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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

#191

Post by rhizome »

redm wrote: post #152

A few honest questions for anyone who's an ad buyer for mixed media: I've wondered how advertisers look at broadcast advertising compared to digital. For one there's no direct correlation (as in a click) with broadcast television. There's also no direct accounting of who actually saw it, just a best guess based on Neilson numbers. It seems to me that DVR's are akin to ad blockers as well. Why is digital so conversati…

Why is digital so conversation obsessed (clicks/purchases) and not focused as much on the branding values (CPM)?

I'm not in the profession, but my theory is that what can be measured, will be measured. However, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, that doesn't mean that any digital strategy is more effective than any print/broadcast strategy from 40 years ago.

Keep in mind these are the people pushing for autoplay video.

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

#192

Post by bcoates »

redm wrote: post #152

A few honest questions for anyone who's an ad buyer for mixed media: I've wondered how advertisers look at broadcast advertising compared to digital. For one there's no direct correlation (as in a click) with broadcast television. There's also no direct accounting of who actually saw it, just a best guess based on Neilson numbers. It seems to me that DVR's are akin to ad blockers as well. Why is digital so conversati…

It's a mix of two things:

The first is searching under the streetlight: both attributable digital ads and non-attributable ads are put into a media plan with (mostly fanciful) estimates and projections as to returns and value before the project starts. Then the campaigns are run, and the attributable ads are scored according to actual results, while everything else is either carried forward on the assumptions the estimates are true, assigned an arbitrary fraction of all sales/traffic, or run through some GIGO model. A lot of personal prejudice and tribal knowledge is applied here.

The other, smarter instinct is that while traditional/non-digital advertising can't be finely attributed it can be monitored and audited, and this is vastly more important. Mistakes and underperformance are bounded--fraud is not. A billboard in an inappropriate place with shitty creative at least exists and has some non-zero value not that far from the best possible billboard; but fraudulent Internet advertising can just dump all your money down a hole, never be seen by a relevant human, and do nothing but give you false metrics.

DVRs aren't that much of a threat -- most of what a TV ad says is that "my brand exists, I can afford TV ads, and your social circle has seen my ads" and that works at 10x speed anyway. Hypertargeting makes Internet ads worthless for that sort of positioning.

(I buy internet display only right now but I used to work in a mixed team)

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

#193

Post by drewmol »

bartread wrote: post #50
tannhaeuser wrote: post #43

Clickfraud has been a problem for as long as online ads exist. Its widespreadness has caused ad revenues to decline to the point of non-profitability years ago, and many web media outfits to close shop. On what basis should customers be refunded without actual, objectively measured clickstream data? This piece feels like a media campaign to make AdSense appear as premium service over alternatives to me. The point is…

That's an interesting point and I suppose the answer is maybe but what I've found is that the best, or certainly the easiest, way of searching StackExchange is Google.

I agree, but wonder if it's mostly habit(been using that single search box for over ten years, and I'm reluctant to add one more click/step to the process when I can just press enter right now and then filter through the results page). I still have to remind myself to use the !bang function of DDG even though it's often a faster, more direct path to the results I want. For me, only after it slowly becomes habit does it truly feel easier

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

#194

Post by ssharp »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #38
sharkweek wrote: post #16

Pardon my rudimentary understanding here, but I sort of assumed in such a wide scale auction, pricing would reflect acceptance of a certain level of fraud, and that the price would balance out at a point where these fake clicks were part of the equation.

Judging by my competitor's bids I don't think many advertisers have an 'equation'.

Never underestimate the amount of dumb money in advertising.

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

#195

Post by drewmol »

Buge wrote: post #44
Rjevski wrote: post #6

Couldn't have happened to a nicer industry. :) Just imagine for a second the total human time lost due to ads and all the productivity that could've been done in that time.

But also think of the human benefit gained from ads. Free search, free email, free news articles, free videos. Also consider how Hacker News survives. As soon as you start charging a fee, you eliminate huge swaths of the world population. Ads are an equalizing force.

I agree advertising certainly has a place and tradeoffs. It's seems more like a cost shifting, less direct, obfuscated payment terms model than 'free'. Certainly people being advertised to are paying for it because the ads are successful, just not a direct exchange of money for content/service but instead a payment of time/attention for psychological manipulation/impression which will result in a direct payment sometime in the future(if the advertising party is successful)

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

#196

Post by drewmol »

zaroth wrote: post #14
vosper wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The account credit probably goes to the agency, and the actual customer is none the wiser. Or it gets credited to some kind of covering-our-asses fund that can be used by the agency to make the click-through cost look a little less bad at the end of the next quarter.

The former would be theft, and the later would be fraud. So, let's hope not...

Although I'm not in the industry, I assume that depends on verbose and difficult to understand contact terms...

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

#197

Post by mcbits »

revelation wrote: post #157
fatjokes wrote: post #144

People just want free stuff. Google did introduce a program (Contributor) which would allow users to pay to fund their content creators without seeing ads. Last I heard that program was not doing well.

Patreon is doing very well I believe.

Patreon itself seems to be going strong, but I've only seen a handful of users making anything close to a livable income, and I check out profiles almost every time someone plugs theirs. Usually it's a laughably small amount. The successful users are popular enough to make still an order of magnitude more with ads, sponsorships, etc. I love the model and hope it keeps growing, but it's not there yet.

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

#198

Post by hanetzer »

squarefoot wrote: post #162
neotek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ridiculous way to think.

Badly exposed, maybe, but surely not ridiculous. We are so used to wasting hours alone in front of a screen while being bombarded by advertising that we are totally forgetting what it looks like to get out and speak with other people. Word of mouth, baby. When a product is good it makes a good subject for conversation with friends and relatives, and they surely don't cover my mouth with duct tape as a form of ad-bloc…

Off topic, but are you still interested in those ActiveX h264 dvrs? I've got sdks for a few variants of a chip family commonly used in them and am working on reverse engineering their binary kernel modules, and was hoping to start gathering helpers.

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

qq66 wrote: post #15
Rjevski wrote: post #6

Couldn't have happened to a nicer industry. :) Just imagine for a second the total human time lost due to ads and all the productivity that could've been done in that time.

For a different perspective, I had a business software product for a particular targeted use case that could ONLY find customers through targeted ads, particularly on Google. The company could have not existed without Google ads and the customers would have not solved their problem without Google ads.

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by bittermang »

Buge wrote: post #44
Rjevski wrote: post #6

Couldn't have happened to a nicer industry. :) Just imagine for a second the total human time lost due to ads and all the productivity that could've been done in that time.

But also think of the human benefit gained from ads. Free search, free email, free news articles, free videos. Also consider how Hacker News survives. As soon as you start charging a fee, you eliminate huge swaths of the world population. Ads are an equalizing force.

Human benefit? The trash bags full of money being thrown around the room, while we fight over the scraps?

Or we can talk about the purposeful obfuscation of the industry. How you have no way of verifying clicks, or views, or anything. How Cost Per Click is just an arbitrary number you and unknown others compete against, all for the pursuit of fake traffic and the hope of winning the advertising lottery.

It is more worth your time to play Three Card Monty on the street corner, because at least all parties agree that game is fixed.

When the online advertising bubble pops, it's going to go off like a fucking bomb, and we'll all be lucky to survive it.

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