Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

dayzlegame.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 434 posts

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#21

Post by mr_mitm »

xfour wrote: post #14
phenomen wrote: post #8

If you have their IP addresses in your dashboard, go to Google Ads > Admin > Account Settings > IP Exclusions. Then, add the entire network/data center range there (i.e. 123.4.5.*). In 99% of cases, these bot networks are not run from residential providers. You can confirm IPs at https://ipgeolocation.io/ After running Google Ads for a couple of years, our current exclusion list has over 4000 networks just in the US.

Is there an open database of this?

There is https://knock-knock.net/, which is similar

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#22

Post by bliteben »

legonigel wrote: post #5

What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.

likely they run an ad intelligence operation which requires them to click to see where the ads lead

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#23

Post by LoganDark »

rationalist wrote: post #9
legonigel wrote: post #5

What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.

One reason: It helps makes the bot accounts look more legit. It's why Facebook bot accounts like random legit pages.

This was my thought too. It's easy to pretend to click one ad in order to make that ad money. But it's also easy for Google to tell apart a huge number of accounts that all clicked that one ad and no others. However, if a huge number of accounts simply click a whole load of ads there's basically no way to tell that it was targeted at any particular ad + they can bot for multiple ads at once.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#24

Post by walrus01 »

phenomen wrote: post #8

If you have their IP addresses in your dashboard, go to Google Ads > Admin > Account Settings > IP Exclusions. Then, add the entire network/data center range there (i.e. 123.4.5.*). In 99% of cases, these bot networks are not run from residential providers. You can confirm IPs at https://ipgeolocation.io/ After running Google Ads for a couple of years, our current exclusion list has over 4000 networks just in the US.

This is one of the primary reasons why fraud actors purchase residential proxies in bulk now. Google "residential proxies for sale" for the tip of a huge grey/black market iceberg.

You know all those trojan infected smart TVs and home routers and such? That's one of the things they're doing.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#25

Post by benoau »

phenomen wrote: post #8

If you have their IP addresses in your dashboard, go to Google Ads > Admin > Account Settings > IP Exclusions. Then, add the entire network/data center range there (i.e. 123.4.5.*). In 99% of cases, these bot networks are not run from residential providers. You can confirm IPs at https://ipgeolocation.io/ After running Google Ads for a couple of years, our current exclusion list has over 4000 networks just in the US.

Why doesn't Google do this automatically? /s

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#26

Post by Dwedit »

carlosjobim wrote: post #19

Digital marketing is a solved problem. You pay a commission on verified real sales to affiliates, and they can do what the hell they please to make those sales. If somebody like Google or Meta cannot promise X amount of sales for Y amount of ad money spent, then you are a fool to give them any money. They have all the algorithms and profiles on everybody, so it's their job to match your product to customers. Why shou…

Honey says Hi.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#27

Post by wilbo »

Sayrus wrote: post #7
legonigel wrote: post #5

What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.

The bot owner is also providing "ad space" to Google. Author pays Google to show the ad. Bot owner gets paid by Google to "display" that ad and for conversion. The bot themselves aren't getting paid for installing the application. In a normal scenario, the provider of ad space would be a website or an application. Google would pay the owner of that space. On Youtube, that would be an ad served by Google paid to the c…

I'm trying to confirm that I understand what you mean:

Bot farm is operated by a company that displays Google ads. This bot farm fakes traffic to the bot farm owner and simulates conversion Google wants to see. Google sees the high conversion and happily serves more ads to the bot farm owner. Bot farm owner is paid by Google for displaying the ads. The person paying for the ad gets screwed.

Post reply on HN