Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Fraud [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 412 posts

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#381

Post by flatline »

tripzilch wrote: post #302
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’m an ads engineer at Facebook so I feel qualified to respond. You'll be qualified to respond when you've actually watched the video so you won't have to write uninformed drivel like the following: > 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 pictur…

xxbondsxx is also a fake, just of a different variety. Convincing perhaps at first glance, if you only read the first sentence of his post and moved on, but lacking any apparent understanding of the issue at hand and moreover, I suspect, full autonomy. A marketing drone.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#382

Post by nayefc »

joeblau wrote: post #163
dclara wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need better solution.

Pay for quality products.

It's not about quality of products. See the other reply. Without ads, there will be no Facebook or Twitter. The issue with fraud is a very serious and difficult one that creeps into many industries, and ends up sucking the life out of them (hint: check banking or finance!).

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#383

Post by mpeg »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #218
mschaecher wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

I wasn't going to comment on this story, as I'm clearly biased. I used to work for an early facebook marketing partner, and I am very familiar with their advertising.

This video is sensationalist, a large portion of all internet advertising is click fraud, no one is arguing against that; however, that doesn't mean you can't get results from social ads if you have the right expertise.

I don't know what kind of budgets you have managed, I have personally devised campaigns with millions of dollars in spend for brands, and they worked out very well. Of course, the targeting we did was very advanced and impossible to do for most people.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#384

Post by mpeg »

seestheday wrote: post #363
JacobJans wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do analytics for a major brand you have definitely heard of. We spend way more than $46K/year. I agree with Jacob here. If you are willing to work at it, facebook can give you a very healthy ROI. It is not nearly as easy as with Google though. - Buying likes is basically a waste of time unless your goal is to stroke someones ego or are trying to generate some sort of "social proof" - Re-targetting via Custom Audien…

I work in the field and have seen companies who spend several million a month, agree with your key points.

For companies of that size, data is everything, if an ad is underperforming it stops running, if an ad is bringing you low quality clicks (for example, like farms) it will stop running too.

It's really silly to look at someone saying they dumped $20k in FB ads and it didn't pan out without providing any kind of data at all, how many creatives/targeting permutations did they try? did they monitor their ads at all? did they try to negatively target those bad likes they were getting?

I've even seen "custom" lookalike audience implementations, to squeeze that extra cost/performance ratio out of it.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#385

Post by overdrivetg »

johnvschmitt wrote: post #380
blazespin wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jacob, that makes perfect sense. Yes, I suspect people are getting good ROI that know how to navigate the fakes. But the reality is that facebook could easily create "don't allow likes from someone with more than 5+ likes in their account" rule. Why not? You're probably not getting any mind share from them anyways.

I really like that: "don't allow likes from someone with more than 5+ likes in their account"" The # of likes by the user is a good proxy for how diluted the quality of the "like" is. Probability_to_show_ad = constant * num_other_likes That said, as long as Facebook has a counter-incentive to cleaning it up, we shouldn't expect this change. We need advertisers to revolt in large #'s before the financial incentives ma…

This is actually a great idea for Facebook - don't sell Likes in absolute numbers, sell them normalized to the fraction of total Likes for the users Liking you.

So I could buy 10 "Fractional Likes" and get 20 users who each only have 2 total Likes (including this one) = 20 * 1/2 = 10

OR I get 10,000 users who each have 1,000 Likes each = 10K * 1/1000 = 10

...which seems a reasonable ballpark for resolving it in an automatable, economic way.

"Don't allow Likes over X" kind of sucks since what happens to legitimate Likers? I'm not a clickfarmer, but I've Liked way more than 5 things.

My News Feed has turned to crap (probably because of it), but that's a whole 'nother story.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#386

Post by overdrivetg »

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?

I replied above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7222232) but Facebook could basically sell Likes normalized against the users' total Likes. So a Like by someone with 10 Likes is worth 10x vs someone with 100 Likes, etc.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#388

Post by dclara »

nayefc wrote: post #382
joeblau wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay for quality products.

It's not about quality of products. See the other reply. Without ads, there will be no Facebook or Twitter. The issue with fraud is a very serious and difficult one that creeps into many industries, and ends up sucking the life out of them (hint: check banking or finance!).

FB can still put ads on users timeline pages, like Twitter inserts ads in between the tweets.

But this kind of fraud is a big harm to the social network ecosystem.

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#389

Post by piyush_soni »

xxbondsxx wrote: post #179
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…

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…

And what about the 83,000 fake likes that his Science related page has? Can you explain that too?

Re: Facebook Fraud [video]

#390

Post by fendmark »

xxbondsxx wrote: post #179
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…

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…

The most interesting assertion in this video is that the facebook algorithm sends out user updates to a sample of their fans/subscribers and that the engagement performance within that sample is a key determining factor as to whether an update is shared more broadly in news feeds.

If that is in fact the case and purchasing facebook ads indirectly increases the amount of fake/automated likes included within that sample (thereby negatively impacting the overall engagement metrics on your posts) then the purchase of facebook advertising has the side effect of diminishing your ability to organically drive traffic and engagement.

To put it another way. This would be like if buying Google Adwords advertising not only got you fake/automated traffic, but also simultaneously decreased your organic, unpaid search rankings.

Post reply on HN