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

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

#131

Post by shimon_e »

micheljones wrote: post #127
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…

It's not schadenfreude, and this latest uptick in AdNauseam installation&use is not caused by anti-ad attitudes, but as backlash against what is perceived as thought policing by google, mostly in form of demonetizing and silencing popular YouTube users who lean right in their political expression.

Yeah its a politic war. I believe it all started when some people on the left got some companies to pull their ads from some right wing Fox anchor. Unless someone knows of events older than this?

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

#132

Post by ManlyBread »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #52
cft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Give me a break. It is laughably easy, even trivial for Google to filter out such traffic.

How? If the clicks are random, how does one filter them out and separate them from actual traffic?

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

#133

Post by zo1 »

omginternets wrote: post #90
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…

>But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. Literally nothing else seems to be working, so poisoning the advertising well strikes me like a fair tactic.

Have you tried regulating? Seems to work pretty well for places like China.

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

#134

Post by taneq »

_ak wrote: post #116
pdkl95 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tech…

> the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side

Isn't that a win, for a user who already runs an adblocker?

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

#135

Post by zo1 »

shimon_e wrote: post #131
micheljones wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not schadenfreude, and this latest uptick in AdNauseam installation&use is not caused by anti-ad attitudes, but as backlash against what is perceived as thought policing by google, mostly in form of demonetizing and silencing popular YouTube users who lean right in their political expression.

Yeah its a politic war. I believe it all started when some people on the left got some companies to pull their ads from some right wing Fox anchor. Unless someone knows of events older than this?

The earliest notable one I can think of is the whole Kellogs and Breitbart incident. However, specifically relating to Google, I'd say it's the James Damore political silencing by Google. And even more recently, Youtube has started censoring controversial videos and putting them inside a "gimped" version of Youtube. I.e. no likes/shares/related videos. It really is turning into a 1984 scenario.

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

#136

Post by shimon_e »

tyingq wrote: post #92
narrator wrote: post #22

I always thought it was funny that Google's billion dollar revenue model essentially relies on a trusted client.

I suspect part of the uptick in fraud was Google's release of headless chrome. It uses less memory than other approaches, so any click farm converting over would have more capacity.

Google can detect headless chrome.

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

#137

Post by wongarsu »

_ak wrote: post #116
pdkl95 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tech…

Maybe the actual impact is low, but GP was discussing intent, which is completely unrelated to achieved impact.

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

#138

Post by micheljones »

zo1 wrote: post #135
shimon_e wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah its a politic war. I believe it all started when some people on the left got some companies to pull their ads from some right wing Fox anchor. Unless someone knows of events older than this?

The earliest notable one I can think of is the whole Kellogs and Breitbart incident. However, specifically relating to Google, I'd say it's the James Damore political silencing by Google. And even more recently, Youtube has started censoring controversial videos and putting them inside a "gimped" version of Youtube. I.e. no likes/shares/related videos. It really is turning into a 1984 scenario.

Yes, no likes/shares/related, but on top of that, the videos are demonetized + no longer embeddable.

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

#139

Post by whipoodle »

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…

Somehow, I think Google just might pull through this dire situation.

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

#140

Post by lugg »

ManlyBread wrote: post #132
Drdrdrq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. It is laughably easy, even trivial for Google to filter out such traffic.

How? If the clicks are random, how does one filter them out and separate them from actual traffic?

People don't click random ads at random times.

Google has more than enough training data to pick up on this traffic with a high degree of accuracy using rudimentary machine learning.

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