Tag: Blocking

Republicans propose blocking SOTU speech if president doesn’t submit budget on time

President Biden is preparing to deliver a State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress after again missing his deadline to present spending and national security plans to Congress. 

Some Republicans in Congress want to hold Biden and future presidents accountable to the deadline with a simple penalty. No plans on time, no grand speech under a proposal titled the SUBMIT IT Act, short for Send Us Budget Materials & International Tactics In Time.

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 – updated several times – requires a president to submit his budget request to Congress no later than the first Monday in February. The National Security Act of 1947 requires the president to submit a national security proposal for the same day. But there is no enforcement mechanism for either, which is where the SUBMIT IT Act could come in. 

“President Biden’s budget was due on Feb. 5, yet Congress has seen nothing,” Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., who sponsored the bill, told Fox News Digital. 

3 WAYS TO TREAT AMERICA’S DEBT PANDEMICS

“This is irresponsible. Until Congress receives the president’s national security strategy and budget, he has no business delivering a State of the Union address,” Carter added. 

The SUBMIT IT Act would prohibit House or Senate leadership from inviting the president to address a joint session of Congress until Congress gets both plans. 

If passed, the bill would affect the State of the Union going into 2025 and onward. This won’t have any impact on Biden’s State of the Union address this year, scheduled for March 7. 

Biden’s tardiness is not unique, as his four immediate predecessors from both parties were also late in getting their plans to Congress – including his likely 2024 Republican opponent, Donald Trump. So, rather than a partisan problem, it’s largely a long-running issue between two branches of government. 

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced a Senate version. 

“If the president is going to be allowed the opportunity to address Congress and the entire nation, he should actually have a plan in place,” Ernst said in a public statement when announcing the Senate version. “At a time when Americans are facing skyrocketing inflation and the world is on fire, we deserve more than just empty rhetoric.”

BIDEN BLASTS HOUSE FOR TWO-WEEK ‘VACATION’ DESPITE FACING CRITICISM FOR HIS FREQUENT BEACH TRIPS

Biden’s budget proposals in the past three years missed the deadline by 115, 49, and 31 days, respectively, noted Kurt Couchman, a senior fellow in fiscal policy at Americans for Prosperity. 

“Over the past several decades, presidents’ budget and defense proposals have been delayed more and more as missed deadlines have become an ever-more common symptom of the breakdown of the budget process,” Couchman said in a public statement supporting the legislation. “Congress and the American people deserve the opportunity to see and evaluate the president’s requests in a timely manner.” 

Trump, who was 38 days late in his first year, and his three immediate predecessors missed the budget deadline as well, according to Roll Call. President Barack Obama was late by 98 days in submitting his first budget proposal in 2009, according to a Congressional Research Service report. President George W. Bush was 63 days in his fiscal 2003 plan. In 1993, President Bill Clinton was 66 days late. 

The Congressional Research Service report noted the deadline was changed several times. Previously required in January, the most recent adjustment was in 1990, when the deadline was changed to say, “on or after the first Monday in January but not later than the first Monday in February of each year.”

The Constitution requires the president to submit a State of the Union update to Congress, but nothing requires that message to be a speech to a joint session. Every president from Thomas Jefferson through William Howard Taft submitted a written annual message to Congress. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson broke that tradition with a speech to a joint session of Congress. 

The speech to a joint session requires an invitation from congressional leadership, which has typically been a formality. 

But in 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., threatened to withhold an invitation Trump to speak until the partial government shutdown ended. Trump suggested he would deliver the address at an alternative location. The shutdown ended, and Pelosi invited him to speak. 

Click Fraud Blocking: Your Search Ads Secret Weapon?

In the quest for more conversions, there’s an element most PPC advertisers overlook; invalid traffic—aka IVT, fake traffic, click fraud, or ad fraud.

You might have noticed the IVT column in your Google Analytics dashboard, although it isn’t displayed by default. And if you’ve ever searched for invalid traffic online, you have probably read Google or Facebook’s policies on the matter.

IVT is common. In fact, invalid ad traffic accounts for over ten percent of digital ad traffic.

Marketers often assume tech giants are in control of IVT. But are they? And how much actual invalid traffic really makes it through to your paid ads?

The Challenges of Digital Advertising

Although pay-per-click advertising is one of the most important elements of digital marketing, its reputation has taken a beating in recent years.

Marketers have watched CPC rise, an increase in competition, less-than-accurate tracking, and even noticed they’re paying for fake or fraudulent traffic that doesn’t drive results. 

Plus, consumer groups have been campaigning for more privacy and control over our personal data.

So, where does this leave the average marketer?

First, some stats.

Between 40 and 60 percent of all internet traffic is from non-human sources. This includes bots, web crawlers, and other automated scripts. Despite the wide range, we can assume, on average, that around half of all web traffic is non-human.

It’s also estimated that ‘bad bot’ traffic outnumbers good bots, with bad bots conducting up to 25 percent of total internet activity. Bad bots can include spam bots, scalpers, or data harvesters, to the bots used for hacking, stealing logins, or committing ad fraud.

Added to this, marketers are also seeing their tracking and targeting capabilities changing as Google and Facebook adapt to the changing data laws around the world. 

The growth of fake traffic combined with reduced targeting and analytics sounds like a recipe for a marketer’s headache. 

But Facebook and Google are putting a stop to all this—right? 

The Battle Against Fake Traffic

In 2021, the cost of click fraud and ad fraud was estimated to be around $42 billion. 

The tech giants have long claimed their invalid traffic filters remove the worst of the bots and bad clicks. 

And those IVT rates in Google Analytics might be encouraging. 

Most marketers using Google Analytics see an IVT rate in the low single figures, somewhere between 2 to 8 percent. 

But data from ClickCease shows an average of 14 percent of clicks on paid ads come from non-genuine sources, aka click fraud. Some industries even see click fraud levels way beyond this, with invalid clicks making up 60 percent of traffic. 

Why the discrepancy? Surely the big ad platforms would want to put a stop to fake traffic?

The truth is, it’s complicated.

On the one hand, yes: Google, Facebook, and Microsoft do want to put a stop to fake traffic and protect their advertisers. After all, advertising revenue is by far the biggest earner for all of these companies.

However, the methods they use to filter invalid traffic are considered less strict than third-party click fraud solutions.

A common way for click fraud and ad fraud operators to get around the filters is by masking their location. Most ad platforms block traffic sources by IP address. Using a VPN, bots and click farms can cycle through multiple IP addresses to click repeatedly without getting blocked. 

In fact, the click thresholds for the ad platforms are thought to be much more generous than using a third-party fraud blocker. 

For the more cynical amongst us, there is also the issue of money.

Fake clicks are still a source of income to the ad platforms. And for many advertisers, the metric they’re looking for (beyond just conversions) is a good click through rate. 

More clicks or impressions equals a bigger reach and a job well done, right?

For the ad giants, so long as advertisers see something is being done, then the fight against click fraud is winning in some way.

Well, I did say that’s the cynical view.

Protect Your Advertising Spend With Click Fraud Blocking 

Blocking invalid traffic using a third-party solution is the most effective way to block bots, automated clicks, and even malicious traffic such as brand haters and competitors.

That’s why click fraud prevention is a secret weapon for search marketers. 

For starters, the clicks lost to fake traffic are more than just lost budget.

Companies operating on a limited ad budget might find their daily or monthly ad spend exhausted prematurely. With their ads out of service, the missed opportunities will go to their competitors.

For those operating with a bigger ad budget, the issue of misattributed success comes into play. 

How can you tell if those impressions or clicks resulted in conversions? Well, it’s increasingly difficult.

A tool such as ClickCease doesn’t just block bad traffic in real time and flag suspicious activity. It also offers another level of analytics marketers can use to examine their audience – something becoming more crucial as the tracking changes come into play.

Seeing which search terms attract the most invalid traffic, or how many VPN or out-of-geo clicks your ads, attract allows advertisers to adjust their targeting.

This applies to search and display ads on Google or Bing Ads, and social media ads such as Facebook or Instagram. 

Marketers looking to get ahead of the trends, especially as the tracking changes come into play, should take the opportunity to see how click fraud blocking makes a difference to their campaign results.