Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee" • Hacker News Board

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#31

Post by Animats » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:05 AM UTC

Well, no one can complain that the right wing is being censored:

    RussiaToday.com
    Pravda.ru  
    WND.com  
    Zerohedge.com  
    Breitbart.com  
    Newsmax.com  
    Whatfinger.com  
    TheBlaze.com  
    TheFederalist.com
    Hannity.com

Half of those guys were kicked off Fox News.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#32

Post by mwint » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:05 AM UTC

floomk wrote: post #27

paxys wrote: post #19

Meh. I read the original report when it was released, and it was a whole lot of nothing. Their claim was basically – "we found some Google video ad fraud!". Well guess what, Google knows and agrees that there is fraud. So do all the advertisers who pay them. The question is really about how much fraud there is. Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that numbe…

> Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that number How about actively keeping that at 0%?

Relevant: Bits About Money, The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#33

Post by candiddevmike » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:08 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #21

kyleyeats wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There's a century-old quote for it: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." - John Wanamaker

I believe the context for that quote is that it was referencing TV ads, which makes sense. How can a TV advertiser know who is watching? Online ads were supposed to fix this problem.

Ad attribution is extremely difficult across any ad medium, especially while respecting user privacy.

You may see an online ad two weeks ago and buy the product today, how do you attribute that?

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#34

Post by codedokode » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:08 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #19

Meh. I read the original report when it was released, and it was a whole lot of nothing. Their claim was basically – "we found some Google video ad fraud!". Well guess what, Google knows and agrees that there is fraud. So do all the advertisers who pay them. The question is really about how much fraud there is. Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that numbe…

It is obvious to me that third-party sites are motivated to employ every trick to increase ad views. Google cannot show ads to bots, because it will be a fraud, but a third-party site can because they are in a different country and you won't hold them responsible anyway.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#35

Post by vgeek » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:09 AM UTC

Google has done the exact same thing with Google Search Partners for 15+ years. They never disclose who these search partners are, but are opted-in by default. Their performance is always around 5-10% of Google Search-- because they are random spam-search-type sites whose sole purpose is to serve ads.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#36

Post by fundad » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:09 AM UTC

anony23 wrote: post #15

Big brands don't care. They have massive budgets that they need to spend and are happy to spend them or else they get cut.

Unless you're selling gold bars or boats, nobody want's to overpay to run next to Breitbart.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#37

Post by fundad » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:12 AM UTC

biomcgary wrote: post #17

The real goal of this post is clear about half way down the page, de-funding disinformation from right-wing sources. My guess is that the group of website that they call out as problematic are actually great for getting ad viewers (older, non-tech savvy, gullible) that don't click skip. I would be less suspicious that this was a submarine article if the sites called out were roughly balanced left-right (by US standar…

Yeah it's wild that Google is trying to help disinformation outlets get around Check My Ads but I guess they need the money.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#38

Post by makeitdouble » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:15 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #19

Meh. I read the original report when it was released, and it was a whole lot of nothing. Their claim was basically – "we found some Google video ad fraud!". Well guess what, Google knows and agrees that there is fraud. So do all the advertisers who pay them. The question is really about how much fraud there is. Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that numbe…

At the same time, Google is the only entity that could provide the numbers you want to see.

Who else could get actual numbers of scams they run vs legit ads ? There's no other entity that sees every single of the ads they serve, so we'd need a trustworthy insider leak to meet your standard.

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#39

Post by phendrenad2 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:16 AM UTC

Google is a 1.5 trillion dollar advertising company. There simply isn't enough content in the world to monetize to keep Google growing YoY. All companies reach this point. Some glide to a natural equilibrium point (McDonalds, Subway), some cook the books and implode spectacularly (Enron), some oversteer in the other direction and fall down in chunky movements (Meta).

Re: Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

#40

Post by makestuff » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:17 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #25

As I understand, the problem here is that Google wants to run your ads on third-party sites (to earn more), but you don't want to run ads there because third-party sites employ every trick possible to generate impressions even if real user never sees the ads. If you care about money spent, you should calculate ROI for each third-party site and filter out those which give low returns. And not expect that Google will d…

I would be surprised if there wasn’t some SAAS offering that did this for you.