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Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

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Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#161

Post by boxed »

mcosta wrote: post #140
IggleSniggle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently working in ad tech. Your solution wouldn’t work today because so many current and upcoming privacy solutions being rolled out across platforms are run through a VPN or VPN-like service, and many with IP rotation. Many of the bots are using these services so that their IP appears as coming from a legitimate privacy service like Cloudflare. The privacy service providers don’t have good incentives to attempt t…

What percentage of people uses these privacy solutions?

It'll soon be most iPhone and mac users. The mac userbase can be ignored, but iPhones? Those are the people you want to target the most!

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#162

Post by jefftk »

lucideer wrote: post #144
jefftk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in adversarial games, and most of engineering isn't adversarial. Enabling compression on your website or designing your UI to make things clear to users give real improvements that don't degrade with time. Other sorts of improvements like optimizing your JS delivery or your server specs decay with time, because people make incidental changes elsewhere, but this is a slow process. Adversarial situations are very…

I don't really follow any of this comment. Are you saying perfect solutions are possible on non-adversarial situations?

I like to divide solutions into four approximate categories based on what sort of scenario they're applying to:

1. Collaborative situations: your solution works better and better, because people notice and work with you. Ex: designing an icon or coining a word for a new concept; over time more and more people recognize it, use it, etc.

2. Indifferent situations: your solution continues working about the same, because it's not about interaction with others who adapt. Ex: enabling compression on HTML serving, inventing joist hangars, new cancer surgery technique. Most inventions and engineering is in this category.

3. Decay situations: your solution slowly stops working as well, because the world moves on. Ex: payroll software needs to be updated as payroll regulations change.

4. Adversarial situations: your solution quickly stops working well, because others are directly trying to counter your work. Ex: investing strategies, antibiotics, ad fraud, ad fraud detection.

When you're evaluating a solution based on how it seems like it would work in the current world, thinking about how collaborative-vs-adversarial the situation is helps you predict what the full rollout of your solution would look like.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#163

Post by manigandham »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #6

When 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…

12 year adtech veteran here. Ad fraud is a business problem, not a tech problem.

All the major solutions are well known but not implemented because of the massive effect it would have on business for everyone down the chain for advertisers.

The entire industry meets every year. They can figure this out and fix most big problems in a few hours, but incentives are not aligned for that to happen.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#164

Post by Retric »

steveBK123 wrote: post #151
tomhallett wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made an ad fraud startup which ran into the exact same problem. With video ads, advertisers will pay 10x more to be in a “user initiated” video player (the user clicked or there was a reasonable expectation there’d be a video on that page - YouTube, camera icon on preceding link, etc). But more often then not, those ads are running in an autoplay context (sticky video players in the bottom corner, large players in…

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically ta…

I have played serval hours of an ambient ocean sounds vid on YouTube and the only advertising was at the beginning. That was years ago, but I suspect they intentionally avoid inserting advertising in the middle of such videos.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#165

Post by tomschwiha »

steveBK123 wrote: post #151
tomhallett wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made an ad fraud startup which ran into the exact same problem. With video ads, advertisers will pay 10x more to be in a “user initiated” video player (the user clicked or there was a reasonable expectation there’d be a video on that page - YouTube, camera icon on preceding link, etc). But more often then not, those ads are running in an autoplay context (sticky video players in the bottom corner, large players in…

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically ta…

Don't undererstimate how much human will actually spend to please the feline fellow.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#166

Post by InCityDreams »

Oarch wrote: post #42

The digital economy would doubtless take a hard hit if we knew the true scale of synthetic engagement out there. It's just easier not to look too hard. Reminds me of a joke: "Doctor, my brother has lost his mind. He think he's a chicken." "Have you tried telling him he's not a chicken?" "No. You see, the thing is, we really need the eggs..."

Must be a European joke. In the States I'm guessing it costs more to see a doctor than just go buy eggs.

And, yes, i know my euro-taxes essentialy pay for my doc, but a week in hospital that cost me €13.50, I'll live with. As well as a year's worth of post-care and meds....€0.00.

Eggs are getting a bit pricey now, though.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#167

Post by steveBK123 »

Retric wrote: post #164
steveBK123 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically ta…

I have played serval hours of an ambient ocean sounds vid on YouTube and the only advertising was at the beginning. That was years ago, but I suspect they intentionally avoid inserting advertising in the middle of such videos.

These videos actually have frequent ads throughout the video like any monetized content

And because no one is there to skip them after 5 seconds, my cat gets the full length ad served..

It's hilarious

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#168

Post by pmontra »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #6

When 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…

> The business team vetoed that, it would adversely impact their numbers in the current quarter, and well, a significant proportion of their total comp was bonuses tied to those numbers

Furthermore they were not spending their own money to buy those ads. Shareholders money is (almost) for free. In my experience companies run by the founders with little or no investors are always more careful about the money they spend.

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#169

Post by vgeek »

steveBK123 wrote: post #151
tomhallett wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made an ad fraud startup which ran into the exact same problem. With video ads, advertisers will pay 10x more to be in a “user initiated” video player (the user clicked or there was a reasonable expectation there’d be a video on that page - YouTube, camera icon on preceding link, etc). But more often then not, those ads are running in an autoplay context (sticky video players in the bottom corner, large players in…

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically ta…

Maybe the ads are really effective, but you just need a cat translator to know how effective the ads are on your cats? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4

Re: Companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots

#170

Post by Nextgrid »

kritiko wrote: post #137
Nextgrid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who implement the tools from the ad companies are responsible for their GDPR compliance - you don't get to offload the blame somewhere else.

This is why all websites have big cookie consent modals that appear before you can view content now. Most people just accept all. (And even when doing that, things like Apple Tracking Transparency have broken fingerprinting for a lot of adtech.)

None of those consent modals are compliant. GDPR compliance requires those modals to make it as easy to decline as it is to accept, and not skew the choice via a pre-ticked checkbox or making one option more prominent than the other. Which again reinforces my point that nobody is interested in seriously enforcing the GDPR.
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