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

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

#291

Post by scotty79 »

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…

> Ban user tracking and targeting. It's a red queen's race and no one benefits. Everyone is better off once it's illegal.

Tracking and targetting has clear benfits for me as a consumer. I see adverts for things that actually interest me. If anyting I'd like it to be more precise.

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

#292

Post by GekkePrutser »

nomel wrote: post #187
crumbshot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks great. I already use an adblocker, but playing a small part in interfering with their pay-per-click mechanisms sounds much more compelling. Are there any downsides to using this?

If you're goal is to get the pages, that you value enough to view, to move to some other way to get money from your use of their service (which I assume you think should be free), then there's no downside.

Well by clicking on the ads it's pretty likely the site gets more money.

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

#293

Post by GekkePrutser »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #142
crumbshot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks great. I already use an adblocker, but playing a small part in interfering with their pay-per-click mechanisms sounds much more compelling. Are there any downsides to using this?

As others have said, any service doing fraud prevention might ban you. It doesn't seem to be happening yet, but that could change any time it got popular and they would be pretty justified doing it.

Since when is clicking on something but not looking at it fraud?

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

#294

Post by GekkePrutser »

sincerely wrote: post #23
thrownaway954 wrote: post #3

adnauseam.io i don't know how many people actually install this extension, but it is specifically designed to clicks ads so you don't have to :)

Always wondered how stuff like this/Decentraleyes etc work (or not, as the case may be) if you already have Ublock origin running.

Decentraleyes caches important JavaScript includes without which most sites don't work. UBlock origin won't block those because it'll break too much.

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

#295

Post by GekkePrutser »

notatoad wrote: post #20
user5994461 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warning to not install this extension if you use google ads in any capacity (work/blog/other), it will get your account banned from google very quick for clickfraud.

In addition to google, it's likely to get you at least shadowbanned on any site that has ads and does any sort of basic fraud prevention.

What's Shadowbanning? Never heard of this.

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

#296

Post by Ajedi32 »

jamiequint wrote: post #185
koverda wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unblock ads on sites I find useful, use frequently and want to actively support. If the ads aren't obnoxious, they stay unblocked. Sites wouldn't exist without the users, so they should keep in mind user experience when deciding how to monetize.

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.

> 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.

I'd argue the opposite. It's fundamentally selfish for a site to assume that _it_ gets to decide, without my agreement or consent, how I must consume the content it has freely and unconditionally sent me. If a site wants to negotiate a fair payment in exchange for its content (whether that payment be currency or merely displaying ads on my screen) it is free to do so, but without a mutual agreement neither party is under any moral obligation to the other. I'm not obligated to view the site in any particular way, and they're not obligated to serve me the content.

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

#297

Post by cmorgan31 »

abakker wrote: post #219
sam0x17 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with any model where ad performance is based on how much cash you can throw down is that scams are much more profitable typically than legitimate services. A scam page can afford $5/click if it's scamming 1% of its clicks for $5000. Bidding on clicks is just a race to the bottom in terms of quality. We should instead be using user metrics to evaluate and punish ads that lead to pages users regret navigati…

But, then we'd need to track users even more deeply, right?

We would need to model regret which is a questionable request to agree to “solve”.

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

#298

Post by stealthbot »

cbsmith wrote: post #214

I gotta say... this is an incredibly naive analysis. To demonstrate Reddit Ads isn't doing click fraud protection, you should try to generate a fraudulent click yourself. Looking at what is getting through and finding that a lot of it as easily identifiable as fraudulent is NOT a valid signal. It's incredibly likely that there are far more bots that are being blocked and that the bots that are getting through have in…

A company basically did what you described on Facebook, Google, Bing and Yahoo.

https://www.methodmi.com/reports/in-plain-sight

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

#299

Post by searchableguy »

stevesearer wrote: post #166
Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say 'on my site' would it be correct to say that you are talking about the one in your 'about' section? If so I was motivated to take a look as a way of expressing support for your design choices. However, you are using a Google-Analytics script???? Nothing wrong with that Buuuuttt.... uhm, yeah.

Yeah, I would like to not use GA too in the ideal world too :/ That said, we do use the Anonymize IP setting and have all of the demographic / interest settings turned off for Google Analytics. We basically whittled 3rd party stuff down to GA and a Google font, so while not 100% perfect, I am pretty happy with the strides we have made.

Have you thought about moving to posthog or plausible?

https://plausible.io/

https://posthog.com/

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

#300

Post by rightbyte »

Kiro wrote: post #49
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…

Extremely unpopular opinion but sometimes I like being targeted. Just last week I was looking for a ceiling lamp but couldn't really find anything I wanted. I finally found one that I liked by seeing it in an ad that was obviously targeted. It was nice to not having to actively go through the hundreds of pages of lamps and instead get presented a few different ones in each ad group now and then, as a break in my usua…

Are you surfing the web without ad-blocker? For real? But I trust you are sincere. One of my friends sincerely said that he likes ads in movies so he can get up and do stuff during the movies. He felt stuck without ads (Pre-streaming of-course).
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