Everyone is understandably pleased about Google’s decision begin sharing the URLs of sites that run your adwords ads on their content network, because the transparency (and related features) will allow you to filter unwanted sites from your distribution. Opting into the Content Network is no longer an all-or-nothing proposition.

This is great for many reasons. The consensus seems to be that the real motivation for the change is big brand advertisers who somehow couldn’t be cajoled into buying blind placements like the rest of us online dopes. (Don't believe this stuff about them being afraid of Quigo.) These guys have a lot of money sitting on the sidelines, and Google wants it – so they’re finally willing to give the rest of us something we’ve been requesting for years.

The big win here that I haven’t seen mentioned in the flood of articles and posts, is the impact this will have on click fraud. The Content Networks (Google’s and everyone’s) are home to all kinds of shady characters, and the inability to see who was sending clicks (and spending your money) has always left us with the sneaky suspicion that the reason Content Networks virtually always underperform the Search Networks or Google itself is fraud.

Seeing the URLs will enable us to note a sudden spike in traffic from any site, review the sites to see if they appear reputable, and understand traffic patterns in a way the ‘black box’ system didn’t.

But I’d like one more thing. (Don’t I always?) Don’t just share the URLs in the adwords interface, pass them along in the referring URL so we can collect and track them via our own website analytics. It would be great to track individual URL performance over time, associate click-costs to products sold to specific referring sites, and even define site groupings of our own choosing to look for patterns in what makes a successful Content Network ad-hosting site.

Transparency is good. The ability to track is better.