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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

#851

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rtkwe wrote: post #840
modin wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with kitchen appliances, but not limited to Facebook. I'm not going to buy another refrigerator for at least 10 years, but still I'm treated as Mr Fridge.

Honestly this might be a good thing, it seems to show that ad networks don't have or at least don't provide your actual purchase history to the ad space buyers because given that info they probably wouldn't be spamming someone who just bought a $thing with ads for $thing_but_from_us. As annoying as it is it's probably better than the alternative of ubiquitous access to your purchase history.

Yup, this is the problem. There is no centralised log of what people bought, which is what you'd need to actually fix this problem.

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

#852

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #808
TriNetra wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For ex, one ad network launched “battery saver” style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone. > When you type the word “Uber” into your Google Play, it auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves. Isn't above an example of a criminal intent of deliberate fraud?

Ad fraud is HUGE online.

In display, at least. It's not massively common with either Google or Facebook (assuming you avoid their networks), which is part of the reason that both of them make so much money.

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

#853

Post by missedthecue »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #707
doopy1 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distilling it down into "any particular advertising campaign" is pretty myopic in this world. It's about strategy as a whole over decades. Not every ad campaign is to drive immediate sales or signups (direct response). Branding and awareness campaigns can take years to run, and these are ALL diligently measured at every stage. Losses do occur do to negligence, malice, and poor execution all the time, but the brands s…

No matter what time scale you pick, there's still a point where ad spending costs more than you benefit. As time passes, the boost from any campaign decays. For any particular person you only need to show them so many ads to maintain awareness. > these are ALL diligently measured at every stage Mmm. Sometimes. Sure, you can obsessively measure audience and sales numbers, but if you don't have any controls then it bec…

it is true that that profit/loss point exists, but it may be impossible to measure. But it's very clear that 75+ years of Coca Cola marketing strategy has produced the situation where any human on earth immediately associates "Coca Cola" with soft drink.

If Coca Cola cut advertising 90% this afternoon, they likely wouldn't see the consequences until a new generation or two grew up.

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

#854

Post by missedthecue »

choward wrote: post #838
specialist wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get downvoted whenever I propose digital advertising bubble will pop once people wise up to the fraud.

I think the next major recession is going to be triggered by this bubble popping.

Why would it cause a recession? Google and Facebook would report lower numbers, literally every other company on earth would save more money.

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

#855

Post by SilasX »

aerosmile wrote: post #507
SilasX wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so their marketers are unwilling to do anything that would reveal ad ineffectiveness, and you consider that an argument in favor of the claim that ads are effective (the topic at this point in the thread)? Like, you take that as a signal that marketers would converge on effective ads?

My point is that we have to differentiate between bad employees and the overall effectiveness of ads. The latter is all about incrementality. When you adjust for it, you get the true effectiveness of ads. In some instances, the incrementality will be significant, in others it won't. It looks like that in Uber's case, the incrementality was low. Btw, if you're not familiar with this term, please look it up - there's a…

You think Uber's marketing people are extreme outliers compared to the typical large company?

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

#856

Post by iamacyborg »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #852
iamacyborg wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad fraud is HUGE online.

In display, at least. It's not massively common with either Google or Facebook (assuming you avoid their networks), which is part of the reason that both of them make so much money.

I don't think that's true, just that fraud is different on those platforms. I suspect it depends on how you define fraud but certainly if a platform tells me I'm bidding to show adverts to customers who match criteria X, then I expect them to match that criteria.

Unfortunately, that's frequently not the case.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2019.118...

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

#857

Post by manigandham »

polk wrote: post #793
manigandham wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a superficial analysis at best. Adtech produces petabytes of data every day proving that advertising works. There's a reason why two of the most valuable internet companies sell ads. The problem is knowing exactly which formats and campaigns are working down to the dollar, but part of that is just the reality of fuzzy attribution and it's only getting harder as privacy regulations get stronger. However you c…

The implication here is that money spent on ads is largely wasted. Companies like Uber and Ebay have turned off all their adspend and saw little to no change in their acquisition metrics. You can argue that they were just doing it wrong. But the point is that, if even they are doing it wrong - and getting nothing in return for the millions they're spending on ads - then it's very likely most others are in the same si…

Why the ad spend isn't working is a critical detail. It's definitely not most money but yes there's a lost of waste because it's a 12 figure industry with lots of politics, perverse incentives, thousands of vendors, and a complex global supply chain.

Fraud is a special case because it's criminal activity and has nothing to do with advertising. It happens in every industry but it's especially easy with online technology spanning multiple countries and data that can be easily faked. Uber was exceedingly oblivious here but I wouldn't extrapolate advertising efficacy from these examples.

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

#858

Post by User23 »

crakhamster01 wrote: post #666
voxl wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, thanks for your experience, but can't comment on the argument provided? Isn't it possible that these experiments you talk about are fatally flawed? I have serious doubts that a company can run and do well designed statistical experiments when academic experts are plagued by p-hacking and other foot guns.

I'm not sure what argument you're referring to? I quoted two claims from the parent comment and refuted those based off of industry experience. > I have serious doubts that a company can run and do well designed statistical experiments when academic experts are plagued by p-hacking and other foot guns. By "company" are you referring to individual advertisers or digital advertising platforms? Why do you doubt that eit…

Another option is that the experiment design was wrong for every single one of those experiments. Sounds unlikely right? Running the same broken experiment any number of times won't change that it's broken. So if these "100 million+" ad experiments are more or less copies of each other they could all be wrong. How likely is that? I don't know, but I do know that at a big Silicon Valley tech company that you've definitely heard of I was involved in an exercise where we were told to create an experiment. The type A take charge person in our group did what they do, which in this case was talking over and shutting down the Los Alamos trained particle physicist who was trying to explain to her why her "experiment" could never show anything.

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

#859

Post by joshspankit »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #851
rtkwe wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this might be a good thing, it seems to show that ad networks don't have or at least don't provide your actual purchase history to the ad space buyers because given that info they probably wouldn't be spamming someone who just bought a $thing with ads for $thing_but_from_us. As annoying as it is it's probably better than the alternative of ubiquitous access to your purchase history.

Yup, this is the problem. There is no centralised log of what people bought, which is what you'd need to actually fix this problem.

A good argument, but it happens on Amazon when the search, research, and purchase were all on Amazon.

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

#860

Post by Miraste »

fredophile wrote: post #824
SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm pretty sure that if I typed foo in my browser back in the early 2000s I'd go to foo.com or www.foo.com. Now I type foo in Chrome, see the logo for foo, but end up at a Google search page. This is very clearly a step back in terms of user experience.

In modern Safari this pattern will often take you directly to the website (or some other, non-Google website when it guesses wrong). When it works it's very nice.
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