Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 381 posts

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

#311

Post by EternalFury »

javajosh wrote: post #189

Isn't this why, oh, around 2005 CPA was the big thing instead of CPC? Personally, I think CPA is absolutely the right way to do internet advertising, and I wonder why FB doesn't do that.

Because they would not make a tenth of the money they do if they did that, obviously.

Most sales or acquisitions originated online are based on rational decisions, not on the appeal of annoying ads.

The day advertisers start to use a verifiable CPA system, 80% of online advertising cease to exist and 95% of today's start-ups see their cash vaporize.

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

#312

Post by samstave »

dboat wrote: post #286
samstave wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, your paranoid schizophrenic approach is counter-productive. Really, now I am a paranoid schizophrenic? Just because I make claims which are readily confirmed and were completely available in the media - even the EFF filed suit on the AT&T events... Yet, for some reason, it is my responsibility to educate everyone every single time someone new comes along who hasn't been following these things closely. Now I am…

What I am witnessing is someone trying to inform people, while effectively censoring himself by delivering in such a way as impedes its delivery. You obviously have a vested interest in seeing your "message" be received, so stop ignoring what people are telling you about your tone and change it. Figure out what it is that people do listen to, or else you have no one but yourself to blame when they take issue with you…

Thanks - Ill take the constructive criticism on my tone.

However, I will point out that with respect to your comment on FB's complicit actions due to the daunting nature of the problem, this does not take into account their other actions of a 24K ransom on the domain.

Everyone can argue in any direction they want - but neither me nor anyone else is really going to know until we get further down this path...

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

#313

Post by cookiecaper »

kirubakaran wrote: post #227
nhashem wrote: post #162

My startup is essentially an advertising aggregator (pooling traffic from a variety of publishers and routing it to advertisers) and dealing with things like bot detection is a HUGE chunk of what we work on, technology-wise. Let me try and give you an idea of how deep the rabbit hole can go. - Okay, you want to detect bots. Well, "good" bots usually have a user agent string like, "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2…

I understand that it is challenging for a third party like you to identify the bots. But Facebook has more than enough signal on each user clicking on an ad (friends, posts, location, 'non ad-click activity' to 'ad-click activity' ratio) to determine if that user is a bot. Looks like they are choosing to not do anything with this information. "FB is turning a blind eye to keep their revenue" seems to stand up to Occa…

It's just as easy to invest in several fake profiles that act just like real users. Pay people to work from home maintaining fake accounts for you, posting stuff that seems real, interacting with your other fake accounts and celebrity/business pages, etc. Then, run bots with these accounts, click around on a subset of good links randomly, and throw in a reasonable ratio of ad clicks per account, then move on to the next shill account.

This definitely takes non-trivial effort, but it's also definitely doable if you have a serious interest in perpetrating click fraud. While Facebook hypothetically could fight this form of click fraud, it'd likely be difficult and the method would be fragile/easily circumvented. Like most things, PPC advertising can only function in a world primarily populated with positive actors.

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

#314

Post by briandear »

samstave wrote: post #194
dboat wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd to me that your posts aren't more downvoted than they are.

You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.

And there are some that actually know what they're talking about in terms if intelligence agencies but choose not to indulge in idle conspiracy hypothesizing. The real operations aren't something that the people with actual knowledge would ever discuss. Those that do claim conspiracies are often ill informed or just have read too many spy novels.

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #314
samstave wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.

And there are some that actually know what they're talking about in terms if intelligence agencies but choose not to indulge in idle conspiracy hypothesizing. The real operations aren't something that the people with actual knowledge would ever discuss. Those that do claim conspiracies are often ill informed or just have read too many spy novels.

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #314
samstave wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.

And there are some that actually know what they're talking about in terms if intelligence agencies but choose not to indulge in idle conspiracy hypothesizing. The real operations aren't something that the people with actual knowledge would ever discuss. Those that do claim conspiracies are often ill informed or just have read too many spy novels.

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #314
samstave wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think I make this shit up? There are some really naive and stupid people on HN that have zero grasp on the history of intelligence agencies.

And there are some that actually know what they're talking about in terms if intelligence agencies but choose not to indulge in idle conspiracy hypothesizing. The real operations aren't something that the people with actual knowledge would ever discuss. Those that do claim conspiracies are often ill informed or just have read too many spy novels.

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by nikcub »

nhashem wrote: post #162

My startup is essentially an advertising aggregator (pooling traffic from a variety of publishers and routing it to advertisers) and dealing with things like bot detection is a HUGE chunk of what we work on, technology-wise. Let me try and give you an idea of how deep the rabbit hole can go. - Okay, you want to detect bots. Well, "good" bots usually have a user agent string like, "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2…

This sounds like a problem that should be addressed with machine learning and AI rather than the wack-a-mole style of matching strings.

Separate out and distinguish possible humans from possible bots using a set of known humans and known bots.

Assign a human likelihood probability to each user and pay out the click based on the probability.

for eg. this user is 90% likely human, therefor the cost of the 20 cent ad click is 18 cents.

This doesn't have to wait on Facebook, somebody could build this as a third-party app and then send refund requests to Facebook on clicks that are likely bots.

Post reply on HN