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Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

buzzfeednews.com

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Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#12

Post by dang »

randomfinn wrote: post #3

The link is blog spam, original article is at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/in-banne...

Thanks. Url changed from https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/22/18276542/scam-hidden-vide....

Submitters: please read and follow the guidelines. They include: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#13

Post by dang »

fxfan wrote: post #6
randomfinn wrote: post #3

The link is blog spam, original article is at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/in-banne...

The verge is not blogspam - its long form tabloid

"Blogspam" is more an article attribute than a site attribute. In this case the article was a couple paragraphs lifted from another source, which is usually how people use the term.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#14

Post by dang »

senectus1 wrote: post #9
myth17 wrote: post #8

How are they making money by draining batteries?

the answer is in the Title of TFA: This Giant Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users' Batteries And Data By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android Apps

The originally submitted article didn't have that title (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459834).

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#16

Post by TheIronMark »

myth17 wrote: post #8

How are they making money by draining batteries?

The buzzfeed article goes into more detail, but the short answer is that the fraudsters buy a cheap banner ad in an app. They then resell that space for a higher fee, running a video that is hidden behind the banner ad. Because the video just keeps running, the brand whose ad it is ends up paying even more to the fraudsters.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#17

Post by narrator »

drilldrive wrote: post #7
zamalek wrote: post #4

It's crazy that ads have reached through point where impressions-without-impressions are lucrative. If I was the type of scumbag to pay large amounts of money for data hungry ads, I'd be furious. But, they don't care? Are ads now just a sunk cost with no ROI analysis? Is it like a gym membership?

I think that the issue here is little to no access to a more detailed portfolio of the ads ran on your platform, as you are generally going through a middle-man, which in this case is the scammer by selling to providers on their front than they are paying you for.

I think the issue is that there are lots of number crunchers out there thinking :

"Well this ad campaign is profitable when we spend $100 on highly targeted Facebook ads, let's spend $10000... Oh they don't have that many impressions to sell us..."

"Where are we going to get all those ad impressions from?"

"Shady Bob's affiliate network has millions of impressions to sell us!"

"Great. That should work. The sky's the limit on this ad campaign! We're going to be rich!"

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#18

Post by distant_hat »

YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #2

I used to date a girl who had a Galaxy S8 from sprint and that phone had most ridiculous ads like online casino ads, everywhere, even on lock screen.

A few years back Lockscreen was identified as one of the most underutilized real estate on the mobile phone. So a lot of phone companies started selling it to the highest bidder. While Samsung shouldn't be needing it, a lot of the lower end Chinese companies make razor thin margins on the phones, even if a company offered $1-3 for pre-installing an always running app that would show ads to users, they'd happily take it.

Re: Ad Fraud Scheme Drained Users’ Batteries By Running Hidden Video Ads In Android

#19

Post by rjbwork »

drilldrive wrote: post #7
zamalek wrote: post #4

It's crazy that ads have reached through point where impressions-without-impressions are lucrative. If I was the type of scumbag to pay large amounts of money for data hungry ads, I'd be furious. But, they don't care? Are ads now just a sunk cost with no ROI analysis? Is it like a gym membership?

I think that the issue here is little to no access to a more detailed portfolio of the ads ran on your platform, as you are generally going through a middle-man, which in this case is the scammer by selling to providers on their front than they are paying you for.

One of the issues is that there just isn't that many advertiser focused platforms that give the advertisers the data they need to actually do the analysis of that ROI. So they just kind of spray and pray sometimes.
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