Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
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Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#2Advertisers, for example, should demand transparency from website operators about where their traffic comes from.
Ads are usually served from ad networks' servers so they should already have this information.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#3Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in.
Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most smart companies haven't priced this into their bidding. There's not some sort of intrinsic value per click or impression - it should purely be based on the expected propensity of it leading to a conversion. Fake clicks and impressions are just a factor which reduces this and therefore it should automatically be taken into account.
In fact, I'm surprised it's not the suppliers of inventory, like YouTube, who are complaining that this is erroding their value. If advertisers are getting caught out by this then they're not being very smart.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#4Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in. Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most sma…
That's what I thought but the fraudulent ad views are probably not distributed evenly. You can't just assume that 25% of views on your ads are fraudulent. There's a lot of uncertainty here.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#5Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 in extra profit - you're paying too much for ads. The fact that 23% of ad views don't convert just pushes down the price of an "ad view", ie those fake views are priced in to your CPM rates already. This does not effect your ad budget however.
People that get hurt aren't the advertisers but the quality publishers who may be struggling to sell ads at higher CPM rates, justifying those with fewer fake ad views. But this is nothing new, ad rates have always varied considerably across newspapers based on their quality and audience, and ad buyers should understand that. It's completely normal to pay hundred times more to show your ad on WSJ compared to PornHub for example.
I don't know enough about this, but surely ad buyers have the tools to track conversion rates of different advertising mediums and publishers, thus enabling them to ultimately compute the cost-per-sale?
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#6Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 in extra profit - you're paying too much for ads. The fact that 23% of ad views don't convert just pushes down the price of an "ad view", ie those fake views are priced in to your CPM rates already. This does not effect your ad budget however. People that get hur…
Most advert buyers are not sophisticated. So fraud matters.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#7Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in. Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most sma…
That's what I thought but the fraudulent ad views are probably not distributed evenly. You can't just assume that 25% of views on your ads are fraudulent. There's a lot of uncertainty here.
As long as it's not a hugely noisy in the way it changes within each exchange/source of inventory, you should be able to account for it. Don't forget plenty of other "legitimate" changes happen every day to affect the value of placements too - usage patterns, page layouts, tastes and fashions etc. They can be just as nefarious but all need to be accounted for - fraud is just another factor.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#8Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in. Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most sma…
25% is an average => some small advertisers likely close to 100% broken in a way which is not immediately visible to them.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#9Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in. Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most sma…
There's a big difference if 25% of your plates are accidentally broken in shipping vs being smashed with a hammer in the warehouse.
Re: Robots, Not Humans, Fake 23% of Web Video Ad Views, Study Finds
#10Not sure I fully buy the argument that the industry is actually genuinely losing that $6bn. If I buy plates in bulk but find that 25% are usually broken in shipping, I will tend to pay 25% less for each shipment on the assumption that this will happen - the supplier might even have already priced this in. Online advertising is a much more fluid market and very metrics-focused - I find it hard to believe that most sma…
There's a big difference if 25% of your plates are accidentally broken in shipping vs being smashed with a hammer in the warehouse.
I imagine the supplier would probably care (and maybe the police too) but as long as I'm paying 25% less it's not really my problem.