Ad Fraud on LinkedIn • Hacker News Board

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#161

Post by Spivak » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

rtx wrote: post #142

gknight wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, but often times in B2B advertising, your target audiences are going to be small. How would you suggest assessing the success/failure of your ad campaigns if it's an order of magnitude less than your 50k threshold?

Let's not start with the assumption that we can reach c-suite at large companies in 25 dollars per lead.

Yeah, it was a wake-up call for me that b2b tech companies are first and foremost sales companies. Once place I worked the actual product was developed and maintained by a team of about 20 people that included dev, ops, and product managers but sales was about 200 people.

Just getting a meeting with a decision maker at a med-large company could take a whole team months. I don't envy their jobs.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#162

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

rurp wrote: post #155

dylan604 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's face it Shell and Raytheon have much much larger ad buying budget than probably any/all of your actual interests combined. If Shell/Raytheon/types target the same audience as smaller vendors with smaller ad buys, then they will always lose the auction. If someone has a $500/month budget, they will lose to someone with a $5000 budget. This is why I think these "targeted" ad pushers are the actual fraud. Other me…

If this is the case then why does LI even have the "I find this ad annoying or not interesting". I thought the whole point of that option was to counteract a company that the user is explicitly not interested in from winning the ad auction. If the option doesn't work than that seems like an issue on the part of LI, either dishonesty (pretending it does something when it doesn't) or incompetence. Given the company we'…

You must be thinking that the button is meant to improve your ad experience. All ad platforms care about are fulfilling their obligation of serving ads. They claim they are targeted. Again, that's not for your enjoyment. It's a way to get advertisers to spend more money. You clicking the button says you're an actual human like the 'unsubscribe' link in spam while being a placebo. Am I cynical, maybe? Am I wrong, ??

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#163

Post by neetdeth » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #58

marcinzm wrote: 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…

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…

I’ve done the same to at least a dozen “Daily Show with Trevor Noah” ads on YouTube. I’m pretty sure there is no algorithm behind it. A switch connected to nothing that exists only to provide an outlet for user frustration.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#164

Post by tehwebguy » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

huac wrote: post #127

picodguyo wrote: post #111

I observed the same with Google's "Smart" display ads. I ran a campaign for a couple of weeks and watched all of the traffic with HotJar. The first fishy thing was 99.9% of the traffic came from foreign countries despite the target being US/Canada. When I saw the targeting wasn't effective, I even set up specific geographic exclusions for every country != US/Canada and still the traffic was from mostly underdeveloped…

the default setting on Google location targeting is/was "user in [geo] OR user 'interested' in [geo]." which is insane! but could explain the location weirdness

Wow I figured Google quietly changed this in shame when it was publicized years back. How are they still running this scam?

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#165

Post by Macha » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

radicaldreamer wrote: post #129

kzrdude wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like pay-per-click and similar models should just be discontinued, they don't work since they can be exploited. An independently verifiable metric needs to be used (if the price for the ad should be traffic or interaction based) - or something completely different. Fixed prices?

There's a large circular economy with ad buyers, marketing/PR firms, ad-tech, and ad networks going on where a large amount of fraud is overlooked/ignored because everyone's jobs and ad budgets depend on ignoring it.

Sometimes it's just priced in. If partner A has a 10% fraud rate and partner B has a 5% rate but partner A is 10% cheaper than partner B, while you'll probably complain to partner A it's still the sensible choice.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#166

Post by kyleblarson » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

josefrichter wrote: post #30

LinkedIn is the weirdest product ever. Everybody is there, nobody is using it for anything. Except shady recruiters.

And virtue signaling.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#167

Post by thiscatis » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

achairapart wrote: post #128

WY3JBHIL3KLPN5B wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priavcy is the name of the service. https://privacy.com/

Any EU alternative for privacy.com or similar services?

Revolut offers virtual and disposable cards. I've been (unethically) using them for these 1GBP / month trials a certain online newspaper offers.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#168

Post by picodguyo » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #160

picodguyo wrote: post #111

I observed the same with Google's "Smart" display ads. I ran a campaign for a couple of weeks and watched all of the traffic with HotJar. The first fishy thing was 99.9% of the traffic came from foreign countries despite the target being US/Canada. When I saw the targeting wasn't effective, I even set up specific geographic exclusions for every country != US/Canada and still the traffic was from mostly underdeveloped…

I work at Hotjar and love it that you're getting value out of the product! We do try to not record bots that advertise known user agents, like Google, Bing and other common ones. Reasoning being that recording non-humans will usually not tell you much about how your UX is optimized for humans. It's really interesting that somehow the fact that we recorded these less known user agent bots actually made the product mor…

I promise I'm not a shill, but yes I do indeed love HotJar and find it essential for getting new sites off the ground. I've uncovered countless UX improvements by watching HotJar recordings. And thanks for your generous free tier!

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#169

Post by smnscu » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #26

marcinzm wrote: 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…

> No, if the only option you give me is "Request Demo" but all I want is more info then I'll click "Request Demo." Then when I don't get more info or info that I like I'll bail. Exactly. Even if I was thinking about requesting a demo when I clicked the ad, I then want to see a lot of information on the target site before proceeding. I'm not going to sign up for a demo unless I think there's a pretty good chance I'll…

No, thanks. Unless the person giving me the demo is the CEO, their entire salary and taxes are being taken out of my price, and it's most likely not the kind of company I want to do business with.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#170

Post by beervirus » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #160

picodguyo wrote: post #111

I observed the same with Google's "Smart" display ads. I ran a campaign for a couple of weeks and watched all of the traffic with HotJar. The first fishy thing was 99.9% of the traffic came from foreign countries despite the target being US/Canada. When I saw the targeting wasn't effective, I even set up specific geographic exclusions for every country != US/Canada and still the traffic was from mostly underdeveloped…

I work at Hotjar and love it that you're getting value out of the product! We do try to not record bots that advertise known user agents, like Google, Bing and other common ones. Reasoning being that recording non-humans will usually not tell you much about how your UX is optimized for humans. It's really interesting that somehow the fact that we recorded these less known user agent bots actually made the product mor…

Sounds creepy af. It's stuff like this that makes me keep javascript disabled whenever possible.