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Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

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Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#71
post #68

One POSSIBLE explanation for what Facebook would use anonymous bots for: verifying the advertisement goes where the advertiser said it would go. Facebook has problems with fraudulent or confusing advertisements. for example, iPad's being advertised for $2, but the user clicking the ad is sent to a penny auction site that bills you $100 when you sign up.... so that domain ends up getting banned, but those advertisers/…

[deleted]

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP says that they are not accusing FB of using bots to drive up revenue.

They refused to overtly accuse them, but the subtext seem to argue exactly that.

I don't think so, there's lots of reasons that would be a stupid idea for Facebook. But there's clearly something shady going on, and Facebook is being dicks to them in other ways, so they're out. That's the subtext.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#74
post #49

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us…

Happend to us too!! we first thought kissmetrics was wrong, so we built a logger that logged server side requests and a client side code that executes on load of the landing page, and we found that 70% of the server side hits had javascript disabled(or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%).

What user agent was reported by those hits? This is fascinating.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#75
post #68

One POSSIBLE explanation for what Facebook would use anonymous bots for: verifying the advertisement goes where the advertiser said it would go. Facebook has problems with fraudulent or confusing advertisements. for example, iPad's being advertised for $2, but the user clicking the ad is sent to a penny auction site that bills you $100 when you sign up.... so that domain ends up getting banned, but those advertisers/…

True, but they shouldn't be charging for those verification checks.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#76
post #57
post #49

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us…

And here is a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/4hu66.png

Here's ascii of the screenshot in case they censor your picture of text.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=HHeY5nP1

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#77
post #49

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us…

you're not alone. I've heard similar stories from other businesses that have tried to advertise on FB. At first I thought they just didn't track properly, but it seems it's a widespread problem.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#78
post #68

One POSSIBLE explanation for what Facebook would use anonymous bots for: verifying the advertisement goes where the advertiser said it would go. Facebook has problems with fraudulent or confusing advertisements. for example, iPad's being advertised for $2, but the user clicking the ad is sent to a penny auction site that bills you $100 when you sign up.... so that domain ends up getting banned, but those advertisers/…

So you think that a facebook ad checking bot is taking up 80% of the clicks?

I know facebook doesn't have the best reputation for careful engineering but that's quite a stretch.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#79
post #68

One POSSIBLE explanation for what Facebook would use anonymous bots for: verifying the advertisement goes where the advertiser said it would go. Facebook has problems with fraudulent or confusing advertisements. for example, iPad's being advertised for $2, but the user clicking the ad is sent to a penny auction site that bills you $100 when you sign up.... so that domain ends up getting banned, but those advertisers/…

If it was coming from Facebook, I would expect not to be charged for the clicks.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#80
post #49

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us…

Happend to us too!! we first thought kissmetrics was wrong, so we built a logger that logged server side requests and a client side code that executes on load of the landing page, and we found that 70% of the server side hits had javascript disabled(or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%).

> (or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%).

That's actually an interesting proposal-- 100% of the time when I click on an ad, I didn't mean to and I try to close it before it has a chance to annoy me.

Probably doesn't make sense on a large scale, but it's something to consider.

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