Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not open a new page, and delete all content (but a link to the new page) off the old page?
You lose all your Likes.
Which is presumably why this is a policy in the first place...
Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
101–110 of 381 posts
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#102One 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.
Well why not? It is really more expensive to run such a bot at 80% rather than say 5%.
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. This used to happen a lot on ad networks, although I personally don't know how pervasive it is now. The game is as jiggy said. Force competing ad buyers to pay for what appears to be non-productive traffic by forcing ad clicks. Since the real views are dominated by false views, the conversion rate on whatever is being sold appears to be horrible. The competitor goes elsewhere, and the scammer maintains access to…
How does Google prevent this? Is it simply inherently not-problematic, due to their spread of advertising?
Overall it's hard to say whether google wins or loses overall by this. In absence of a real competitor in the search ad space, people generally will swallow google's fee hikes ...
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you tell if it's a bot? Just by user-agent string or repeated slamming by IP address, or is there some other technique? A combination of things. Off the top of my head: * IP address ranges. Are they all from, e.g., EC2 instances? * Are images and other content (e.g. CSS) linked from the page loaded? How long does the client take to do so? Are other pages being viewed in line with what you've seen from other us…
Is there a single tool that can take access/error logs and compile these stats? This sounds like something relatively useful ...
If not, it sounds like a great place to use ML/classification algorithms.
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#105Wow, even if this is a little true the implications are big. Is this similar, or related to other ad space inflation? I'm reminded of Google (and others)(1) sending out free $75 adwords coupons to easily allow the costs of bids to inflate since it's not my own real money (thereby increasing the percentage of real cash being made on the ads)? (1)Edited and clarified
Unless you're buying ads for popular affiliate stuff, handing new AdWord users $75 in credit doesn't have much of an effect (other than some percentage of those users going on to spend real money). I have gotten similar offers from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and a lot of othe advertising companies.
Yeah, lots send it out, but how many end up using them is relative to how big of a player in search (and search related advertising) the player is.
I've used Google coupons, none with anyone else that I can remember. I also spent ads on google way before any other system and remember the 10 cent clicks going up to $1.00 for not much more traffic.
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They end the bot section with "But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable." after saying that they weren't accusing Facebook of running the bots. The subtext is screaming out. Does me pointing out the barely shrouded subtext mean that I believe what they are saying? Of course not. It's just as likely, it seems, that their test is simply flawed (as others said, let's see the technical honey trap)…
It would be outrageous for FB to run the bots themselves. There's two other issues that are more realistic and unfortunately not so great for FB: they're aware of the bots and ignoring them in favor of the ad revenue or they're just becoming aware of the bots and will implement some fix which could result in a substantial decrease in ad revenue. Good to keep in mind that OP's 80% is just one data point and may not be accurate.
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#107I wish their post was a bit more technical. Show us the code you used to detect javascript, how did the analytics work? Did they test their code by using their own browser to click an ad and see if the code detected javascript, or their hit in the analytic software? More technical info and data would be nice!
While that would have been interesting to me as well, I think the post was meant for their actual users, to explain why they are moving away from FB. Technical details would have been an unnecessary distraction for their intended audience.
Maybe if they have any employees who follow HN, someone would share more light on the technicals?
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#108Earlier 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; if anything, the subtext is merely arguing that Facebook isn't doing anything to stop the problem. Whether that is just as bad as running the botnet itself, that is another thing.
Assuming the problem is as bad as many are saying, I personally think it's fair to draw the same conclusion you have -- running and letting run a botnet is one and the same. It's costing other businesses money; it's too big for Facebook to be able to play dumb on the issue.
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#109Could it just be a badly written search spider? The ad is simply an anchor tag around an image. If you didn't filter it out specifically, you would just "click" it to get to another page.
Possibly, but aren't these ads only shown to logged in users?
Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots
#110Why hasn't anyone asked what IP, user agent, etc. the bots were showing up as in the log?