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Facebook Fraud [video]

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Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#101

Post by thattallguy »

blumkvist wrote: post #94

I like how a bunch of programmers, mom&pop bakeries and nerd youtubers who have absolutely 0 experience in marketing/advertising expect to throw $50 on facebook and see astonishing results and ROI. Guess what? Marketing is a difficult discipline. Pick up a book on communications and a couple more on copywriting and advertising. Then another one on marketing. Do a demographic/psychographic profile, read a ton of white…

First, you sound like a real champ, so thanks for making it hard for me to reply and support your point.

But I will,

Test, Test, Test and don't be a noob is the key to making any paid channel work. The deck is stacked against anyone who doesn't.

The problem I see is that Facebook is banking naiveté and unsophisticated users to bolster their short term revenue.

Is that right or wrong? Maybe. Will it have long ranging impacts on the platform and the small businesses that could really be benefiting from social channels, probably.

Test Test Test and don't be a noob.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#102

Post by dudus »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #82
calbear81 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good questions raised about the UX issues that contribute to fraudulent clicks and installs but I take issue with the generalization that only bottom of the funnel, high purchase intent ads are valuable. Startups generally have a bias towards doing things that they can measure accurately. This leads to heavy reliance on highly attributable channels like AdWords since you can target people who have expressed high purc…

>Startups generally have a bias towards doing things that they can measure accurately. As far as biases go, preferring to pay for things that have a demonstrable effect is a pretty good one, especially for startups that generally don't have the resources to waste on a large number of failed initiatives. Sure if you have some incite that gives you a better than normal chance of getting a very high ROI on a creative in…

I agree that investing on these may seem more profitable in the short term. But branding is a long term goal. Even for Startups branding is important, this can be crucial to close the next deals with VCs or acquiring users' hearts.

Digital Ocean is a good example, I've read good and bad stories, mostly good and they had an extensive Youtube and Display Campaigns. When it was finally time for me to close a deal with a VPS to replace my old Dreamhost shared server I didn't have to search. I went straight to Digital Ocean.

This is harder to measure, or even impossible when you add the fact that I was probably impacted at least 50 times by passive or active advertisement for them on at least 4 different devices.

Also keep in mind that I was aware of this the whole time, and I smiled every tie I saw a DO ad, because I knew I was probably gonna sign at some point. But most of the time these type of advertisements happen without you even noticing, even if you are in this business.

Companies spend millions in SuperBowl ads, and nobody can click on that, it's impossible to tell how many coca-cola bottles will be sold by that ad and post discussions that it sparked. But they will do it again next year.

Display advertisement is valuable but it's harder to put a price tag. Even if you don't click on the ad in a mobile app it's still valuable. I'd argue that if you make it annoying or if you try to steal a click it's less valuable.

There is a reason this type of publicity is sold by impressions, because that's where the value is, clicks can or cannot happen, that's just a plus you won't get on TV.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#103

Post by kevando »

lingben wrote: post #6

If you haven't yet watched Derek's earlier video about "the problem with facebook", you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g because in it he lays bare several fundamental structural issues about facebook which 99% people don't realize. Well worth the watch. Unless fb changes drastically, it will die a surprisingly fast death.

The trouble is this is 100% from the content creator's perspective. From the user perspective, this ends up working out quite well.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#104

Post by memracom »

thinkcomp wrote: post #68

When I moved to Silicon Valley in 2006, I had just lived through the events that were eventually twisted into the movie The Social Network. My conclusion having witnessed Mark's behavior firsthand was that he was the least trustworthy individual I had ever met and that he was likely to harm others. At the risk of sounding like Chicken Little ("the sky is falling!") I wrote a great deal voicing my point of view, inclu…

Without judging whether he is right or not, I'd just like to point out that IF he is right he would fill the same role as Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Banking Collapse of 2008 and the role of Harry Markopolis in the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme.

So there is ample precedence for this being a correct assesment and if you have read anything surrounding the Madoff controversy and the banking collapse, you will know that the NY financial scene is riddled with incompetence and corruption. It is entirely possibility that Facebook is the biggest stock market fraud in history.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#105

Post by debt »

pmr_ wrote: post #19
debt wrote: post #16

Here we go again. It's a new quarter. Now that earnings decimated the young-people-dont-use-facebook myth, now we have the click-fraud-is-a huge-systemic-problem myth. Haters be hatin.

This video does not seem like hate to me. The guy starts by how he tried to increase Facebook likes through legitimate Facebook endorsed advertisement and shows the data how that worked out for him. Of course, the data he uses is rather thin, but he makes a good point.

Google had a click fraud issue before and they fixed it. Facebook will throw every appropriate resource on this problem and it'll be fixed. I am absolutely positive this is just noise.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#106

Post by dangerlibrary »

JacobJans wrote: post #41
ebabchick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding the word "fake" in this context. He means they are inauthentic likes, aka likes from real people who don't actually like what they're clicking the Like button on.

The problem is that he's intentionally buying likes from people he KNOWS aren't responsive. The simple solution? Stop targetting the unresponsive countries. It's not rocket science. It's actually super-brain-dead obvious. If you're buying likes from India -- and no Indians are responding to your content -- then why would you keep buying likes from India? This is stuff you can spend $5 to figure out. It is very, very,…

I see you are a proponent of the third way.

http://xkcd.com/1285/

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#108

Post by monkeyboysteve »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #69
notlisted wrote: post #26

Nice video. All true. I have performed tests with the same ad budget ($20k) and target audience for Google and FB. FB ROI was negative. Google ROI was 400% (travel space). The only thing that seemingly "works" has been buying likes by advertising. This video should help educate my clients of the utter uselessness of those too. This brings up the interesting question of the general (non)value of a lot of mobile advert…

google display network advertising is equally useless/fraudulent It is very good at giving me pictures of the more expensive things that I have recently bought, should I suddenly need two.

I think the difference is that Google really tries to kill the click farms as apposed to the social media companies.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#109

Post by hayksaakian »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96

I have my pet theory. I'm yet to find significant evidence for or against it, but it's what my hunch tells me. The theory goes like this: All on-line ads are mostly worthless - most clicks are from clickfarms, and the genuine parts are mostly by clickjacking or accidental misclicks. Almost no one really wants to buy stuff via ads. Ad agencies keep telling companies that advertising online will generate lots of revenu…

While there is a lot of fraud, if you actually track from ad click to sale, you'll see SOME amount of results.

In most cases they will be underwhelming, but if the numbers make sense, why not?

example: 2$ per click for a $500 dollar product (assume no other costs_

if you can turn 1 out of 100 clicks into a sale, then it might still be worth it, despite 99 fake, uninterested, botted, clickfarmed or otherwise undesirable clicks.

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