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Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

wsj.com

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Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#111

Post by jasode »

cyphar wrote: post #69

Despite what your opinion might be on the ethics and justifications of the people involved, I find it quite concerning that they're being painted as "ad fraudsters". This sounds like the same Orwellian re-definition of words as "piracy". There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I h…

>There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I have to be interested in the product.

I understand you want to fight ads but your comments (e.g. your usage of "I" as in the "websurfer enduser") are not relevant to this particular WSJ story.

In this case, the "click fraud" is the correct label because the website operators (not the websurfer) of ad inventory explicitly agreed to Google's AdX policies.[1][2]

Yes, you're right that the end user didn't make an explicit contract. However, the website operator/seller that voluntarily opted into the AdX exchange _did_.

Like you, I'm also hypersensitive to Orwellian doublespeak but in this case, your vigilance is misplaced. Your comment (almost verbatim) is more relevant for the AdNauseam thread that's currently on the front page because that _is_ about endusers fighting back with the justification that they didn't agree to any ad Terms-of-Service.

[1] see section "Invalid Activity" : https://support.google.com/adxseller/answer/6337462?hl=en

[2] see section "Invalid activity" : https://support.google.com/platformspolicy/answer/3013851?vi...

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#112

Post by elorant »

cyphar wrote: post #69

Despite what your opinion might be on the ethics and justifications of the people involved, I find it quite concerning that they're being painted as "ad fraudsters". This sounds like the same Orwellian re-definition of words as "piracy". There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I h…

It's called fraud because it's systemized. An individual accidentally clicking on an ad, or clicking on an ad without been actually interested in a product is far from suspicious, we've all done it and we'll do it again. But that's not what this is about.

Say you have a couple of web sites and you've strapped AdSense on them. Income is ok but nothing spectacular. One day you decide to go black-hat. So you purchase a couple hundred static IPs or even better rent them from private proxies. Then you set-up a bot that systematically clicks on your ads. If you keep it low profile without becoming greedy it could run for years without anyone taking notice.

Then some other day you become greedy. You realize that if you scale your model it could bring you shitloads of money. So you build a malware and distribute it to tens of thousands of PCs. Actually you don't even have to write the code yourself, malware has been commoditized these days. So now you have 100k PCs which means that you have tons of traffic. And since you only have a handful of websites you commoditize the "business", offering ad clickthroughs for money to various publishers. Run it for a couple of years and you've become a millionaire. At this point of course eventually Google will shut you down because they have a whole department of very smart people who're monitoring these things. But nothing stops you from building other sites or no sites at all if you drive all your traffic to third parties. And let's not forget that AdSense isn't the only form of advertising. There are ads based on mere impressions. Which means that all you have to do is drive traffic to those sites.

This isn't a far-fetched scenario, it's already happening in unprecedented scale. Estimates indicate that at least 30% of ad traffic is fraudulent. Take a look at Methbot [1] for example. A botnet that was set-up to deliver fake video traffic and netted more than $5M daily.

[1]. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/20/methb...

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#113

Post by [deleted] »

shubhamjain wrote: post #54
madars wrote: post #8

In related news, certain subreddits have been promoting the use of https://adnauseam.io/ , a fork of uBlock origin that automatically clicks all the ads encountered. The same redditors also encourage searching for high-CPC terms (e.g. insurance or rare medical conditions) to maximize the impact.

It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. What if the advertiser is not a rich company but a small business. How acceptable it's to destroy the potential value of her budget? Of course, Google might already be detecting it, but the intent of AdNeuseam seems nothing but…

[deleted]

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#114

Post by Noos »

amelius wrote: post #74
srean wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in place of ads ?

If ads were the only type of information, we were already doomed. For example, why do you think reviews are so important? Also, you are reading articles through HN, not by watching ads for them first. Then there is the age-old word-of-mouth. Or seeing products in action with friends. I could go on and on.

How do you get reviews when people have no idea the product exists in the first place? The amount of ignorance these comments have about why marketing in general is a necessary part of business is disheartening.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#115

Post by cat199 »

elorant wrote: post #112
cyphar wrote: post #69

Despite what your opinion might be on the ethics and justifications of the people involved, I find it quite concerning that they're being painted as "ad fraudsters". This sounds like the same Orwellian re-definition of words as "piracy". There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I h…

It's called fraud because it's systemized. An individual accidentally clicking on an ad, or clicking on an ad without been actually interested in a product is far from suspicious, we've all done it and we'll do it again. But that's not what this is about. Say you have a couple of web sites and you've strapped AdSense on them. Income is ok but nothing spectacular. One day you decide to go black-hat. So you purchase a…

DING DING DING we have a winnner..

Not to mention bots to scrape other legitimate sites and recreate them only with slightly reshuffled texts and a bazillion other ads and links to legitimate and illegitimate other sites, paid spamming to spread your malware and drive traffic into your network, spoof SEO and fake promotions by spam commenting on websites, blogs, etc. I'm probably missing a few thousand other things.

Worked in webhosting for a couple of years.. it was amazingly eyeopening to contend with the fact that yes, people actually make all of that junk content that I do my best to ignore, and that there are reasons behind it...

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#116

Post by _ak »

pdkl95 wrote: post #83
shubhamjain wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. What if the advertiser is not a rich company but a small business. How acceptable it's to destroy the potential value of her budget? Of course, Google might already be detecting it, but the intent of AdNeuseam seems nothing but…

This isn't shadenfreude ; it's a type of direct action against advertising and indirectly the type of hyper-capitalism that allowed advertising to become malignant. When profit is the only metric that counts, the only way to send a message is to disrupt the flow of revenue. > seems nothing but despicable I'd suggest viewing it from the other side, but I suspect Upton Sinclair's caution may apply: "It is difficult to…

You overestimate the amount of impact adnauseam makes. Users that click on many ads on one page within a short time window, but never convert? Obviously fraud that's being filtered, the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side, and you very quickly make no impact at all, and will most certainly not disrupt the flow of revenue for anybody involved here. That's not some outlandish futuristic technology, that's standard practice for any half-decent player in online advertising.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#117

Post by cat199 »

Good to see this -

I've often questioned the somewhat symbiotic nature of scam sites and googles ad revenue - if things were too easy to find, there would be less need for ads in the first place..

Not that the simple existence of such a program precludes this.. they could just be using it to tune the equation when the sides get out of balance..

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#118

Post by cat199 »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #51
birken wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternatives? The key product here is Google search which is what attracts the consumers. The advertisers are dealing with Adwords not because Adwords is the greatest platform in history, but because Adwords is the platform where the consumers are. Ad fraud, no matter how massive, has no effect on the consumer side of Google search. Google has a strong incentive to fix this because any money going to scammers is…

> It's a game of whack-a-mole for sure, but at the end of the day the higher the level of fraud on the marketplace the easier it is to catch, so the scammers are somewhat limited in how much damage they do. This is a perfect summary of what is going on. In this case I trust Google because their incentives are aligned with advertisers', and they certainly have both data (from Google Analytics and other sites) and mean…

> In this case I trust Google because their incentives are aligned with advertisers

Is it?

The better the overall search algorithm, the less the need to hack around it by paying for placement..

Some level of 'bad results' helps ensure that ads are needed in the first place, and junk sites provide a ready source of bad results..

Now, when junk sites cause you to lose revenue, the equation gets unbalanced, but that is not to say having the variable equate to 0 is good either, because the revenue would lessen..

Obviously it can't simply allow the fraud because that would make google fraudulent itself, but at the same time they cant just outright ban crappy sites, since there are so many that are only marginally crappy but otherwise legitimate, and could only be unwilling participants in someone else's dishonest scheme..

I would argue that google is attempting to maximize a set of equations here, and since at some point there is a grey area between 'crappy scammish sites' and 'full on fraud', google has some leeway to what extent it polices the grey area, and, further, to some extent can do this at advertisers expense so long as 'the house wins' to borrow gamboling terminology..

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#119

Post by cat199 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #20
cft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be a coordinated 4chan attack https://files.catbox.moe/6ueduv.png

Yes, it's seen as, probably correctly, the only way to do anything that'll affect Google. Outside of getting laws changed, that is. It probably won't be effective - the people handling ad fraud are probably not the ones pushing their censorious politics. But hey, unlike most slacktivism, this causes them real damage. I imagine the response will be to ban people's Google accounts, for those dumb enough to sign in whil…

which, aside from being ironic, could create network effects to move people out of gapps and back towards more federated solutions..

things could get interesting.. or, more likely, they could not.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#120

Post by reefoctopus »

rcdmd wrote: post #99
cyphar wrote: post #69

Despite what your opinion might be on the ethics and justifications of the people involved, I find it quite concerning that they're being painted as "ad fraudsters". This sounds like the same Orwellian re-definition of words as "piracy". There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I h…

I think you're missing the point of "click fraud[1]". Unscrupulous actors are using botnets to "click" ad network links on their sites, which they then get money for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

I'm penalized about 15% of my revenue every month due to invalid traffic. 99% of the traffic is organic, and google doesnt give me any idea where this invalid traffic is coming from.
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