“35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent” • Hacker News Board

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#251

Post by jlund-molfese » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

stevesearer wrote: post #147

earthboundkid wrote: post #8

Every newspaper in America has obvious scam ads on its homepage. The whole online ad market is diseased and needs to be uprooted. Common sense fixes: - Never allow dynamic ad content! Ads should be individually approved by publishers and not subject to change after approval. - Ban user tracking and targeting. It's a red queen's race and no one benefits. Everyone is better off once it's illegal. - Pay for ad time slot…

On my site we follow a couple of the practices you mention: - No dynamic ad content (we do allow geo-ip targeting for continents and countries, but this is using a self-hosted maxmind list) - Half-month or Monthly advertising time slots In addition to those practices, we also do the following: - Self-host our ads - Sell our own ads and have direct relationship with the ad buyers - No animated advertising (only static…

Do you have any thoughts on the financial impact of self-hosting vs using something like Google Ads? I'd assume you mostly made that choice for ethical reasons, right?

I noticed that my ad blocker doesn't block your ads, and like you mentioned, they don't interrupt the browsing experience. They're almost like those in a high-quality paper magazine!

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#252

Post by skyyler » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #223

hbn wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blows my mind when I'm watching someone just sit in silence waiting 10 seconds so they can skip an ad on youtube

Was visiting distant family ~10 years ago in a small Yugoslav village. They had ~2mbit fixed wireless (w00t), but when I installed Adblock and dialed up their CRT to 85hz from 60, they didn’t even notice anything changed .

Adblock is one thing, but why would anyone notice a 15 fps increase?

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#253

Post by jamiequint » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #234

jamiequint wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What malicious code are first-party ad networks running on your computer?

0. The vast majority of websites are running third-party ad networks, not first-party. 1. Even first-party ad networks often track and fingerprint users without consent, and may even share the data they have with other websites. This has personally happened to me, specifically in which eBay and Amazon serve their own first-party ads, but shared data about my searches, purchases, and clicks with other platforms. Even…

1. They have consent, it's called the terms of service.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#254

Post by eptcyka » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

ramenandtrance wrote: post #202

eptcyka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are what you like, given enough information, the ID becomes pointless.

If I allowed tracking, which I don't, the ad companies wouldn't know what to make of me. Middle age white guy devops nerd into manga, anime, fishing, ramen, lo-fi, and coding. Yet, I wear Wrangler jeans, boots, and drink wine. Even my wife thinks I'm an oddball. My kids think I'm cool until it's bed time on a school night and then howls of "Dad, what about Gundam! It's almost over. We promise!"

No one human has to be capable of putting you in a box, there's this cottage industry devoted to making machines do it for us.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#255

Post by leoplct » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

I wonder if pay for impression (CPM) is a better to mitigate this cost?

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#256

Post by sk2020 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

stanmancan wrote: post #138

Nextgrid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that opening up the market to "Aunt Mae" will also open up the market to malicious players. The financial barrier of entry of TV & print advertising is a very effective filter against scams. I have yet to see scam ads for fake tech support or "win an iPhone by filling a survey" or some "free" trial which uses unreadable fine print to sign you up for something very expensive, but those are commonplace o…

So the answer to preventing scam ads is only allowing the richest companies have a chance to advertise? Surely there’s a better way.

I worked at a local TV station a while back, and I programmed the commercials. You would be surprised at how little those slots go for. Off prime time, a 15 or 30 second add spot might sell for a couple dollars. At night they’re only a few cents. It was a mid-sized metropolitan area, so I don’t think this would be so out of the ordinary.

To this day, I have no idea how any TV stations are financially solvent.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#257

Post by SuperCuber » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #237

Does this actually matter? If you are doing online advertising, you should be able to attribute a particular visit to a specific ad campaign, so you can calculate your conversion rate. If Reddit has lots of bots, it just means your conversion rate for those ads will be lower, and you can adjust your spending accordingly. There are a lot of things that can significantly affect clicks other than fraudulent clicks (popu…

The point the poster was making is that they were paying money for clicks that had no chance of generating any conversion - and that it's Reddit's responsibility to detect those and not charge for them. So they're not complaining about lower conversion rate, but lower bang for their buck.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#258

Post by dheera » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #253

dheera wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. The vast majority of websites are running third-party ad networks, not first-party. 1. Even first-party ad networks often track and fingerprint users without consent, and may even share the data they have with other websites. This has personally happened to me, specifically in which eBay and Amazon serve their own first-party ads, but shared data about my searches, purchases, and clicks with other platforms. Even…

1. They have consent, it's called the terms of service.

For eBay and Amazon, I consider that consent to be a malicious term, especially for these websites which are near monopolies. Even though I hit "agree" to their attempt to collect data, I still will instruct my devices to not actually give certain data to them, and instruct my devices to not display ads that are targeted based on cross-business shared data.

And of course there are the million other sites you don't need to agree to any ToS to use.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#259

Post by duskwuff » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #253

dheera wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. The vast majority of websites are running third-party ad networks, not first-party. 1. Even first-party ad networks often track and fingerprint users without consent, and may even share the data they have with other websites. This has personally happened to me, specifically in which eBay and Amazon serve their own first-party ads, but shared data about my searches, purchases, and clicks with other platforms. Even…

1. They have consent, it's called the terms of service.

The terms of service for a web page the user just visited? They haven't even seen anything to suggest that the ToS exists at that point -- they haven't consented to anything.

Re: “35-50% of clicks on Reddit Ads are fraudulent”

#260

Post by goostavos » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

effingwewt wrote: post #197

jamiequint wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fundamentally selfish viewpoint that you instead of the site you're using should decide how you consume what the site offers, a point of view that would be considered patently outrageous in many other contexts. Many people here confuse such a thing being possible with such a thing being morally justifiable.

If you are going to attack people for not liking ads maybe throw out a disclaimer about how you make your living?

Wow, this is a weird thread. Who is this guy and why is everyone so mad at him about making his living in ad tech..?

Him being in ads doesn't change the validity of the points he's making. Websites have to make money somehow. If you don't pay for a subscription, and don't allow the ads to run, why should you still feel entitled to consume their content?

To be super clear: I'm in the ad-blocker camp, but I don't think we can really pretend that it's somehow justified. Ads annoy the bejesus out of me, I'm not willing to pay for a million little one-off subscriptions, there's this lovely back door that gives me all the content with no ads, so, me being of low moral fiber, goes the adblocking route.