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Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

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Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#721

Post by melomal »

I am enjoying seeing this coming to light more and more. Paid Ads with FB and Google used to actually be really good, they worked really well but since the influx of Drop shippers, algo updates and everything else in between they have both got really expensive and drive far fewer results.

I mentioned in another post on HN about Googles Quality Score of your ad based on 0-10 scale. There is no clear way to fix the issue, you just have to read Google's Docs and figure it out. In the mean time, you will be charged extra of the low-quality ad but it will be shown still. Now you are spending money, changing a headline here, changing a bit of text there and still you get 4/10 score.

PPC has become nothing more than gambling with it almost feeling like 'If I just change one more headline I might get rich' - this is what it has felt like to me for a long time now.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#722

Post by f430 »

KONAir wrote: post #510
dylan604 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it might appear like there's a coordinated takedown of ad tech companies going on. Oh please let it be so, even though it's just a wild ass guess. Ad "tech" has ruined the internet (only slightly hyperbolic). Oh to be able to recover the "innocence" of the late 90s internet. Maybe I should just stop browsing so I can spend more time yelling at the kids to get of my lawn

I am at a loss to this '90s innocent internet. It scared me into using adblockers for over 2 decades (which coincidentally makes the article and this whole thread completely alien to me).

You had to use an adblocker because advertisers went crazy with tracking and a lot of shady stuff.

If you've been on various internet marketing forums, you will see that this is just a group of people who weren't smart enough to land a wall street jobs but morally unhinged enough to defraud businesses.

I am already hearing about law firms sending out letters and emails to people who bought Google or Facebook ads in the past 10 years.

With the new USGOV administration hawkish towards social media/tech (essentially ad revenue dependent cmopanies) and now seeing class action lawsuit against ad tech companies, my popcorn is being prepared in the microwave.

People have no idea how lucrative ad click fraud is in the botnet market. It used to be that botnet operators DDOS for hire or install Dutch spyware toolbars, now with headless browsers and fingerprinting evasion it has become impossible to distinguish real ad impressions from fake ones.

Your only tool to fight these fraudsters are statistics but over the past 10 years the "bad guys" (I don't know who is more evil, the people defrauding businesses legally or illegally) finally figured it out. They know if they are too greedy they will be caught so they now play the long milk game.

It is incredibly lucrative. A single botnet victim can yield upwards of $2~4 in ad revenues from a variety of ad networks.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to distinguish real from fraud ad clicks/impressions since the introduction of headless browsers and fingerprint evasion

Somehow web scrapers/botnet operators have found the sweet spot. This is just like how the American Cosa Nostra working with Russian criminal groups were able to siphon off crude oil from the USGOV in the 80s.

I miss the 90s when everything was more simpler and secure as a result. You can't hack an HTML document.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#723

Post by masonic »

legitster wrote: post #283
jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

I work in digital marketing and this episode made me want to tear my ears off. First of all, they didn't differentiate between display or PPC advertising. PPC you only pay if the user actually engaged with the ad. Nearly all of the anecdotes they used where about online display advertising - a known crock. And we absolutely run experiments all the time! In fact, we tie our ad spend directly to conversions. If anythin…

  PPC you only pay if the user actually engaged with the ad
Who defines that "engagement" legitimately occurred? The ad network.

Example: TVguide.com/listings. On most devices, I get a nondismissable audio ad when I'm looking at telecast schedules. I kill the audio immediately.

I never experience the bulk of the ad, and even if I can identify the product being advertised, I'll form a strongly negative impression of them.

I don't count this as "engagement", but it's charged as that.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#724

Post by DrScump »

spoonjim wrote: post #364
jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

This is nonsense. I had a startup completely powered by Google Ads. Ads brought in nearly 100% of the traffic. When my billing information with Google got mixed up and the ads stopped, the traffic went to 0 immediately.

That means you have zero loyalty among your consumers. Don't you see that as a problem?

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#725

Post by deelowe »

ABeeSea wrote: post #345
treis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effectively every restaurant in the US has to pay either PepsiCo or Coca Cola. Similarly, if you want to buy a non-alcoholic beverage at the grocery store it's mostly down to those two (with Dr. Pepper having a much smaller but still significant stake). Any competitor that emerges just gets bought up by one of the three. Apple's half of the phone Duopoly. Either you pay them or pay Google if you want a phone and want…

Restaurants only pay because consumers demand it and would not visit the restaurant otherwise. That’s not rent seeking. That’s market forces. And what they pay correlates with how much their customers demand coke/Pepsi.

The exclusivity contracts are what some consider to be rent seeking. I don't know if this is the correct term, but I do believe they are anti-capitalist and shouldn't be allowed in a capitalist economy. If freedom of choice is so important, than large businesses shouldn't be able to use their ability to corner the market to force you into exclusivity agreements.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#726

Post by harry8 »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #667
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think should be made illegal is that Google (and others) is essentially collecting another toll even when users enter in the brand name of the target business in the first place. That is: 1. User types CompanyFoo (whose real URL is www.companyfoo.com) into their address bar, which lands them on Google (because Google owns Chrome and pays billions for the privilege on other browsers). 2. Since Google will sell…

What do you expect should happen? The browser should automatically load the first google search result? Google should prevent companies bidding on their own name? Or that they should make bidding on their own name free?

How about they clearly separate search results from ads and don't put the ads first.

There was a search engine that got really popular doing that. I think they were called Google..?

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#727

Post by takeda »

maxwelljoslyn wrote: post #615
bdefore wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much to hope for: a Chromium fork to have the search hint dropdown provide suggestions + Duck Duck Go results. And maybe block the enter key unless a resolvable address had been entered to prevent inadvertent Google searches.

I had a hunch and looked at MDN's list of web extension APIs. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... It seems like you could implement your described behavior as a cross-browser extension, for everything except Safari (and Android Firefox -_-). Easier than forking Chrome! :)

What's the point of listing Edge or Opera? Is the same damn browser as Chrome after they forgo their engines.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#728

Post by beefield »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #667
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think should be made illegal is that Google (and others) is essentially collecting another toll even when users enter in the brand name of the target business in the first place. That is: 1. User types CompanyFoo (whose real URL is www.companyfoo.com) into their address bar, which lands them on Google (because Google owns Chrome and pays billions for the privilege on other browsers). 2. Since Google will sell…

What do you expect should happen? The browser should automatically load the first google search result? Google should prevent companies bidding on their own name? Or that they should make bidding on their own name free?

Well, I think there are two options.

Either Google should take a note from the old days when they were not rent-seeking jerks but did no evil and actually distinguished search results and ads by placing the ads to the side bar.

Or their practical search monopoly and all the profitablity from there should be regulated to oblivion.

That's just what I think should happen. The sensible me understands that obviously neither is going to happen.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#729

Post by throwbacktictac »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #704
amarghose wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree in this specific situation (generally yes) - "XYZ alternative" is about as clear language as you can get. Nothing sneaky about it.

People click through search results really fast. "XYZ alternative" would be much more acceptable if it came after the real name, but putting "XYZ" as the very first word is guaranteed to cause confusion.

The result can be split two ways. Either the advertiser wasted money on a click because the consumer will seek out the true XYZ. Or the consumer will be satisfied with what they've clicked and choose to buy it.

Hopefully the metrics show that the latter is mostly happening.

It's only fraud if the advertiser counterfeits XYZ's brand on their website.

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