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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

#281

Post by omgomgomgomg »

tommek4077 wrote: post #194
raunak wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People come back on different devices, different browsers, clear cookies, shop at a later date etc.

And that is whos problem? You dont pay for that either.

That is a multi party collaborarion problem.

Some affiliates make it very simple, affiliate links. Sure , there are some fraudulent tricks, on both sides, but it is manageable.

The ad networks are never interested in implementing any such thing, they only show how "configurable" their setrings are.

When asked where is the traffic coming from, "sorry,we cant disclose".which is funny, we would see later on anyway, right?

Then other networks provide you with a list upfront.

None or few of them have retargeting.

When asking them straight up "ok , you own my product, how would you use your network to generate conversions rather than impressions?" .It is all suddenly silent.

I have other,more qualified revenues, they are expensive but they deliver on cpa, else they are not paid. But they are the dearest, of course, so my boss is considering alternative revenue channels, even though they are the very least specifc and totally useless. He is the one impressed by rhe config options, I try to assign most spend away from such.

We are speaking spending 5k on some impressions campaign with absolutelly zero sign up or first time depositors.

For this money, you can pay a youtuber with regularly 200k legit views and say 30k my product views to create 8-10 10 minute videos, qhich actually converts.

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

#282

Post by myth2018 »

seti0Cha wrote: post #225
myth2018 wrote: post #206

> “After all, who cares if big brands waste their money showing ads to bots?” I'm not so sure this affects only big brands. I've experienced that in march 2020. I ran ads in a very popular platform and was fairly happy about the results -- modest, but steady. When the pandemics hit, my target-market shifted their focus away from my sort of product, and such shift happened almost overnight. Since I used to get a reaso…

Your bounce rate went up. That's still consistent with your target audience losing interest. It may be that they care enough to click on your ad but don't engage with your content. It could also be that the ratio of bots increased at the same rate as customer interest wained, or it could be the ads were never effective. It kind of doesn't matter. As an ad buyer, the only thing you to need worry about is whether the v…

They cared enough to keep searching for my keywords, to click on my ads, but then they realized they were not interested and bounced?

Also, like I said, the traffic the ads generated was good (it generated prospects fitting the profile I was targeting, and I was happy with the numbers), so yes, the ads were effective.

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

#283

Post by jefftk »

lucideer wrote: post #278
jefftk wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nice that you have a framework but you still haven't addressed my (I think fairly simple) question about how any of it applies here. I realise this probably comes of a little snarky but I've tried following your comments in good faith and it just seems like a very abstract hammer looking for a nail without really reading/listening to the quite literal/simple/not-very-abstract discussion being had here.

We started with EdwardDiego calling blocking cloud IPs "a simple solution to ad fraud" and me replying that because ad fraud is an adversarial situation this wouldn't be nearly as much of a solution as they seemed to think.

Then, in our subthread it seemed to me like you were saying that it being adversarial doesn't matter, and wins are always ephemeral ("every solution is a component in the perpetual fight"). I responded by explaining how this varies by situation, with some where wins compound (cooperative) but that the adversarial nature of ad fraud shortens the lifetime of wins dramatically compared to other domains.

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

#284

Post by lofaszvanitt »

hnburnsy wrote: post #145

To me it feels like companies have these ad budgets, and just feel the need to spend, spend, spend without measuring any sort of ROI. Example, almost every GM commercial these days are for EV cars\truck that you cannot even buy, some you cannot even put down a deposit or the "pre-order" is meaningless (like refundable $100 for the Lyriq, but no specs, colors or pricing has event been announced). It is like GM needs t…

They have specific goals to spend x amount on y product every month. SO that is not a mystery. Also, there are video game sales of 10s of millions where only 10% ever finish the game. Yet the next version has the same mechanics and sales are higher and still 10% finish the game. Interesting...

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

#285

Post by fdewrewrewf »

kritiko wrote: post #202
max51 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any cloud that is ad-supported? AFAIK, all of them (including google) is supported by charging directly for it and/or bundling it a different purchase (physical phone, software subscription, etc.)

I'm referring here to Instagram / Facebook. How are you going to send your wedding or vacation or dog photos to your network? Mass email? The social platforms have a utility for most people at this point.

>vacation or dog photos

>social platforms have a utility for most people

Hard to tell if you're serious!

I quit all social media and gave up my smartphone. I don't miss that brief "huh, that's nice" moment when being seeing an acquaintance's random photo they felt they had to share, and moments when visual imagery are shared now feel much more special.

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

#286

Post by awavering »

nickphx wrote: post #273
alberth wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I proposed to the owner of the company, I would create a "Click Faker". It would go to google on your local PC, it would then search for a term you wanted to rank, then it would navigate the top 10 pages, if it found you, it would click your link, then spend 2-5 minutes navigating around your site before closing the window. Dumb question: how would google know you spent 2-5 minutes on that domain and navigated a…

If you're hoping to participate in the SEO game, you have to utilize google's javascript analytics code. Their code collects and reports on a variety of user activity. It's safe to assume (based on google published articles [1]) that the data collected is used to influence the site's rankings. 1. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en

You don't need to install Google Analytics to rank on Google.

The article you cited mentions CRUX data[1], which comes from the Google Chrome browser, not Google Analytics. That data is reported to website users in the form of the Core Web Vitals report, which is a different product than Google's ranking algorithm. Although similar data is probably used as a ranking factor, you can't conclude that from this support documentation.

1. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/

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

#287

Post by indymike »

makestuff wrote: post #157
indymike wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to own a digital agency. I had a client who was the 80 year old CEO of a 120 year old military contractor. He sat through a meeting where his 27 year old marketing manager and I walked through advertising metrics for digital ads. At the end he said, “This is all very interesting, and will be helpful for Kelly (the marketing manager). I’m going to decide if we renew next year with this: increase in sales divide…

Did they renew?

They did. We got them 5.2, but it was very hard, and it was also very good for our team to have to deal with a hard metric target. We got a lot better at ad buys.

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

#288

Post by freediver »

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…

Great insight, thanks. Are there any 'honest' ad networks with integrity out there in your opionion?

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

#289

Post by FiatLuxDave »

emaro wrote: post #49

If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch. The amount of wasted resources (i.e. attention, money, electricity, bandwidth, time, smart people) is just insane ! The benefits I see are mostly lot's of jobs and means for the biggest businesses to sell more stuff. That can hardly be worth it. I know I'm dreaming and it will never happen, but still...…

Here's a plan: Tax it. Tax the everliving hell out of it.

The problem isn't the existence of advertising, it is that there is so much of the crap advertising. Taxing ads would raise the price of advertising, which would lower the ROI on advertising and force ad buyers to be more careful about which ads they buy. Crappy advertisers who are not actually connecting buyers with sellers would tend to go out of business, shrinking the industry. The remaining ad industry would have to create less ads with higher quality to compete in the newer high cost marketplace.

Basically, the idea is to move the supply curve on the (on the supply and demand curves) to a place where they meet at a higher price and a lower quantity. See for example, https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-... (scroll down to Tax Incidence). Note that for advertising the 'producer' on this graph is the company making the ads and the 'consumer' is the company buying an ad for their product. The part about moving the curve to a lower quantity is the key! The goal here being to reduce the ratio of 'attention used' to 'product-consumer fit created'. We would have a smaller, better ad industry. We can't have that with current market conditions; competition won't allow it.

The nice thing about a tax plan is that it is pretty easy to sell people on the idea of 'take money away from these people who annoy all of us and give it to [insert social good here]' . The best people in advertising would likely benefit from it as well, as they would likely stay in business and have better margins in a smaller industry with less competition.

So, keep dreaming, but feel free to spread this idea around. Maybe it will grow by word-of-mouth.

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

#290

Post by thih9 »

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…

Until somebody finds a way to use that. E.g. play scary ads to the cat, display ads showing cat anxiety specialists to the cat owner.
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