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Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

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Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#111

Post by pathdependent »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #95
pathdependent wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This used to happen a lot on ad networks, although I personally don't know how pervasive it is now. The game is as jiggy said. Force competing ad buyers to pay for what appears to be non-productive traffic by forcing ad clicks. Since the real views are dominated by false views, the conversion rate on whatever is being sold appears to be horrible. The competitor goes elsewhere, and the scammer maintains access to…

How does Google prevent this? Is it simply inherently not-problematic, due to their spread of advertising?

It's a cat and mouse game. Google gets good at it; scammers get more sophisticated; google catches up again; ad infinitum. Also, in addition to the scam mentioned above -- in Google's case, targeting AdWords -- they have to deal with scammers hitting their own AdSense properties.

It's a well known problem. Considering AdWords is Google's primary source of revenue, they work hard at it. For a tiny bit more directly from Google, see: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#112

Post by samstave »

reustle wrote: post #49

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us…

That escalated quickly!

And so it seems that Facebook could be proven to be the new groupon.

I would absolutely not be suprised if the hits were FB bots - however I'd expect they wouldn't be that directly stupid so as to have an Ad-bot net in house. Surely this is some service they outsource for plausible deniability.

Something they would have learned from their relationship handing all user data over to the NSA/CIA.

EDIT:

I'd like to make a prediction on how this could potentially play out:

1. FB ignores them. They have nothing to do with this issue and they know the bots are tainting traffic - but they can't/wont do anything about it because it boosts their revenues.

2. FB may or may not be involved in the ad-bots, but, they will drop their $ contingency on ad-rev for the name and payout these guys to shut them up. Their stock was improperly priced and taken a beating. They don't want this coming to light in a large way as it will have a negative affect on the perception of their business model. They hav to be kind of careful of the Barbara Streisand effect here too...

3. Many more people will reveal the same results with empirical testing and it will be revealed that FB earnings are 80% over inflated. Their stock will drop to the predicted real value of <$10... maybe hit that actual projected number of $7.00 - Zynga will BEG FB to purchase them as they are now a penny stock and they can't sustain.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#113

Post by spaghetti »

seiji wrote: post #98
hobonumber1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is besides the point.

Is it though? It seems they spent a lot of time throwing more and more javascript at the problem until they realized they couldn't figure out what was happening. If they had real logging from the beginning, it would have unconfused them much sooner.

They were taking orthogonal measurements to see if the pattern would appear over and over. Also it sounds like each successive measurement technique was at a lower level than the previous technique. Sounds pretty thorough. I'd love to see some actual data though.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#114

Post by rapind »

huggyface wrote: post #83
Cushman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, there's lots of reasons that would be a stupid idea for Facebook. But there's clearly something shady going on, and Facebook is being dicks to them in other ways, so they're out. That's the subtext.

They end the bot section with "But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable." after saying that they weren't accusing Facebook of running the bots. The subtext is screaming out. Does me pointing out the barely shrouded subtext mean that I believe what they are saying? Of course not. It's just as likely, it seems, that their test is simply flawed (as others said, let's see the technical honey trap)…

I actually think they were trying to say something strange is going on, which I think is pretty obvious given their stats, and that they have no idea who's doing it or why, partially because Facebook can't be bothered to look into it or at least get back to them about it.

That to me sounds like FB is aware of the issue and isn't interested in discussing it. That's the subtext imo.

My own suspicion would be because someone is gaming their ads and they haven't been able to prevent it as of yet, and not because they themselves are gaming the numbers. No doubt they believe that discussing it is tacit admission that they haven't been able to prevent it, which is bad for business.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#115

Post by crygin »

seiji wrote: post #98
hobonumber1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is besides the point.

Is it though? It seems they spent a lot of time throwing more and more javascript at the problem until they realized they couldn't figure out what was happening. If they had real logging from the beginning, it would have unconfused them much sooner.

How would you use the access log to determine if client-side javascript was being executed?

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#116

Post by huggyface »

spaghetti wrote: post #99
huggyface wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They refused to overtly accuse them, but the subtext seem to argue exactly that.

While I doubt malicious intent on FB's part there's certainly a financial incentive to ignore this problem. How would their earnings reports change if they stopped charging at least some advertisers for 80% of clicks?

It would be a very, very short term financial incentive.

Advertisers monitor to see performance on the other end, and when the campaigns don't yield actual success they move on.

The only real exception to this are mega-brands that advertise just to build namespace. Everyone else expects direct action from some hefty percentage of their ads.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#117

Post by russtrpkovski »

smackfu wrote: post #101
russtrpkovski wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lose all your Likes.

Which is presumably why this is a policy in the first place...

Facebook allows advertisers to target friends of users who liked your page. They probably restrict name changes so users associated with a page don't get blind-sided if the company radically changes its product or service.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#118

Post by Cushman »

huggyface wrote: post #83
Cushman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, there's lots of reasons that would be a stupid idea for Facebook. But there's clearly something shady going on, and Facebook is being dicks to them in other ways, so they're out. That's the subtext.

They end the bot section with "But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable." after saying that they weren't accusing Facebook of running the bots. The subtext is screaming out. Does me pointing out the barely shrouded subtext mean that I believe what they are saying? Of course not. It's just as likely, it seems, that their test is simply flawed (as others said, let's see the technical honey trap)…

I see what you're saying, it just isn't very hard for me to take them at their word: They're not claiming that it's Facebook, not out of some sense of propriety, but because they don't have any evidence that it is. It could be anyone.

And it doesn't matter who it is, because they're leaving for a different reason: Facebook never returns their calls unless it's with an offer of extortion.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#119

Post by vampirechicken »

wpietri wrote: post #96
seiji wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. They reinvented the access log? By hand? Are people really that detached from how servers work?

This could be a businessperson's interpretation of what happened. Or they might have indeed reinvented it. Kids these days and their Heroku! Back in my day we'd process each HTTP request by hand. And we'd do it uphill both ways in the snow.

using awk.

Re: Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

#120

Post by adharmad »

pandog wrote: post #60
huggyface wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They refused to overtly accuse them, but the subtext seem to argue exactly that.

Which is really taking things too far - if Facebook wanted to generate some revenue with bots then it wouldn't be very difficult for them to write ones that supported JavaScript.

That is true, but Facebook's reputation would suffer seriously if they were ever caught.

What they (Facebook) are doing now seems to be some version of DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell).

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