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Facebook Fraud [video]

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Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#211

Post by smaddali »

Having worked on Fraud Detection and Risk Management at eBay previously, I can understand the difficulty in solving this. As it was explained in the video, the fraudsters will want to look like the regular folks as much as possible. I think this is solvable problem. I will not post the features here, My guess FB folks already know how to address this specific aspect of Fraud.

Btw, has anyone had better experience/ROI with FB Mobile app installs ?? How is the effectiveness of those Ads ?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#212

Post by tmarthal »

345723 wrote: post #4
nonsequ wrote: post #2

I'm interested in learning more about this. Does anybody have any thoughts? I think that, by intentionally posting unlikeable things, he guarantees himself 100% spam likes. On something that's actually likeable, these spam likes might be contained to a reasonably small proportion of likes. But what is the size of this shadow population of click farm users on Facebook? For these countries with large click farms to be…

I've worked on all sides of this: brand, agency, buying likes, selling likes, etc. The reality is this: everything in this video is 100% true and it's been this way almost since the beginning. But most marketers are just checking a box. No one really cares about the budget spent on social ads. It's a line item next to display and TV. I should say, this isn't just true with Facebook. The same thing happens on Twitter…

The Google engineers are also trying to release their methods. This is not detecting 'fraudulent' activity, but rather trying to classify adversarial advertisements: http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37195.html (pdf is linked there). You can assume that they are doing the same types of thing to classify fraud.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#213

Post by uvace08 »

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…

Two questions: (1) What are practical, specific ways that Facebook could fix this problem? There's clearly a problem. (2) Also, how should digital advertising companies that integrate a Facebook share option in their offering avoid supporting shares from fake profiles?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#214

Post by kostko »

tonydiv wrote: post #184
kostko wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something similar on Youtube, I've hidden all the side videos to help me focus on the video I was watching. But on FB, I unfollowed 99% of the people, and only left things like 'March Against Monsanto', and 'Naturalnews', so so my feed only contains stuff that matters to me.

How long did it take you to unfollow everyone on FB? Sounds like that would take a while for someone with 1800 friends.

~150 friends only, I unfollowed only when a post appeared. And I marked lots of people as acquaintances. Why do you have 1800 friends? Dang.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#215

Post by rosser »

dmazin wrote: post #192
xxbondsxx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey everyone -- sorry to hijack the top thread but I’m an ads engineer at Facebook so I feel qualified to respond. I posted this over on reddit too but it's still pending approval. In the case of this ad — I think we actually delivered on what was asked for. The targeting specs were fairly broad (cat lovers in four countries). Getting 39 people who like cats to like a page with a cute cat picture in 20 minutes sounds…

I do not think you addressed the actual point of the video: the clicks on his cat page came from click farms. They were not real people.

It's not like that would be the first "non-denial denial" Facebook has ever issued...

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#216

Post by tzs »

onedev wrote: post #116
rhizome wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just online, or in general? Has it been broken for years, decades or centuries?

I think the newer generations who grew up online tend to be oblivious to Ads. It's just an instinct to ignore them.

More likely they THINK they are oblivious to them, but they are not. I recall (sorry, I have no citation) a survey of people who played the California state lottery that asked people if they had paid attention to any of the state's ads for the lottery.

They also asked the people why they played the lottery. A very large fraction of the people who said they had not noticed the ads repeated slogans and tag lines from the ads when explaining why they played.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#217

Post by dangrossman »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #189
xxbondsxx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey everyone -- sorry to hijack the top thread but I’m an ads engineer at Facebook so I feel qualified to respond. I posted this over on reddit too but it's still pending approval. In the case of this ad — I think we actually delivered on what was asked for. The targeting specs were fairly broad (cat lovers in four countries). Getting 39 people who like cats to like a page with a cute cat picture in 20 minutes sounds…

Oh lord, "ads engineer". I weep for humanity.

Humanity has had ad engineers as long as we've had civilization. There was even actual physical engineering going into the intricate stencils used to carve the names of kings promoting themselves into temples and other buildings in ancient Babylon -- over 4000 years ago.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#218

Post by unclebucknasty »

mschaecher wrote: post #208
unclebucknasty wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article (video) is pointing to fundamental flaws in FB's advertising offerings. I don't think that any amount of "social media marketing" expertise will compensate for the fact that a large proportion of the ad spend on those offerings may likely be wasted on what is effectively fraud. Even if you optimize for better performance, there will still be inordinate waste to fraud. Beyond that, I think a lot of people…

BS - I've watched both videos twice and more sophisticated targeting solves 90% of their "problems." How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it's a lot if you're going to call out "fundamental flaws" and "large portion of ad spend...likely wasted...on what is effectively fraud." I've managed many millions across a handful of companies. Has their been issues? Yes, just like every other channel. You're s…

Regarding your question about my statement that a "large portion of ad spend is likely wasted on what is effectively fraud."

Not sure what you want me to say here. I don't believe the author's experience is isolated, nor is that of others who have demonstrated/reported the same. Your suggestion that they should use more "sophisticated targeting" to circumvent fraud is odd. Targeting should be for optimization, not fraud avoidance. How about instead FB fixes the fraud problem?

In any case, by your own admission, most people don't possess this sophistication anyway, so it follows that they would likely be significantly affected by this fraud problem. Hence, you haven't refuted my statement, but supported it.

>How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it's a lot if you're going to call out "fundamental flaws"

Really? OK. Well, personally, I have only my own company's test cases. But, I can read and I don't think it's a coincidence that my experience corroborates that of many others. I'm actually also paraphrasing you (in part) when I say it's fundamentally flawed. I think it's a pretty big problem if only you and your cousin Bob, along with two other people who live on a mountain somewhere possess the esoteric knowledge required to create a successful campaign.

And, now you've explicitly stated some of the flaw, with this: "To make it simpler, they hide sophistication and advanced options. The very options that are needed to drive campaigns with meaningful ROI. But those options are also over the head of the SMBs"

You don't see a very serious problem there?

In general, what you're saying throughout your post just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You gloss over fraud and lay out all of these problems with FB advertising, then you conclude that it's not fundamentally flawed. Instead, the problem is with the huge percentage of people who simply don't know how to use it. For what other product would this premise lead to this conclusion?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#219

Post by notlisted »

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…

Since it was my post, let me hijack the hijack and refocus the discussion.

FB advertising has major issues and not just fraud.

#1 - FB has a feedback loop issue

The main reason why (for us) Google works so much better, is that it spans the full sales funnel, from impression to click to registration and finally conversion (room bought).

Google optimizes ad serving for themselves AND for me, and I can see the results. As long as they generate more revenue for my client at an acceptable cost per conversion (sales, not likes) we will spend more on google. Google isn't just taking, it's giving (a lot). As long as the last segment, ie actual conversions affecting ad serving, is missing, google will remain our favorite marketing channel.

#2 - Facebook has a major intent issue.

Eyeballs are nice, but only if those eyeballs have the intent to convert/purchase, which is rarely the case for high price, non-luxury and non-lifestyle items on the FB site itself, unlike a lead generated by google's search engine.

I have read about the "tricks" to minimize useless clicks and learned about some more below, but it really shouldn't be that hard.

PS I do realize that my situation is quite specific - see comment above or below, hospitality industry, busy market, price-sensitive audience, not a big brand name, etc. It may work for you, it just doesn't work for us, and not just because of the fake likes.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#220

Post by Sheepshow »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #189
xxbondsxx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey everyone -- sorry to hijack the top thread but I’m an ads engineer at Facebook so I feel qualified to respond. I posted this over on reddit too but it's still pending approval. In the case of this ad — I think we actually delivered on what was asked for. The targeting specs were fairly broad (cat lovers in four countries). Getting 39 people who like cats to like a page with a cute cat picture in 20 minutes sounds…

Oh lord, "ads engineer". I weep for humanity.

I sincerely hope names like this become widespread if they accurately describe the job. Very helpful to have a bright red "KEEP OUT" sign.
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