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Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

medium.com

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Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#61

Post by paulpauper »

It could also mean that the fraudster made enough money and decided to bail on the campaign and tear down all of their infrastructure. Tough to confirm either way.

Or the ads simply did not generate a positive ROI. I have read that Facebook advertising (especially for US traffic) is very expensive and tends to not convert well. I often see people run Facebook ads for non-scammy purposes (for example three months ago James Altucher ran Facebook ads for his books, and those ads are gone) and then pull them down , presumably because the conversion is crud. No one ever pulls a successful advertising campaign because they 'made enough money'.

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#62

Post by markab21 »

I've been running ads for a bit now on Facebook. Compared to googles ad stack, Facebook's feels definitely more unrefined, to say the least, than Google's. Sometimes basic things on Facebook's platform simply do not work.

Their ad approval process is random. I've had ad's that were not approved, resubmit for "automatic" approval. (Keep trying till it passes into the sample group of Auto-Approve, it's an older account?)

All that said... I know Facebook was under pressure after their IPO to get revenue coming. They've figured out now how to monetize their traffic base and marketers are flocking to their platform. I expect that over time you're going to see slow tightening of their policies, especially as marketers learn to exploit it. It's still impossible to get someone on the phone from Facebook if you have a problem and though you can generate very low cost CPA actions from facebook, it's dangerous to bet big on them right now as this article points out, change is going to have to come.

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#63

Post by raverbashing »

x0 wrote: post #45
raverbashing wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the possible check would be simply for FB to follow the original link and see if it matches the display link after the redirect from the tracker But of course they won't do that.

then you'd send facebook's checker to the real url, and then redirect everyone else

Check using a random referrer and random IP, also possibly recheck later

Also, for example, if they claim to be CNN, it should go to a relevant page, not just cnn.com

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#64

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

Is it just me, or do other people actually LOVE this new trend of plugging your product/work/yourself through interesting blog posts? Like, I don't care how much $$$ this guy could spend on advertising --- this blog post is certainly far more effective in getting me to buy the product. I learned something, I was entertained, I now "trust" this individual, I got a great demo of the product's use... love it!

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#66

Post by runarb »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #64

Is it just me, or do other people actually LOVE this new trend of plugging your product/work/yourself through interesting blog posts? Like, I don't care how much $$$ this guy could spend on advertising --- this blog post is certainly far more effective in getting me to buy the product. I learned something, I was entertained, I now "trust" this individual, I got a great demo of the product's use... love it!

Personally I did feel a little cheated when I realised that the article was an advertisement.

Content marketing like this blurs out what is someone's genuine opinion and what is advertisement.

I do not like it. Where I live, in Norway one has to clearly mark content marketing as advertisement or risk some steep fines.

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#67

Post by Kiro »

runarb wrote: post #66
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #64

Is it just me, or do other people actually LOVE this new trend of plugging your product/work/yourself through interesting blog posts? Like, I don't care how much $$$ this guy could spend on advertising --- this blog post is certainly far more effective in getting me to buy the product. I learned something, I was entertained, I now "trust" this individual, I got a great demo of the product's use... love it!

Personally I did feel a little cheated when I realised that the article was an advertisement. Content marketing like this blurs out what is someone's genuine opinion and what is advertisement. I do not like it. Where I live, in Norway one has to clearly mark content marketing as advertisement or risk some steep fines.

It's written on Hunchly's own blog so I'm pretty sure it would be fine in Norway as well.

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#68

Post by AJ007 »

stevoski wrote: post #55

When Google got into advertising, they were relaxed about what ads they accepted. They happily ran just about any advert. But then two things happened. 1) the scammers came. 2) governments started holding Google accountable for running ads for online gambling and prescription medication. Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo) had to pay large fines for running ads for products and companies that governments saw as illegal.…

Facebook's ad platform is very mature, it was launched in 2007.

I think Facebook is able to let more questionable stuff run in part because the micro-targeting makes it easy to disperse bad stuff to narrowly targeted audiences. On Google, investigators could search well known pharmaceutical terms and it was plain as day the advertisers were breaking US law. It is kind of like putting crack for sale in your storefront window verse in the back behind a maze of doors.

From what I have heard first hand, Facebook's platform was much more difficult initially and now is more lax. This could be in part the sheer scale of their ad network and the difficulty in policing it, or everyone figured out which loopholes Facebook couldn't plug without screwing up their quarterly numbers.

Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#69

Post by sean99 »

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Re: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

#70

Post by AznHisoka »

paulpauper wrote: post #61

It could also mean that the fraudster made enough money and decided to bail on the campaign and tear down all of their infrastructure. Tough to confirm either way. Or the ads simply did not generate a positive ROI. I have read that Facebook advertising (especially for US traffic) is very expensive and tends to not convert well. I often see people run Facebook ads for non-scammy purposes (for example three months ago…

This. It's all fine and well he's getting lots of clicks but is he actually converting them to revenue? If all he's doing is an ad arbitrage mode (i.e. Hope visitors click on Adsense ads) he's doomed because that will never succeed.
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