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How much of your audience is fake?

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Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#61

Post by legutierr »

downandout wrote: post #26
meeper16 wrote: post #14

This is exactly why social networks are far less valuable than properties like Google that started with algorithmic foundations as opposed to rebranding the next geocities. I'll never trust facebooks numbers on their fake profiles especially when Yahoo kills close to 1mil fake profiles every month and while Ashley Madison was rife with them. Reddit started this way too, with tons of bots, fake accounts etc. We just d…

I personally know the founder of an SEO company that is running around 50 fake searches per second as I type this.

Very interesting. I assume that he is doing that in order to collect up-to-date search result data. Or is he actually attempting to manipulate search results (or AdWords ratings) in some way?

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#62

Post by halcyondaze »

legutierr wrote: post #61
downandout wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally know the founder of an SEO company that is running around 50 fake searches per second as I type this.

Very interesting. I assume that he is doing that in order to collect up-to-date search result data. Or is he actually attempting to manipulate search results (or AdWords ratings) in some way?

It's to manipulate the 'auto-complete' feature.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#63

Post by forgetsusername »

cwyers wrote: post #37
forgetsusername wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space. Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers fo…

From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?

>* those fake profiles are still real humans, right?*

This is true. I'm more thinking along the lines of "we have 1 billion active users!"

>you can still do demographic targeting, no?

This I'm not so sure about. Some targeting, sure. But the fake profiles make it more difficult, since the demographic data is also fake.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#65

Post by garrettr_ »

cwyers wrote: post #37
forgetsusername wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space. Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers fo…

From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?

From an ad network's point of view, maybe, but from a publisher's point of view, no. This is just another variation on click fraud, because fake people don't buy real goods.

If you actually read the article, the Heineken advertiser's response is:

> “It was like we’d been throwing our money to the mob,” Amram says. “As an advertiser we were paying for eyeballs and thought that we were buying views. But in the digital world, you’re just paying for the ad to be served, and there’s no guarantee who will see it, or whether a human will see it at all.”

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#67

Post by jaredsohn »

garrettr_ wrote: post #65
cwyers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?

From an ad network's point of view, maybe, but from a publisher's point of view, no. This is just another variation on click fraud, because fake people don't buy real goods. If you actually read the article, the Heineken advertiser's response is: > “It was like we’d been throwing our money to the mob,” Amram says. “As an advertiser we were paying for eyeballs and thought that we were buying views. But in the digital…

But the GP is talking about a case where the ads are being viewed (so there is a guarantee that a human sees it); just not by as many unique people as the number of accounts would suggest.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#68

Post by cwyers »

garrettr_ wrote: post #65
cwyers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?

From an ad network's point of view, maybe, but from a publisher's point of view, no. This is just another variation on click fraud, because fake people don't buy real goods. If you actually read the article, the Heineken advertiser's response is: > “It was like we’d been throwing our money to the mob,” Amram says. “As an advertiser we were paying for eyeballs and thought that we were buying views. But in the digital…

That's a response to bots viewing ads, not people who register a second Facebook account so they can send themselves Farmville gifts. They aren't fake people, they're real people wearing fake mustaches. I am sure they are less valuable to advertisers than Facebook profiles with real demographic data but it's still better than an ad never seen by a human.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#69

Post by mattmanser »

cwyers wrote: post #36
mattmanser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, red face for the journalist, it turned out with regards to the Ashley Madison 'fake' profiles, the vast majority of them weren't fake.

Can you expand on this?

http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/31/ashley-madison-refutes-clai...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/statement-from-avid-...

This refutation was widely reported, although unsurprisingly not as much as the original cockup.

Re: How much of your audience is fake?

#70

Post by mattmanser »

davidgerard wrote: post #43
mattmanser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, red face for the journalist, it turned out with regards to the Ashley Madison 'fake' profiles, the vast majority of them weren't fake.

Citation needed. (I would be most interested.)

http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/31/ashley-madison-refutes-clai...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/statement-from-avid-...

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