I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots • Hacker News Board

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#431

Post by moeadham » Sun, Sep 13, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

jfil wrote: post #352

kimi wrote: post #228

We had a similar issue with Reddit, spent $500 and got a lot of clicks - none of them ever did anything else, not even by mistake. When we reported this behavior to Reddit, the rep who helped us set up the campaign just vanished. No answer. After a while, another rep came out and asked if we were interested in advertising on Reddit. Explained the situation and... poof! this other rep disappeared too. My feeling is th…

I've worked in different parts of the online ad industry for years. This is correct: fraud is a systemic and convenient part of the business model. The victims are the advertisers, who's in-house marketers don't know enough to detect/call out fraud. Google itself forces advertisers into fraud-friendly products like PMAX. Then, when you detect the fraud, the hapless account rep says "ummm... maybe try using IP exclusi…

ugh PMAX is such a scam. I can’t believe there is a PM somewhere getting paid good money to completely light Googles’ reputation on fire.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#432

Post by moeadham » Sun, Sep 13, 2026, 4:57 AM UTC

tommek4077 wrote: post #331

kimi wrote: post #228

We had a similar issue with Reddit, spent $500 and got a lot of clicks - none of them ever did anything else, not even by mistake. When we reported this behavior to Reddit, the rep who helped us set up the campaign just vanished. No answer. After a while, another rep came out and asked if we were interested in advertising on Reddit. Explained the situation and... poof! this other rep disappeared too. My feeling is th…

Same here. Most of the bots didn't even load anything besides the html, no js execution, no clicks...

I understand the mobile bot farms monetization (publish app with ads, have bot farm click on ads in your app).

I don’t understand the reddit ad clicks though. How does the bot farm profit? Is there some way to earn money hosting reddit ads?

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#433

Post by camkego » Sun, Sep 13, 2026, 5:24 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #222

camkego wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the marketer is an employee or a consultant, is it in their interest to show that the ad-spend they are controlling is high ROI, or low ROI. Maybe this is a cynical take, but, if they get to the bottom of things, and show their boss/client that the ad-spend is not returning so much, it seems it would portend bad things for the marketer. I really don't know, and it seems like a very hard problem. Maybe this is the…

That's not how ad performance is measured. Your ROI is based on end conversions. You need to know if your leads are _good_, not just plentiful. A company that doesn't do this at the start will figure it out pretty quickly.

Ideally that would be the case that all ad-spend can be tracked through end conversions, and for many businesses it can be. But for much of the corporate world, you don't know where your end conversions come from. (Think Nike shoes, etc) It's estimated about that 35% to 45% of all digital ad spend goes to brand awareness, video reach, and other upper-funnel methods where direct conversion tracking isn't possible.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#434

Post by mitxela » Sun, Sep 13, 2026, 8:19 AM UTC

calmworm wrote: post #424

mitxela wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not offering something of value why are you using the thing that you say doesn't have value?

I don’t. Please see original comment.

Well this discussion about getting YouTube premium is clearly aimed at people who use YouTube but without premium, not people who don't use YouTube at all.