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Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

samueljscott.com

221–230 of 286 posts

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#221
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people use it. The feed aspect of it is useless. But in terms of a network it's great. I've found 2 out of my last 3 jobs there. Assume it's also great for organic marketing as well where you target associates of your current clients.

So it's a digital rolodex. That's not terribly impressive for the weight of the name.

> it's a digital rolodex. That's not terribly impressive for the weight of the name.

It's an automatically-updating and linked rolodex. Rolodexes tell you that you know X. They don't say who X knows.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#222
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Sometimes it's just priced in. Agreed. The real losers are the genuine content creators, as the adcash isn’t flowing to them. They can’t just average it out.

Yep. Got banned from Google ad mob because the ads I bought using other Google services gave me traffic that was deemed to be fraud.

Of course there’s no way to contact and tell Google that Google gave me fraud traffic and got me banned from Google.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#223
This is a reminder to myself to someday explain how these ad-click botnets work, how they make money directly and indirectly by clicking on your ads, and why the big ad tech companies need them to survive.

The open question is whether there will still be perceived value when these things are known. So far, I don’t see ad spending affected by these exposes.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#224
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like the "systemic failures" that brought down the housing market in 2008. It's always been a surprise to me how much money is flowing from ads and how any business can be so reliant on it, since this makes it sound like it's fundamentally flawed. One would think the jig would eventually be up.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the jig is finally up, since there's so much stuff we're used to getting for free that is currently financed by all of this: email, maps and GPS navigation, staying in contact with college friends, ...

FOSS and paid services will rise and shine.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#226
We experienced a similar issue with LinkedIn ads, we had a small campaign for two weeks to a page which was only designated for this specific LinkedIn campaign. Apparently we got a few clicks (around 30) but there was not one single request for that page in our webserver logs.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I wonder what your users would think of the fact that their every click was being recorded. I suspect the reason most people are not worried about this kind of stuff is that they're not aware how creepy it actually is.

I can respect that some people find it creepy, and I personally use AdBlock, which blocks HotJar as others mentioned. That said, I find a tool that records anonymous sessions detached from any sort of PII or even IP address much less offensive than something like Google Analytics, social login, or literally any advertising pixel.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was contracting a lot of my peers got forced into having a limited company as their clients didn't want to be deemed their employer.

When it comes to both taxes (in the UK you can be more tax efficient than trading as a sole trader) and limited liability, why wouldn't you want to have a limited company?

Considering all the new developments in the UK, all at the expense of the employee, there's a real business opportunity for someone who can help workers incorporate themselves as contractors under their individual limited companies. Especially when companieshouse has as much oversight on the database as I know about isolated Renshaw flux oscillation signatures.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the banks offer it online as part of the service?

Not all. A major US Bank (rhymes w/ Pace Bank) used to provide this feature back in the 2000s and then rolled it back. I discovered this ~4 months ago when I wanted to buy something online but didn't fully trust the vendor. Then ended up going with Privacy.com. I'm a huge fan and would def recommend them to anyone looking for better control over subscription charges

Apple Card does this (and obviously Apple Pay in general). It's not nearly as powerful as Privacy though since the card numbers can't be cancelled or paused from what I can tell.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#230

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…

you sure you setup your campaign correctly? from what it sounds like, you didn't limit your campaign to search. also it would be VERY interesting to see how you not only setup your ad group but also what keywords you used for each group. typically when we see people complain about ad fraud we see alot of basic mistakes that they made when setting up their campaign. i hate to say it, but 99% of the people out that cla…

As mentioned, this was Google's Smart (display) Ads not their traditional search ads. I've had good success with the latter but decided to try the former on their suggestion.
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