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Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

samueljscott.com

71–80 of 286 posts

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#71
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of reason is exactly why I started using one time credit cards (privacy) for new service signups.

What do you use to generate the one-time numbers?

I'm guessing @derwiki's parenthetical "(privacy)" is a reference to privacy.com, which is a service for doing exactly that.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#73
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of reason is exactly why I started using one time credit cards (privacy) for new service signups.

What do you use to generate the one-time numbers?

Priavcy is the name of the service.

https://privacy.com/

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#74
post #28
post #5

Hard to know how much is ad fraud and how much is people just not being interested in what is being advertised. Don't see why I should care about yet another webinar especially if I'm already a successful CEO and get five thousand webinar requests a day. Might click for more info but then after 10 seconds on the page (and seeing it's more BS) I'll probably bail. Same as this quote: >“You’ll see the call to action is…

"LinkedIn says 11, our server logs show 10, our actual reporting software's only showing 8 people. The only reason that we would not see them pop up in this logging tool is that they were on the site and bounced so quickly that the logging tool was unable to load and capture anything of their session [We've went back and forth will the session recording company multiple times to confirm that]" Seems awareness of ad/t…

The users we are talking about started by clicking an ad on LinkedIn. Seems pretty safe to assume they're not running ad blockers?

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#75
post #28
post #5

Hard to know how much is ad fraud and how much is people just not being interested in what is being advertised. Don't see why I should care about yet another webinar especially if I'm already a successful CEO and get five thousand webinar requests a day. Might click for more info but then after 10 seconds on the page (and seeing it's more BS) I'll probably bail. Same as this quote: >“You’ll see the call to action is…

"LinkedIn says 11, our server logs show 10, our actual reporting software's only showing 8 people. The only reason that we would not see them pop up in this logging tool is that they were on the site and bounced so quickly that the logging tool was unable to load and capture anything of their session [We've went back and forth will the session recording company multiple times to confirm that]" Seems awareness of ad/t…

> The only reason that we would not see them pop up in this logging tool is that they were on the site and bounced so quickly that the logging tool was unable to load and capture anything of their session.

I'm really happy to hear this shows up in site metrics, since it's exactly what I do when I follow a link into ad-laden crap. I don't block ads by default, but I also have zero tolerance for keeping crap open.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they advertise increased click-through rate and they increase it, what stops them from claiming they fulfilled their end of the bargain? It could even be click bots.

Fraud is not a valid way to fulfill your end of a contract ;)

That only matters if you can prove there was fraud.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#77
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I thought the whole point of a corporation is that it is greater than one person. No, it is the limited liability. Don't want to lose your house because of a bad business deal.

Exactly - although most jurisdictions do require that a corporation have more than one person involved; in the UK you can have a corporation with one director but it must have a secretary as well.

In india, they added OPC (one person company) which is an extension of limited liability for individuals. I think it's becoming quite common across countries.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#78
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason or other LinkedIn keeps thinking I must be very interested in Shell and Raytheon, though that couldn't be farther off the mark. Having selected "I find this ad annoying or not interesting" numerous times without any effect. What is this algorithm behind that thinking? Certainly not a good way to get some ad revenue from me (tbh I'm a lost cause anyway in that regard.. can count the no. of ad clicks I…

> Having selected "I find this ad annoying or not interesting" numerous times without any effect. What is this algorithm behind that thinking? Just because you're not interested in hearing it doesn't mean advertisers don't want to try to tell you anyway.

Or LI tells these advertisers "my my do I have this large interesting target group based on your criteria" which was a bit inflated. Who knows.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#79

I lost a couple of thousand dollars using their services (literally 5x my ad budget) because they "refill" your ad account based on the ceiling you intend to spend - without an email notification or other notification in your main profile. It cycled through my ~$300 ad budget and charged me that amount multiple times before I caught it on my bill. Never received the refund they said they'd send either. People say tha…

Seems they’re still as shady as ever...

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#80
Sooo, I've spent hundreds of thousands on LinkedIn Ads on behalf of clients. Here is my take:

Ad platforms work in varying degrees for different products and companies. You should not dismiss an ad platform based on poor performance alone without understanding why it performed poorly.

It's sort of like with airlines: If you boycott an airline for every minor offense, pretty soon you'll have no option but to take the train.

In this case, it's disingenuous to paint an entire ad platform--that does hundreds of millions in revenue[1]--as "awash in mistaken clicks and bot traffic" based on a campaign that ran for just 1.5 days and resulted in 11 clicks. (They say they saw similar results from larger campaigns, but they don't show them.)

But Ok, let's say we take out the generalizations. I get that it's disconcerting for any company to find they were charged for traffic that bounced within a second. In that case you need to look for the root cause, and see if it can be resolved or worked around.

In this case the root cause should be painfully obvious to experienced marketers like the authors: Most of the 11 clicks seems to be from mobile traffic (as seen in their Fullstory report), where it is remarkably easy for users to accidentally click on an ad in their news feed. They do mention this possibility in both the video and the title, but they seem to underestimate the likelihood of this being the root cause, and talk too much about bots instead. I've seen this exact misclick behavior in Twitter and for that reason I stopped advertising there.

Unlike Twitter, however, LinkedIn lets you work around this. They offer a "lead gen" campaign type, which requires two clicks (one on the ad, and one more on the "submit form" button) and sharing of contact information before the advertiser is charged. I've still seen funky results from this--such as users saying they don't recall submitting any form--but in much fewer cases than with simple image ads.

Today, when I run LinkedIn campaigns, it is almost always with lead gen ads. The results are far better than this anecdotal post suggests. Some issues still come up, and I've found that attempting to troubleshoot them leads to a better outcome for the business than dismissing the entire ad platform.

[0] https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-ad-campaigns-fail/ [1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/linkedin-statistics/#3

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