Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#21

Post by dlock » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

keyle wrote: post #14

adamnemecek wrote: post #13

Is this company legit imploding?

At this point they might be "too big to fail".

dont think facebook is that kind of company yet .... other businesses which are core to our day to day are not built on fb's operations i would think (such as banks manufacturing companies etc).

and if this happened could you imagine the influx of engineers available

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#22

Post by imagetic » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

keyle wrote: post #15

On a side note, if you use instagram, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but literally every 3-4 pictures is an ad now. It's so annoying, they're completely ruining the experience and it affects my retention rate and my will to come back.

They're just reinforcing the demise of the platform. Over 80% of the last followers I picked up were bots. At least I'm assuming anyone who followers 4800 people can't be human.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#23

Post by dirkgently » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

jsemrau wrote: post #2

I have mentioned that several times before, but I always believed that FB's but also Google's metrics are at least borderline fraudulent. Inflated by bots and apps that simulate DAUs and clicks. I only have anecdotal evidence from Google, where I was frequently charged over my campaign limit on ad clicks that I could never validate on my own site. I believe FB is same.

And another discussion where Facebook does something wrong and HN immediately starts talking about Google.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#24

Post by imagetic » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

I've been doing a large amount of video production that is published to Facebook for the last few years. Mostly live, some post / uploaded work. But the live productions stats the morning after an event are extremely suspect. It seems like the numbers astronomically inflated.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#25

Post by ndespres » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #18

Pretty sure Twitter has an ad metrics problem too. As I wrote last year: > When I ran a Twitter Ads campaign for one of my clients, within two days I noticed that Google Analytics was reporting nearly 100% fewer visitors from the campaign than Twitter was reporting clicks. That is, if Twitter counted (and charged for) 100 clicks, Google Analytics showed fewer than 5 visitors from the campaign. > The support team at T…

I do exactly that behavior all the time. It's difficult to tell whether an image will expand when I click it on Twitter app for iPhone. When it opens a browser window that I wasn't expecting, I close immediately.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#26

Post by Deimorz » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #16

m_ke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the reason why reddit went through the redesign. It lets them hide ads in the infinite scroll and pretend that people looked at them.

I really can’t help but wonder if our entire online ecosystem is built entirely on fraudulent ad sales.

This was a good article from a while back that shows how every dollar spent on online advertising seems to only result in about 3 cents worth of actual ad views: https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/display-ads-my-3-w...

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#27

Post by lovich » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

dirkgently wrote: post #23

jsemrau wrote: post #2

I have mentioned that several times before, but I always believed that FB's but also Google's metrics are at least borderline fraudulent. Inflated by bots and apps that simulate DAUs and clicks. I only have anecdotal evidence from Google, where I was frequently charged over my campaign limit on ad clicks that I could never validate on my own site. I believe FB is same.

And another discussion where Facebook does something wrong and HN immediately starts talking about Google.

They are the top two players in the digital ad space, which this article is about. Talking about how others in the industry also follow this practice seems like a pertinent topic of discussion in light of the article

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#28

Post by cm2012 » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

This is why, if you advertise, measure results on purchases or leads generated and nothing else. Every ad platform's engagement measures are useless to you unless you have a lot of experience and context for what they mean.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#29

Post by pavanlimo » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #18

Pretty sure Twitter has an ad metrics problem too. As I wrote last year: > When I ran a Twitter Ads campaign for one of my clients, within two days I noticed that Google Analytics was reporting nearly 100% fewer visitors from the campaign than Twitter was reporting clicks. That is, if Twitter counted (and charged for) 100 clicks, Google Analytics showed fewer than 5 visitors from the campaign. > The support team at T…

Can't disagree with Twitter's reasoning there, anecdotally I myself have done that many times.

Re: Facebook lured advertisers by inflating video ad-watch times: lawsuit

#30

Post by munchbunny » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #16

m_ke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the reason why reddit went through the redesign. It lets them hide ads in the infinite scroll and pretend that people looked at them.

I really can’t help but wonder if our entire online ecosystem is built entirely on fraudulent ad sales.

Yes and no. Conventional wisdom inside ad tech is that fraud rates are about 30% on average. Typically lower for video. So there's real value in there (in terms of ROI for the advertiser) but there's effectively an entire margin of fraud where advertisers are bearing much of that cost.