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Insane state of today's advertising part 3

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Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#21

Post by tomlor »

nomel wrote: post #8
heartbreak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money. They’re faking ad delivery.

Do the ad suppliers have some sort of analytics in place to catch fraud like this? "This ip viewed 200 adds within 10 seconds!"

Not really, all these shenanigans occur in a nested series of iframes. The original webpage that served up the initial ad iframe can't see down into these. Whatever supply partner the webpage is using doesn't want to shed light of this to the publisher or else that supply partner may be replaced.

This issue is illuminated to some degree by 3rd party ad analytics companies that monitor this via crawlers and user panels. This problem is also attacked from the advertiser side that will use 'viewability' providers to ensure their ad is, well, viewed.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#22

Post by mej10 »

btown wrote: post #12

[EDIT: As other commenters have mentioned, the simpler answer is that OP's ad is probably an instance of click fraud. Setting that aside, though, the phenomenon I describe below is likely still in effect, even with players playing by the rules.] I imagine that every stakeholder wants verifiable information that the ad was viewed. It would seem to be a problem of both trust (if some centralized ad server was to stream…

There are other ad server as API companies that provide raw logs of event data. Even DFP has that.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#23

Post by Cursuviam »

baron816 wrote: post #19

A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with intrusive ads. Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.

It's been done, but they ran into trouble with New Jersey for a bit.

https://www.eff.org/cases/rubin-v-new-jersey-tidbit

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#25

Post by mej10 »

baron816 wrote: post #19

A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with intrusive ads. Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.

More efficient to separate the mining aspect and just send a micropayment in a web request.

Brave (the browser) implements of version of this.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#26

Post by darawk »

mej10 wrote: post #25
baron816 wrote: post #19

A bit off topic, but something I'm interested in: would it be possible for a website to generate revenue by using client machines to mine crypto currencies? I would rather go to a website that uses up my CPU and network resources doing that than use up my CPU and network resources AND spam me with intrusive ads. Edit: solid answers to my question. Thanks everyone.

More efficient to separate the mining aspect and just send a micropayment in a web request. Brave (the browser) implements of version of this.

While true, using a browser for mining doesn't require the user to have any cryptocurrency, or even know what cryptocurrency is. It also has a similarly opaque cost to them (in the form of electricity).

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#27

Post by ghughes »

allanbreyes wrote: post #16
doctorless wrote: post #7

I'm actually rather surprised that companies like Google aren't offering solutions to integrate ads into the delivery of the page content itself rather than JavaScript at this point, as it's pretty easy to block the specific domains serving ads. It seems relatively straightforward; the ads would be pre-rendered on the server providing the response and could send the same info a script would for the most part, especia…

I never quite understood why domain-blocking works so well for ad-blockers. I'm surprised why sites don't just use a reverse proxy or something to serve from those ad domains. What am I missing?

That's exactly what the adtech industry is starting to do. They've even got WordPress and Cloudflare plugins that can dynamically reinsert blocked ads via their proxy.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#29

Post by ars »

mjevans wrote: post #18
heartbreak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money. They’re faking ad delivery.

Reflecting on your statement and the 'incompetence' statement... maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time. (As a consumer, I actually hate all ads; they belong as suggested discount incentives after searches; when I'm actually /looking/ for something.)

> maybe they're trying to prove an ad displayed for a given duration of time.

If that was their goal then 1 request per second would be more than sufficient (and also excessive), but the animated image seems to show a continuous flood of requests.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#30

Post by duncan_bayne »

ghughes wrote: post #27
allanbreyes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood why domain-blocking works so well for ad-blockers. I'm surprised why sites don't just use a reverse proxy or something to serve from those ad domains. What am I missing?

That's exactly what the adtech industry is starting to do. They've even got WordPress and Cloudflare plugins that can dynamically reinsert blocked ads via their proxy.

Just wait for Bayesian filters that block specific areas of the downloaded content.
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