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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”

#381

Post by [deleted] »

jamiequint wrote: post #218
proverbialbunny wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work the way you think it does. Ads are paid for my the click. Some people never click on ads. The kinds of people who are likely to consider running an ad blocker are the same type who never click on ads regardless if they have ads or not. The ideal situation is never advertising ad blockers, never bragging about them, never making a big deal about them, and keeping some mild barrier of entry. This way th…

I ran the ads product org at one of the 10 biggest websites in the US. I'm pretty sure that ads work the way that I think they do.

[deleted]

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

cbsmith wrote: post #318
tupputuppu wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to obfuscate an IP address on a TCP connection. The TCP sequence numbers are random so if the fraudster spoofs their IP, they won't get the return traffic and will be unable to complete the handshake and even establish a connection. As the original poster noted, 15 requests from a single IP in a short amount of time should be an anomaly. There's no real world scenario where 15 people behind one NAT sh…

> There is no way to obfuscate an IP address on a TCP connection. I think you misunderstand how this works/is done. > The TCP sequence numbers are random so if the fraudster spoofs their IP, they won't get the return traffic and will be unable to complete the handshake and even establish a connection. A bunch of misperceptions here. I'm posting this right now from an IP address that is different than the IP address t…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by thu2111 »

jedberg wrote: post #244
jamiequint wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that people providing a service should not be able to choose how to charge for it in any other context outside of websites?

As the guy that helped build the first ad platform on reddit, no, I don't think the provider should choose. When we built the first reddit ad system, none of us liked ads, and we knew that a lot of users didn't either. We knew that we had to make useful ads if we wanted people not to block us. We knew we had to make them unobtrusive and even enjoyable. We knew that we had to build an ad product people enjoyed if we w…

The fact that the people who built Reddit ads didn't care if it worked and now blocks ads might explain why Reddit isn't profitable.

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

#384

Post by GekkePrutser »

notatoad wrote: post #339
GekkePrutser wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Shadowbanning? Never heard of this.

It's where you're effectively banned without being told about it. You can still use the service, but any action you take is isolated from the rest of the site. The term I think comes from reddit but the concept is by no means unique to them: your upvotes or downvotes wouldn't affect rankings and nobody would ever see your submissions or comments other than you. The idea is to let spammers or fraudsters waste their en…

Thanks, I had no idea! Never heard of this. Really good explanation.

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

#385

Post by GekkePrutser »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #324
GekkePrutser wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I know you're being obtuse, but the fraud is that someone is paying for you to look at those ads. You're under no obligation to actually do it, of course, and the site is under no obligation to let you use it, hence the ban.

I just reacted to the term 'fraud' which is a legal term that has a clearly defined meaning.

If it was really fraud it would be implied to be illegal. It's not a nice thing to do but it's not illegal.

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

#386

Post by XCSme »

stevesearer wrote: post #325
XCSme wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost managed to remove all 3rd parties too (apart from the tawk.to chat widget, until I implement a custom contact form). If you are looking to replace Google Analytics with a self-hosted solution (to fully eliminate 3rd parties) you can check out the analytics platform I'm building: https://www.usertrack.net

I actually did try UserTrack a couple of months ago using the self-hosting option and it was easy to get going, though was missing a few metrics we use in addition to event tracking.

Wow, that's cool that you already tried it!

Could you tell me what was the most important metric missing from userTrack for you? I keep adding new features (eg. just recently added the ability to filter all sessions from a specific user), so knowing which ones are the most common requested is really helpful!

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

#387

Post by techslave »

lorthemar wrote: post #65
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…

>Pay for ad time slots, not user impressions. This is probably the worst thing you can do to online advertising. It's probably one of the only good things about the online ad industry. If you book time slots, only the biggest players will be able to compete for that slot. Essentially killing the entire selling point of online ads, which is giving a chance to smaller players a chance at the game. I don't want to, ever…

> Advertisers shouldn't know what I like, they should only know that a certain device with a certain ID likes X,Y topics.

That is in fact what advertisers know. It’s the aggregators that know who you are, not the advertisers.

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

#388

Post by remram »

marcusverus wrote: post #331
remram wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're bringing in those buckets, you are already in the slippery slope bringing you to the current system. Why not a bucket for people who visit the site often? A bucket for people using advanced site feature A, feature B? A bucket for people who subscribe to /r/teen?

I don't see any issue with a site using their own data to provide targeted advertisement on that one site. As long as data isn't being aggregated between sites and users aren't being tracked between sites, the privacy risk seems minimal.

Fair enough. Although if that site is Reddit, that includes a lot of information about my preferences for many things.

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

#389

Post by earthboundkid »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #356
earthboundkid wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single publisher believes the internet is a “better” business model than the old world. Google does. Facebook does.

Aren't those 2 of the biggest publishers?

Depends on how you define it. A “publisher” should pay its content producers, so YouTube would be. Nothing else Google or FB do though.

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

#390

Post by nickff »

perl4ever wrote: post #380
earthboundkid wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a theoretical interesting point. But it does not withstand even cursory empirical research. Open a newspaper. Look at page two. What do you see? Ads for local businesses. Watch local TV. More ads for small businesses. Okay, now go to the websites for those newspapers and TV stations. No local businesses. Literally all scam ads.

>No local businesses. Literally all scam ads. I was like "ok, is that really true" so I went and checked, and by golly, you're right. And it's 50-50 the "scam ad" I got is a direct result of a doctor leaking my medical records. The whole online ad industry should be regulated out of existence.

It sounds like your doctor was a big source of trouble; shouldn’t they be the one regulated out of existence?
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