| 'Pump-dump' schemes elude filters
Reader mail has clogged the box along with pitches for herbal Viagra. Let's get to the story. Question: What's with all of the stock pitches in my e-mail? Even my spam filters won't stop them. Answer: This is what's called a "pump and dump" scheme. Those behind such schemes have control of thousands of "zombie" computers (usually home PCs with high-speed connections and no firewall) and buy a bunch of penny stock. Then they send out these pitches by the millions using their zombie networks and hype worthless stock. Enough people buy it, believe it or not, to make the stock leap for a very short time. The pumpers sell their position and the stock drops like a stone. These things are hard to catch because the stock tip is usually buried in a graphic file that spam filters can't read or included with a bunch of realistic text designed to throw off the spam filter.
Local Search Advertising, Part 2: Targeting Recommendations
Searchers often view an ad that explicitly states location as more relevant than a message with no location information. This increases response rate and, hence, Quality Score. Yet despite all these advantages, geotargeted campaigns don't work well for marketers trying to reach people who are traveling, visiting, or moving into a certain area. And targeted campaigns are limited because ad networks can't always determine IP address or map it to a location. If this is the case, geotargeted ads aren't eligible to be shown. Local Keyword Recommendations Within any PPC (define) campaign, marketers can include local keywords. This is actually the original method of local search advertising. It doesn't rely on targeting technology and isn't focused on where the searcher is physically located.
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