Switch to a pay app and the problem goes away.
What do you mean by a pay app?
If "Dayzle" (the app being advertised?) cost $5 to install, bot downloads would stop immediately.
I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
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Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#132If you have their IP addresses in your dashboard, go to Google Ads > Admin > Account Settings > IP Exclusions. Then, add the entire network/data center range there (i.e. 123.4.5.*). In 99% of cases, these bot networks are not run from residential providers. You can confirm IPs at https://ipgeolocation.io/ After running Google Ads for a couple of years, our current exclusion list has over 4000 networks just in the US.
This is one of the primary reasons why fraud actors purchase residential proxies in bulk now. Google "residential proxies for sale" for the tip of a huge grey/black market iceberg. You know all those trojan infected smart TVs and home routers and such? That's one of the things they're doing.
Grey? There's multiple conferences that "ethically sourced" proxy providers feature at now (ex: extractsummit.io)
Web scraping (for LLM inference / training) I guess has transformed "residential proxies" into a giant industry.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#133Google ads are a con. Meta ads are a con. If someone tells you you’re just not doing it right yet, they’re probably trying to sell you something.
Are pretty much all ecommerce brands wasting their money on Meta ads? Seems hard to believe.
Why's it hard to believe? Look around you at how belligerently foolish, irrational, inefficient, dysfunctional, and confidently wrong every large organization acts. Marketing departments confidently report that their marketing campaigns work, because to report otherwise would be to have their budget slashed to zero. Ad networks confidently report that the ads you buy are effective, because to report otherwise would destroy their companies. Ads are just a tax on the consumer which result in no improvement to any product whatsoever, a pure rent-seeking middleman, an intellectual landlord, a red queen's race, a dead weight on the economy, and, of course, a trillion-dollar industry, because we live in hell.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
You had huge click farms back in the days. Today the fraud is perhaps more obvious. YT has served me the same 20 min ad 200+ times over the last few weeks. I let the entire thing play 10 times and 50 times didn't press skip for the first minute (or the view doesn't count) It's so annoying Ive reduced video watching by 80-90% The idea they have someone pay for this in the hope I will buy the product? Or do people real…
These bug me so much. Those 20+ minute ads do nothing but piss me off. I have to grab the remote or switch tabs or whatever to get past them. To the point where I'm on the verge of adding YT to the permanent block list along with Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.
Serious question: Do you watch a lot of YouTube? Why not just cough up the $16 for YouTube Premium? Creators actually do get paid more for Premium users' views than they do from adsense. You get to see none of these ads that piss you off.
Look, I run UBlock Origin myself. But that's because there's zero other way to look at any Web content without going insane with videos and other garbage popping all over the place, and even when sites have memberships, I use too many distinct ones anyway, and the memberships may not remove the ads and junk.
But when it comes to sites like YouTube that let me choose between "ads" and "non-ads" experiences... I guess I'm just saying I see a ton of ROI on the $16.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#135What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.
I once did this by accident and without a bot farm. It was very lucrative. What I did was create a game with an action button. Then I served ads right next to the action button. I didn’t realize people would miss click on the ads at a high rate, but they did. They fat fingered it, clicked the ad, I got paid. I looked into it after a couple weeks because my click rate was crazy high.
That's definitely a core principle of crapware that's widely done. Put that ad 0px away from the "mash here like crazy" button, PROFIT!
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
also why hyperscalers are paying folks to host gpu clusters in their homes. its to get at tgeir IP, it has nothing to do with space, cooling, etc.
No that makes no sense. They only need a tiny device to act as a proxy. It makes no sense to colocate the expensive GPUs
It makes sense when someone else is paying for the power. The AI capabilities of mobile cpus is for pushing cloud based AI to your device. You pay the power bill while retaining the same lack of privacy as cloud hosted AI.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#137Your post led me to install your app and play through 10 puzzles. The post doesn’t even show the app! What’s the name for this sort of marketing? I really like the interface you’ve built for completing the puzzles. Very clean - it’s very nice to not be bombarded at every screen.
Thanks very much - really means a lot that you enjoyed it, we put a lot of effort into making it.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
No that makes no sense. They only need a tiny device to act as a proxy. It makes no sense to colocate the expensive GPUs
It makes sense when someone else is paying for the power. The AI capabilities of mobile cpus is for pushing cloud based AI to your device. You pay the power bill while retaining the same lack of privacy as cloud hosted AI.
I'm pretty sure the company that owns the compute is the one paying for the power. Who would agree to have an ugly noisy cube in their property that they have to pay maintenance for? What would they get out of that deal?
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#139The app appears unavailable in France in Google Play is that expected ? My phone is a pixel.
Yeah sorry - adding it to Europe probably next week though.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the gigantic incumbents with retail distribution being inefficient makes sense to me. What about the long tail of D2C brands that live on Meta ads? AFAIK, they live and die by their ROAS. I would have to believe that these companies just don't really exist to buy that Meta ads are a "con".
the roi is better at smaller corps that pay attention, but you would still be surprised. and where it is more efficient its where there is better attribution models aka direct sales. note: there are certain kinds of products that are 100% 'click driven sales'. they zero brand awareness, they want to sell you that 'fleece hoodie' on the spot. those guys have their funnel math down solid. but startups and other compani…
That does make sense, thanks