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Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

samueljscott.com

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Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#281

Post by srtjstjsj »

picodguyo wrote: post #227
AlexandrB wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What matters is consent.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#282

Post by srtjstjsj »

GordonS wrote: post #192
zaroth wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the adult-oriented ads paid upwards of $0.50/click. Your parents would definitely wonder why you were receiving checks in the mail from Xpics . Once I left the Visual Basic scripted web control running overnight by mistake...

I used to do the same thing, but I don't think any of them were adult sites. It was all done through some kind of ads broker, and the cheques came directly from them. Looking back, it was pretty shitty behaviour by me, but as a 14 year old boy, it just didn't even feel like a crime, even a victimsless one; it almost felt entrepreneurial.

Your 14 year old self learned the core lesson of business success.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#284

Post by ffpip »

AlexandrB wrote: post #204
ffpip wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it won't. Clicking on random ads doesn't increase privacy. It just changes what the advertiser thinks of your interests. To load an ad, you have to allow trackers. If you allow a tracker, you might as well allow the ad instead of hiding it. AdNauseam just hides it.

> It just changes what the advertiser thinks of your interests. How is this not increasing privacy? The point is to keep my real interests private from creepy marketing departments.

> The point is to keep my real interests private from creepy marketing departments.

Which is why you block all ads? Companies don't care about 'real interests'. They see the things you click on and show you more ads based on it. They earn money. That's it.

The marketing department knows the sites you visit because it has to serve the ad so this thing can click on it.

Use uBlock Origin.

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#285

Post by neop1x »

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…

There is also a more broad article about ad fraud I found interesting https://clearcode.cc/blog/rtb-online-advertising-fraud/

I can imagine that ad fraud prevention must be a hard task, probably requiring AI/ML nowadays. But I don't like that fact because it will probably force website owners to add more behavior tracking and analytics events on every web page. That will end up with more websockets, more memory and longer loading times and higher UI latencies and further worsenijg thr web browsing experience which is already pretty bad. :(

Re: Ad Fraud on LinkedIn

#286

Post by 35mm »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #271
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…

So would this then mean that Google's Adwords program for advertising your business based on keywords and target countries or regions is broken and unusable for business owners? (at least not profitably usable). I've read very different from other commentators right here on HN who claim that Google ads work well for them and likewise I've heard plenty of anecdote from users of Facebook's and other ad platforms that t…

I think it depends if you’re doing Direct Response Ads, or branding.

With DR if your sales / leads are not generating a Return on Adspend (ROAS), you will change or stop advertising.

With branding, you might not even notice that Google is sending traffic from the wrong country. And you might be happy with the great looking vanity metrics.

My experience with Google (YouTube) Ads is that they work extremely well. I use them to generate leads for solar panel installers.

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