Can someone explain to me why such farms exist? Who benefits, other than Google?
The farm doesn't gain anything, the only thing it does is waste the advertisers money?
What's the play for the farm operator?
I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
251–260 of 434 posts
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#252Reading all the comments, it seems quite bleak to advertise. How do indies and SMBs reach audience these days then?
Influencers sometimes have very niche / local audiences
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#253I don't feels sorry for people shoving or paying to shove ads in peoples faces.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#254Reading all the comments, it seems quite bleak to advertise. How do indies and SMBs reach audience these days then?
Word of mouth. Make things that work well, people want, and stand out - and they will spread by themselves. I block 100% of advertising on all platforms I use, yet somehow never have difficulty finding things when I want to find them. And that often includes stuff from very small providers. Search + reviews, and so on are a million times more useful than advertising. And getting a hundred or so early users/testers/etc to seed those reviews/etc is trivial in modern digital times.
The world itself would almost certainly be a much better place without large scale/centralized advertising. I think the argument about it providing product discovery for hidden gems is nonsense. In reality it's mostly just crap, artificial demand creation, and behemoths trying to maintain brand image.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#255Given this and the now saturated App market with accelerated with Agentic coding
Sometimes I am wondering the low acquisition rate still pay off
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#256Reading all the comments, it seems quite bleak to advertise. How do indies and SMBs reach audience these days then?
Word of mouth. Make things that work well, people want, and stand out - and they will spread by themselves. I block 100% of advertising on all platforms I use, yet somehow never have difficulty finding things when I want to find them. And that often includes stuff from very small providers. Search + reviews, and so on are a million times more useful than advertising. And getting a hundred or so early users/testers/et…
But even reviews are fake now. 2 years ago I launched a service and added trust pilot to collect some reviews to help with SEO, then received many emails promising “verified” reviews for $x per review.
Same for Google reviews.
I’m a software engineer, and the way I find new tools is usually YouTube, GitHub, and HN. Even those channels are manipulated now with bots to inflate numbers to reach more
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the usual approach here is to offer a free VPN service, and then piggyback traffic over the user’s internet provider. Much, much more scalable and cheaper than offering to put GPUs at a user’s home.
You can offer them a free anything, really. It's a pretty convenient way to pay, that mostly doesn't affect the user at all (unless their connection is very slow), but generates value.
"value"
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Word of mouth. Make things that work well, people want, and stand out - and they will spread by themselves. I block 100% of advertising on all platforms I use, yet somehow never have difficulty finding things when I want to find them. And that often includes stuff from very small providers. Search + reviews, and so on are a million times more useful than advertising. And getting a hundred or so early users/testers/et…
But even reviews are fake now. 2 years ago I launched a service and added trust pilot to collect some reviews to help with SEO, then received many emails promising “verified” reviews for $x per review. Same for Google reviews. I’m a software engineer, and the way I find new tools is usually YouTube, GitHub, and HN. Even those channels are manipulated now with bots to inflate numbers to reach more
Yeah that will definitely be a growing problem, especially in the era of LLMs. Services where reviews can only be provided after purchase and it specifies if the product was returned (as Steam does) can help, but LLMs do seem set to make a complete mess of the digital world across many domains.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#259Can someone explain to me why such farms exist? Who benefits, other than Google? The farm doesn't gain anything, the only thing it does is waste the advertisers money? What's the play for the farm operator?
The farm also runs the website that gets paid for ads. Google notices that the site triggers a conversion, so they will get the same ad again… It might be more involved but this is a large part of it.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's AdSpam/fraud/bot-prevention team was, when I worked there, world class and fairly well funded, took their job seriously, and had access to all the data. It's an existential threat to the ad business, because if Google gets a reputation for being full of bots/spam, then the advertisers will bid lower per click/conversion to compensate, which means that legitimate website publishers will get paid less and go t…
Problem 1: Buyers cannot tell if a product is good or bad, so they offer less money and good sellers may leave. Suppose 50% of used laptops are good and worth $1,000, while 50% are bad and worth $400. Since you cannot tell which one you are buying, the average value is 0.5x1000 + 0.5x400 = $700, so you will not want to pay more than about $700. But owners of good laptops may refuse to sell for $700, so more good lapt…
I don't understand what point you're making.
Your "point 1" is literally the argument of the paper. If that scenario arises, the market collapses and no further sales can be made. That's the whole problem. As someone who takes a percentage of every sale, you want to keep the lemon-sellers out even though in the short run they make you extra money.
Your "point 2", if it's meant to be a rebuttal, isn't much of one. Buyers don't need to accurately know exactly what fraction of sellers are fraudulent; if they believe that it's 50-50, the same thing happens, even if the true rate is 80-20 in favor of good sellers. Conversely, if buyers are overly optimistic about quality, the market can persist despite a level of fraud that's higher than should be tolerated. But in any case, things like reviews and external reporting should eventually give them good information.