When using Facebook ads I am fine with that.
First I argent for likes, after getting a lot of likes on the ad (from bots?) I switch to targeting the right demographic
Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
21–30 of 342 posts
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#22If you are paying any bill for ads, make sure you only pay for conversions . Ie. unless the customer actually buys your product, then don't pay anything. Eg. instead of paying $0.002 per view of your ad, or $0.10 per click of your ad, pay $6 per person who clicks your ad and then buys your product. That way, ad fraud doesn't affect you. Plenty of ad providers allow such an option. Internally, they convert your paymen…
Question: how do they know if you're playing fairly and tell them of the conversion? Also, do they get the customer's personal data that is involved in the purchase?
They don't. But if you don't pay them enough, ad-companies will stop sending you any customers at all, and instead put their efforts into catering to other higher-paying clients. So you are incentivized to make a good ad campaign that generates a lot of sales.
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#23When I worked in adtech, I proposed a simple solution to ad fraud on our platform - assume any UA coming from an IP range owned by a cloud provider was a bot and don't show them ads, don't count their impressions. Worst case, people using a VPN hosted on EC2 might not see an ad, but I was certain they'd cope. Best case, higher quality traffic increases yields. The business team vetoed that, it would adversely impact…
> Then there were all the "bonuses" and "incentives" negotiated with big advertisers or publishers. We just referred to them as kickbacks But every time I propose that market without rules at all leads to corriluption and inefficiency, people get up in arms
Markets are, in a sense, defined by rules.
Perhaps the argument goes better if you say competition without rules leads to mafia, ie., people stop competing and form gangs -- since this is more efficient for them. These gangs then monopolise trade, and use violence to stop people competing with them.
If they disagree, you can always point to the state itself as an example. But likewise, without a winning mafia to set the rules, others arise quickly. No group wants to compete, the want to have already won.
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then there were all the "bonuses" and "incentives" negotiated with big advertisers or publishers. your firm's higher ups received bonsues/incentives from publishers and/or big advertisers directly?
No. When the ad spent increases the sales person, manager etc. get a bonus. And you don‘t do anything to improve quality which would reduce ad spend.
What kind of rational system would ever incentivize spending rather than results (aka sales?). Sounds like the marketing equivalent of being paid by the line of code.
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#25If you are paying any bill for ads, make sure you only pay for conversions . Ie. unless the customer actually buys your product, then don't pay anything. Eg. instead of paying $0.002 per view of your ad, or $0.10 per click of your ad, pay $6 per person who clicks your ad and then buys your product. That way, ad fraud doesn't affect you. Plenty of ad providers allow such an option. Internally, they convert your paymen…
This has been around for a long time, but which major ad providers offer this?
Google adwords does:
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6268632?hl=en-G...
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question: how do they know if you're playing fairly and tell them of the conversion? Also, do they get the customer's personal data that is involved in the purchase?
Usually there's a magic pixel that you embed on the checkout success page or a callback you invoke. I suppose people could cheat, but if your ad never converts, the network has no incentive to run it.
This has major privacy and GDPR implications though.
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#27If anyone wants additional insights, I spoke with an ad fraud researcher on this topic during the pandemic. He had a lot of interesting things to say.
https://www.mql.fm/002-60-million-60-billion-ad-fraud-questi...
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#28When I worked in adtech, I proposed a simple solution to ad fraud on our platform - assume any UA coming from an IP range owned by a cloud provider was a bot and don't show them ads, don't count their impressions. Worst case, people using a VPN hosted on EC2 might not see an ad, but I was certain they'd cope. Best case, higher quality traffic increases yields. The business team vetoed that, it would adversely impact…
> Then there were all the "bonuses" and "incentives" negotiated with big advertisers or publishers. We just referred to them as kickbacks But every time I propose that market without rules at all leads to corriluption and inefficiency, people get up in arms
The markets are working.
1. Even with the bots, the price made sense for advertisers for so long because of how cheap ads were. 2. Its starting to not make as much sense and now we are getting these accusations thrown at platforms etc.
TLDR: Markets work but just not real time and not very perfectly. The issue with rules (esp excessive rules) is the corruption of the rule maker. To enforce these rules, the rule maker tends to have the ultimate capability for coercion.
And If you think "voting" prevents this corruption then you are r*ar*ed. Let alone the corruption of the masses which btw has resulted in the greatest acts of violence in history (USSR, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, 20th century Japan, French Revolution..)
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#29"How xxx Corrupted Advertising" is a really strange titlre. It seems to assume that Advertising being corrupted is a new thing? And that the Elon guy is somehow a genius for noticing a part of the problem? The whole history of advertising seems to indicate that in fact Advertising was designed to make us buy things we don't need, not designed to talk to the better angels of our nature. Edward Bernays, aka Freud nephe…
Strange choice to stress misogyny. Women see attractive models in advertising, they think "unachievable beauty ideals, I feel pressured". I see the same, I think "it exploited my biology to grab my attention, damn it worked again". Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone, let's make money?
Obviously, the primary effects are those that impact women, but things can annoy you and still be misogyny.
Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots
#30"How xxx Corrupted Advertising" is a really strange titlre. It seems to assume that Advertising being corrupted is a new thing? And that the Elon guy is somehow a genius for noticing a part of the problem? The whole history of advertising seems to indicate that in fact Advertising was designed to make us buy things we don't need, not designed to talk to the better angels of our nature. Edward Bernays, aka Freud nephe…
Strange choice to stress misogyny. Women see attractive models in advertising, they think "unachievable beauty ideals, I feel pressured". I see the same, I think "it exploited my biology to grab my attention, damn it worked again". Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone, let's make money?
> Women see attractive models in advertising, they think "unachievable beauty ideals, I feel pressured".
And they are right.
> I see the same, I think "it exploited my biology to grab my attention, damn it worked again".
And you are right.
> Is it let's make money?
Yes
> Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone?
It is misoginy, and misoginy is always is mis-everyone - but a tiny elite who benefits from it.
Advertisers for example.
TODO: Add "why-not-both?" meme here.