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Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

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Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#31

Post by JupiterMoon »

moron4hire wrote: post #27
ryanworl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While sales resulting from ad impressions are important (i.e. direct response ads), wouldn't you also agree ads for establishing branding are important as well? The vast majority of ads for luxury cars, for example, aren't going to elicit an immediate purchase, but still provide value for the automaker down the line. Obviously the ads have to eventually lead to sales, but an immediate and trackable sale isn't always…

Startups aren't luxury car brands. If you're selling a product or service, I think you establish brand by making happy customers. That first requires a sale.

And that first requires reputation. I'm not giving your company my credit card number if I've never heard of it.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#32

Post by moron4hire »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #31
moron4hire wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups aren't luxury car brands. If you're selling a product or service, I think you establish brand by making happy customers. That first requires a sale.

And that first requires reputation. I'm not giving your company my credit card number if I've never heard of it.

You should be able to get your first few sales without any brand identity, just based on the merits of your product. I expect the majority of people reading this site who actually have a project in the works are probably boot-strapping. There is no way they'll be able to spend on "building brand" before they start making sales. Whatever Facebook or Lexus or NHS or whomever does has no baring on us, we are fundamentally different beasts.

Also, you're not sending me your credit card number, you're sending it to Stripe, or Amazon, or PayPal. Regardless, I think you severely overestimating how cautious people are with their credit card info.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#33

Post by hamax »

moron4hire wrote: post #28
hamax wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Ad networks will optimize for cost per acquisition but won't charge based on it since they don't control that part of the pipeline. If advertiser's landing page is down for example, the loss shouldn't fell on the ad network.

It's not really a "loss" though. It's not like there is a significant marginal cost to serving static content.

Ad network can mean many different things.

In case of facebook where their ad network controls the whole process (SSP + Exchange + DSP) they would only lose, besides the infrastructure cost, the opportunity to make money by serving another ad.

But for the majority of ad serving world it's not that simple. If you're for example a DSP and buy ad impressions from exchanges via real time bidding, you have to pay for the impression even if you can't charge the advertisers for it. So you lose money twice. You don't serve another ad which would make you money and you have to pay for an ad that won't be paid for by the advertiser.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#34

Post by jameshart »

morley wrote: post #20
TomGullen wrote: post #15

If you've got a team of smart people willing to drop $500k on a banner campaign and you can accurately measure the results and it's still worth it with all the fraud, good for you. If you're a mom and pop store looking to spend $500 on advertisements they should be made aware there's a good chance they will be defrauded unless they know what they are doing.

I think the article's point is that, if you compare banners to physical billboards, then you have the same issue but the billboard still works. So even your theoretical mom and pop store is getting value out of the impressions.

But when you pay someone to put up a billboard, there isn't a risk that they'll put it by a road they think gets tons of traffic, but is actually just used by one guy being paid by the building owner to drive past it repeatedly.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#35

Post by moron4hire »

hamax wrote: post #33
moron4hire wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a "loss" though. It's not like there is a significant marginal cost to serving static content.

Ad network can mean many different things. In case of facebook where their ad network controls the whole process (SSP + Exchange + DSP) they would only lose, besides the infrastructure cost, the opportunity to make money by serving another ad. But for the majority of ad serving world it's not that simple. If you're for example a DSP and buy ad impressions from exchanges via real time bidding, you have to pay for the…

Meh, crocodile tears. If they shouldn't have to pay in the rare case that my site is down, then I shouldn't have to pay in the more-common-than-not case that there is no real person behind the click. And note that I have an incentive to keep my site up, whereas they apparently have no incentive to keep click-fraud down, evidenced by the fact that it's more than 50% of the case.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#36

Post by moron4hire »

kjjw wrote: post #2

"Honestly, at first when that article got posted I thought you were going to talk about something else: like maybe how the entire dream of the internet is a bit of a fraud for advertisers in general." Dream of the internet (presumably they mean dream of the web) was not initially one of advertisement.

I'd really like to know what he meant by that. I have a feeling I'm not going to like the answer.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#37

Post by justuk »

moron4hire wrote: post #24
morley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article's point is that, if you compare banners to physical billboards, then you have the same issue but the billboard still works. So even your theoretical mom and pop store is getting value out of the impressions.

There is no value to "impressions". Impressions != sales. Sales are the only thing we should be counting as value. Focusing on impressions is how we get click-fraud in the first place.

Click fraud is the opposite of impression based advertising. Click fraud is when the bad guys encourage people to sign up for services or click on links that offer a sales based bounty and are rewarded for their actions.

Impression based brand advertising is a different model to click based lead advertising. The former places all the risk and work on the adveriser, the later pushes it towards the publisher. If you run a website that's hugely popular and don't want to waste your resources on other business's ad campaigns then selling by impression is the only sensible option.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#38

Post by forgetsusername »

The fact that no user really enjoys banner advertising occupying their screen real estate, and that most of this advertising can be prevented from displaying with a simply installed browser plugin, makes the whole online advertising economy seem rather tenuous. And yet, some of the largest companies on the planet derive most of their value from it.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#39

Post by tankenmate »

moron4hire wrote: post #32
JupiterMoon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that first requires reputation. I'm not giving your company my credit card number if I've never heard of it.

You should be able to get your first few sales without any brand identity, just based on the merits of your product. I expect the majority of people reading this site who actually have a project in the works are probably boot-strapping. There is no way they'll be able to spend on "building brand" before they start making sales. Whatever Facebook or Lexus or NHS or whomever does has no baring on us, we are fundamental…

The bulk of the market are conscious of these issues; the "leading tail" of the market, the early adopters much less so. Obviously the "lagging tail" of the market won't buy without cash and without personally knowing the seller and inspecting the goods in person before buying. Branding however is for the rest of the market.

Re: Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter

#40

Post by gjm11 »

moron4hire wrote: post #22
TomGullen wrote: post #15

If you've got a team of smart people willing to drop $500k on a banner campaign and you can accurately measure the results and it's still worth it with all the fraud, good for you. If you're a mom and pop store looking to spend $500 on advertisements they should be made aware there's a good chance they will be defrauded unless they know what they are doing.

This is really important. I really believe small-time projects have no business buying advertising online. It's just so incredibly low value that to scale it to meaningful results takes a lot more money than a person or small group of people bootstrapping their project on a shoestring can muster. For example: my wife has written a sci-fi novel. You can buy an eBook or paperback on Amazon. We would have to spend a few…

I know it's terribly old-fashioned to take the word "literal" literally ... but I'm now trying to imagine what a "literal fuckton of banners" might actually be. It's pretty disturbing.
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