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Facebook Fraud [video]

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Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#221

Post by Sheepshow »

hayksaakian wrote: post #109
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 undesirab…

If you can completely obliterate your margin like that just to make a single sale, I suspect prices are too high and you'd end up doing better by just offering the product at $400.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#222

Post by jfoster »

uvace08 wrote: post #213
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?

Interestingly, the problem is caused by Facebook trying to fix the problem. The hypothesized reason the clickfarms "like" random pages is to seem real because Facebook will shut them down if they don't seem real. Perhaps Facebook could drop that specific ("has the user liked other pages?") signal from their bot detection and focus on other signals. Whatever they do will likely result in some type of side-effect as clickfarms continue to strive to "seem real".

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#223

Post by fellytone84 »

psbp wrote: post #200
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…

You just completely ignored the point he was trying to make with the fake likes. You're going to have to come up with a better bullshit defense.

He didn't completely ignore the claims. As he mentioned, the targeting specs may have been too broad.

It's easy argue against the value of something so easily faked as a like, but we shouldn't forget that Facebook is also a large platform for promotional advertising, where "like-gated" promotions are designed primarily to collect users' email addresses.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#224

Post by jsemrau »

JacobJans wrote: post #204
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 spent $46k on Facebook ads last year, with very healthy ROI. First, I want to say THANK YOU for the many improvements to the ad system that have recently taken place. Second, I want to say that you have a LOT of work left to do. Facebook marketing is hard. Too hard. I have many suggestions, but here's one of them: Allow the same targeting options when posting directly to the page, as when posting an ad. For example…

I would challenge the correctness of this post.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#226

Post by alb000 »

baby wrote: post #97
colinbartlett wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution was to delete my Facebook account. Now, I engage with the people I care about via mechanisms that are far more meaningful: emails, phone calls, a coffee, a lunch.

I really wish I could do that. I used to ask a friend to change my password, now I use www.offsocialnetwork.com to do it (I'm doing it this week). But I can't go really long without facebook since all is planned from there, the parties, the social events, the foreign friends visiting my city, foreign friends keeping in touch with me... I guess it's easier not to have facebook when you didn't travel a lot and don't ha…

You are a freaking WUSSY! And you have NO life,let alone social life. Social life is OUTSIDE, face to face, NOT on facebook. Get a fucking life, freaking zombie.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#227

Post by ChrisClark »

entropic wrote: post #210
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…

I'm the developer of Reddit In Pictures and I'm sorry about that issue, please go into 'Settings' and disable ads! I just wanted to give as much space for images as possible, so when the ad loads it puts itself between the text showing the number of images and the ActionBar, if the ad doesn't load it doesn't take up any space. Is the bounce you're talking about when the ad initially loads (like on orientation change)…

I'd be a bit careful with that. Someone on /r/AndroidDev had his app removed from the store because Google thought it could get accidental ad clicks. He didn't have a space for the ads and the ad would just appear on top of the bottom content.

Not sure if they are cracking down on it or not but thought you'd like a heads up. Popping up onto an area not meant to be touched in the first place is probably fine though.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#228

Post by alexwoz »

cinquemb wrote: post #123
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.

What I don't understand is why doesn't facebook try to leverage it's data and serve contextual/interest ads on other sites in similar way that google does with adsense? I know I would use it with my startup. That way, they don't have to conflate the incentives of the different parties involved as much as they are doing now.

Pretty sure that's on their roadmap: http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/facebook-mobile-ad-tes...

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#230

Post by flinty »

kevando wrote: post #147
Houshalter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. If content from your friends and family and other pages you enjoy is regularly filtered out and replaced with paid "promoted" posts, it decreases the quality of the site.

And from there, you have the fallacy of this argument. This decreases the quality of your experience on Facebook. With the million other options and networks, why on earth would Facebook purposefully lower the quality of their product in order to make a few bucks with ads?

because where else do you have a network of "friends" as extensive as the one on facebook?
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