Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video ads are intolerable. Whenever they exist, they spawn an arms war of dark patterns to get and stop them from auto-playing, without warning, at maximum volume. The Facebook Android app is gawdawful for this; I just discovered that you can put it into some sort of a data-saving mode, which seems to stop auto-play for the moment... but time will tell. And though we're supposed to be bagging on Facebook here, YouTub…
I think what’s shocking is how awful a lot of the targeting is. Even before I started getting super aggressive about blocking all trackers, I regularly got fed ads for products and services I didn’t need, and in languages I couldn’t understand. The most confusing is that I keep getting ads from the same company I bought my wedding ring at. Like, I’m not divorced, and I don’t need a second. Why would they re-target me…
Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
141–150 of 185 posts
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#142Pretty sure Twitter has an ad metrics problem too. As I wrote last year: > When I ran a Twitter Ads campaign for one of my clients, within two days I noticed that Google Analytics was reporting nearly 100% fewer visitors from the campaign than Twitter was reporting clicks. That is, if Twitter counted (and charged for) 100 clicks, Google Analytics showed fewer than 5 visitors from the campaign. > The support team at T…
Why do you (and why do people in general) not use server logs for analytics of this sort? Seems like it might show requests that failed to get to the point of processing the analytics JS as well as those running adblockers.
Off-the-shelf analytics solutions have a ton of heuristics and in-house knowledge built up over decades that help deal with inherently janky data. For example: over half of all internet traffic these days is bots. All modern analytics solutions know how to discriminate bot traffic (to an acceptable extent), you would have to re-create that or get heavily skewed data. As another example, inferring geography from IP: Google, Adobe, etc maintain their own in-house databases for this sort of thing.
Analytics solutions can be configured to send data for interactions that don't involve a page load. There are a lot of interactions that won't put anything into the logfile unless you re-invent tracking beacons. The situation gets more complicated for Single-Page Applications for both types of tracking, but generally the solutions for off-the-shelf technologies are more understood and can be applied more generally.
For another thing, cost and ease of access. Google Analytics has a free version. And for businesses, many of the people who want data work in marketing or UX, not the sort of people who have various types of expertise to dig around in logfiles. At the level of effort it would take for someone to build a logfile tool or learn to dig through the data, GA would offer more benefit at lower cost.
For a solo dev or small team running a not-too-complicated website, logfile parsing may make sense. For a large-enough organization, a custom solution that addresses their specific needs may make sense. But aside from a few sweet spots, most off-the-shelf tools are going to give a better benefit at lower cost. This is especially true of companies that have different teams with different needs and skills, and that benefit from integrations with other tools (like testing or personalization platforms).
Also, slightly-less related... analytics load time is not always a dominant factor in not recording clicks. Most clicks on ads go through a chain of redirects through a half-dozen different services that set cookies, read cookies, attach data, increment counters, etc. There's a large window where a user can cancel navigation before a request is made to the website. Analytics should run pretty fast, unless there is a long time in-between when your server receives the initial request and when the user begins to receive HTML.
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#143I work in ad-tech and let me tell you all these wall gardens are so arrogant that they create their own metrics for measurement and bully industry (especially marketers to follow them). I strongly believe only way to bring these mega companies to senses and rein in on their arrogance by trust busting and creating level playing field for competition. We need DOJ and anti-trust into big 3 oligopoly (GOOG, FB, AMZN) to…
I'm just wondering, at how many companies does a oligopoly become a healthy, competitive environment?
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#144I work in ad-tech and let me tell you all these wall gardens are so arrogant that they create their own metrics for measurement and bully industry (especially marketers to follow them). I strongly believe only way to bring these mega companies to senses and rein in on their arrogance by trust busting and creating level playing field for competition. We need DOJ and anti-trust into big 3 oligopoly (GOOG, FB, AMZN) to…
>I work in ad-tech You just lost literally all of the default credibility that arbitrary humans get.
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#145Pretty sure Twitter has an ad metrics problem too. As I wrote last year: > When I ran a Twitter Ads campaign for one of my clients, within two days I noticed that Google Analytics was reporting nearly 100% fewer visitors from the campaign than Twitter was reporting clicks. That is, if Twitter counted (and charged for) 100 clicks, Google Analytics showed fewer than 5 visitors from the campaign. > The support team at T…
A billion dollar business relying such a shallow dark-ui technique for it's main source of revenue. The state of marketing departments in companies must be a joke if this is how Facebook and Twitter are milking them. I imagine billions of dollars are being wasted in companies with no return value in the name of "marketing". And if anyone ever thinks Facebook and Twitter are actual competition to Google in ad market t…
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#146Pretty sure Twitter has an ad metrics problem too. As I wrote last year: > When I ran a Twitter Ads campaign for one of my clients, within two days I noticed that Google Analytics was reporting nearly 100% fewer visitors from the campaign than Twitter was reporting clicks. That is, if Twitter counted (and charged for) 100 clicks, Google Analytics showed fewer than 5 visitors from the campaign. > The support team at T…
Honest question - who here has done Twitter ads and got positive ROI? AdWords/Bing/Facebook all seem to "work", but I've never found Twitter to be fruitful..at all.
Facebook to actually advertise to my customer base.
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#147I have mentioned that several times before, but I always believed that FB's but also Google's metrics are at least borderline fraudulent. Inflated by bots and apps that simulate DAUs and clicks. I only have anecdotal evidence from Google, where I was frequently charged over my campaign limit on ad clicks that I could never validate on my own site. I believe FB is same.
I personally suspect that’s why Twitter has failed to deal with their bot problem, fixing it would make their usage metrics plumit.
For example, their latest solution is to prevent you from having the exact same name as a famous person. Notice all the bots now have the name "Elon" or "Elon Mu5k" when responding to Elon Musk.
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The explanation is solid, but that doesn't excuse Twitter. If you charge for clicks you should do your best to make sure that the clicks are genuine, not design a user interface where 95% of clicks are caused by bad interface design.
I spoke with a someone recently who uses gmail on his Android device. An ad at the top that resembles an email appears about a second after his real emails appear, timed perfectly to interrupt his attempt to tap and read his first email. Of course he immediately goes back if he makes the mistake, but google probably still charges the advertiser for a click. (This doesn't happen on my phone but I am more likely to hav…
gmail on Android has ads? and they're disguised as email messages?
... no wonder they're killing Inbox
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just wondering, at how many companies does a oligopoly become a healthy, competitive environment?
I once saw an economics paper that used a simple model and showed that when the top 4 companies in a given industry controlled more than 60% of the market they would naturally behave like a cartel even if they weren't coordinating. So that's probably the tipping point.
Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit
#150Seems to be a pretty big nail in the coffin for them and this is just the tip of the iceberg. lol. A class action of one of their core revenue streams is going to be very expensive. I think we should just make Facebook a public utility, and do them like the utility companies were done; congress can easily decide to transfer control of the company and all of its assets in a single resolution. Then, drastically reduce…