Earlier quoted context omitted.
William Gibson could probably give you some ideas on what that says about us. He started writing about this fictionally decades ago.
Or Stanislaw Lem
Really? Could you share the titles.
Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another example, ads that follow me. Oh god how I hate these. I visit a website, usually for a product that I already own, and the freaking ad from that company follows me wherever I go. This is money wasted. Wasted on you, probably not on the majority.
Does the average person like to purchase an item they already own if they see an advertisement for it? Of course not.
Campaigns like this, while frustrating for existing users, aren't there to target us, they're to target someone who filled out the sales form halfway and got distracted.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#43I've been in the online advertising world for 10 years and it still befuddles me to see that most ad dollars still haven't switched to cost-per-action (CPA), i.e. only paying for actual conversions. One big benefit of advertising online after all is that tracking conversions and their referrers is much easier than with offline.
CPA simply doesn't make sense for all ad campaigns. When Lexus buys ads on a financial news site it's for branding -- they want to get their logo in front of their target demographic. The ads aren't optimized for clicks or leads -- sometimes there isn't even a clear call to action.
[deleted]
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#44Back in July, hundreds (thousands?) of sites noticed a surge in traffic in their analytics. Hundreds to thousands of additional visits per day above their normal traffic rates. Curiously, all this traffic identified as Internet Explorer 7 on various version of Windows, but each visit came from a different residential IP, and viewed only one page per session. Eventually the common thread between all these sites was id…
Sometimes this stuff isn't even bot traffic, it's traffic purchased from someone who fulfills by incentivizing people who play online games with virtual currency for viewing videos or clicking through to sites that serve the buyers ads. I presume they've also got into the retargeting capture game, too.
Yup. Many facebook games have a "watch this video" or "visit these sites" in an iframe in exchange for extra points, more seeds, a better pool stick, etc. Just as useless as bot traffic.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#45"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wanamaker
Whilst that quote is about targeting and not fraud, it fits rather nicely. It's actually attributed to a number of people.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#46I've been in the online advertising world for 10 years and it still befuddles me to see that most ad dollars still haven't switched to cost-per-action (CPA), i.e. only paying for actual conversions. One big benefit of advertising online after all is that tracking conversions and their referrers is much easier than with offline.
it still befuddles me to see that most ad dollars still haven't switched to cost-per-action (CPA), i.e. only paying for actual conversions
This assumes that ad networks with useful returns offer such an option.
I have no idea what Facebook have been playing at over the last month or so, but I do know that the new system seemed to charge us about 4-5x as much per real visitor to our site as the old one, despite having what appears to be the closest equivalent set up for click-based charging in the two systems. Of course, even that is only Facebook's idea of clicks, which includes non-conversion clicks such as people liking your ad itself or your page, not just the conversions you actually care about.
We pulled all Facebook advertising within a couple of days as a direct result of this and asked them what was going on. They claimed nothing had changed, and I'm told they suggested the dramatic difference was just down to "increased competition". Our theory is that a lot of other small/niche advertisers were also confused by the new model, but many didn't realise what was going on and continued running their own campaigns at the vastly higher cost per click, at least initially.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another example, ads that follow me. Oh god how I hate these. I visit a website, usually for a product that I already own, and the freaking ad from that company follows me wherever I go. This is money wasted. Wasted on you, probably not on the majority.
Does the average person like to purchase an item they already own if they see an advertisement for it? Of course not.
Does the average person like to purchase an item they already own if they see an advertisement for it?
If that item is a car, probably not.
If that item is a type of beer, or a model of razor blades, or a certain liquid to put in your washing machine, sure.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#48Good. Maybe they'll stop throwing so much wasted money at Google.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#49Advertising in its current form is broken.
I was recently in a class where we performed a case study on Google. The professor asked if anyone had ever clicked on an ad. One kid out of 60 had clicked on ad for cheap protein supplements, but hadn't bought any. Everyone else scoffed, pointed out their use of AdBlock, and cited their gullible parents as the only people they knew who might ever possibly accidentally click on an ad. Furthermore, the strong majority of our class viewed targeted ads on Facebook and Gmail as extremely creepy and unconvincing.
There are two ad models that work in my opinion:
1. Native advertising: Ads disguised as useful content. This works for changing people's perceptions, especially if its done through official or generally impartial channels, such as news outlets. People think they're getting honest information about BP's charitable acts and Coke's health benefits, but they're really being lied to. This doesn't generate any direct sales, but it can really influence consumer sentiment on different brands which can have a massive impact on sales indirectly. This method is extremely sneaky and unethical, and that's probably why it works.
2. Snapchat's new model: Opt-in, high quality ads. I liken these ads to movie trailers. They are well-crafted and curated, and you only have to watch them if you want to. This way, people who click on them are already intrigued and have committed to watching the ad, making for a more engaged and curious user base. This method is still being developed but I can see it become big in the next couple of years.
Re: Advertisers scramble as ‘non-human traffic’ eats up online budgets
#50Advertising in its current form is broken. I was recently in a class where we performed a case study on Google. The professor asked if anyone had ever clicked on an ad. One kid out of 60 had clicked on ad for cheap protein supplements, but hadn't bought any. Everyone else scoffed, pointed out their use of AdBlock, and cited their gullible parents as the only people they knew who might ever possibly accidentally click…
Everyone else scoffed, pointed out their use of AdBlock
If your entire class was running AdBlock, then your sample is far from representative of the general population.
There are two ad models that work in my opinion
The thing is, opinions don't matter in this game, facts do. Do you really think major brands like Coca Cola or McDonalds or Ford spend such astronomical sums of money on advertising without being pretty good at knowing what returns they get?
You might think that no-one really buys a car because of the product placement where the successful business owner drives that model in their favourite TV show, but you'd be wrong.