition is based on, what I would call, a standard model of monetised parking of domain names. As I understand it, there are essentially four parties in it. Domainers send potential customers to businesses through two intermediaries, agregators. There is a flow of money by which businesses compensate domainers for received visitors (clicks), going through the chain: businesses -> ad agregator(s) -> click agregator -> domainer. Domainer can assess the relative efficiency of his parking partner (click agregator) in monetising the traffic of a particular domain only through statistics, in which measuring sticks are visitors, clicks, CTR, EPC, RPM, and the ultimate one - revenue. If a click agregator distorts the standard model, and the community of domainers accepts it without qualification, then all measuring sticks other than revenue become meaningless.

I think it is in the best interest of the domaining community to establish a vocabulary describing specific distortions of the standard model. In this context, "click-shaving" describes well departure from the standard model when click agregator does not credit all clicks that contribute to the cash flow! To have an effect of discuraging click agregators from creating such distortions, related qualifying terms need to have a derogatory connotation, reflecting on the public image of the agregator. It is in our power as domainers to define such a vocabulary with the ultimate aim of increased transparency. The market competition will do the rest.

 

[yes]

Regardless of what you read or who tells you what ...

most of these feed providers and parking companies (sometimes on multiple levels upstream) have the ability to segment traffic into different quality buckets (on individual accounts / affiliates). That explains how your epc can change drastically.

If you read the fine print on your TOS, you will find something like this ....

***** reserves the right, in it's sole discretion, to filter clicks or reduce the amount of valid clicks based on internal procedures, and typically does so in accordance with general industry standards. That explains why you sometimes get credited for less than you send although this is a minor matter compared to the former.

Now having said all that ... these measures are in place to protect the integrity of the programs, they are not meant to defraud affiliates.

Sometimes a one-size-fits-all measure will penalize an affiliate who is not at fault - but such is true in every industry because "This Aint No Perfect World".

Hope it helps
yes

 

[moby]

Hi

Excellent posts, by all especially - dedekind

At the end of the day - i suppose g**gle is too big and is very strict with most of the Parking Advertising Feeds etc.

Parking companies will need to group together, and try improve allowable clicks at least.