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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”

#391

Post by perl4ever »

nickff wrote: post #390
perl4ever wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Actually it was their accountant.

In any case, it's not them who are exploiting the information. The ad industry is like a fence for stolen goods.

It's not that my medical information is top secret; it's that I don't want to see ads about earwax. And I think Google execs should be forced to watch them until they repent and become monks or something.

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

#392

Post by titom4 »

dblock wrote: post #284

I may or may not have participated in click fraud in 1997 with DoubleClick by forging source IP headers and going through a proxy ... that I may or may not have been running. I can only imagine how much more sophisticated click fraud has become today. Even if you raise that bar, I suspect a vast % of clicks are probably fraud anyway.

Yea you'd surely be surprised. Our marketing department started using clickguard 6 months ago and we were simply shocked to discover how much of our budget was being wasted on Google ads.

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

#393

Post by rtkwe »

earthboundkid wrote: post #361
rtkwe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of reasons they're not done that way on the internet, for starters it's reverting back to requiring people in the loop for ad sales which is expensive on both sides of the equation. Add to that that the 'personalized' ads are, if the targeting is functioning properly, worth more to the buyer [0] than simple placement ads and you can see why automatic targeted ads dominate the space, human approved/sold,…

“Influencers” are a new category of ad where you pay people to use your makeup or whatever on Instagram or YouTube. It’s hugely popular with consumers and modestly profitable for “influencers”, and it all works with zero targeting.

It's relatively small in terms of advertising dollars and a pretty different kind of advertising that relies a lot on the parasocial relationship they have with their audience. Random websites have much looser relationships with their audience.

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

#394

Post by earthboundkid »

rtkwe wrote: post #393
earthboundkid wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Influencers” are a new category of ad where you pay people to use your makeup or whatever on Instagram or YouTube. It’s hugely popular with consumers and modestly profitable for “influencers”, and it all works with zero targeting.

It's relatively small in terms of advertising dollars and a pretty different kind of advertising that relies a lot on the parasocial relationship they have with their audience. Random websites have much looser relationships with their audience.

Random websites have loose relationships with readers now because the big algorithmic aggregators have driven small sites out of existence. Back before Reddit and Facebook, small sites were common and you were expected to return regularly to see what’s new.

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

#395

Post by account42 »

jamiequint wrote: post #301
chillwaves wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the person who owns the computer has a right to how that webpage is displayed?

In general yes, but not if they've agreed to display things in a certain way in order to receive a service, then accept the delivery of that service but don't follow through on their part of the agreement.

Where has the user agreed to display ads?

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

#396

Post by account42 »

goostavos wrote: post #260
effingwewt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Websites have to make money somehow.

I have a website. It doesn't make money, yet it continues to exist. Weird, I know.

Does Hacker News make money?

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

#397

Post by ksec »

stevesearer wrote: post #316
searchableguy wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about moving to posthog or plausible? https://plausible.io/ https://posthog.com/

I have looked into alternatives before, but not either of those actually. Plausible looks more promising of the two and I will check it out (PostHog could also be, but I didn't really understand the features as it related to a normal WordPress website). It would be interesting to know how other Plausible users have found their traffic numbers compare vs Google Analytics. Likely that some users would be counted that w…

Due to the privacy focused nature Plausible doesn't track returning users.

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

#398

Post by jpadkins »

Nextgrid wrote: post #182
jpadkins wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you have 3 campaigns with 3 ad networks or ad platforms, how do you measure the ROI of the campaigns without tracking? How do you know if Facebook or pinterest is better ROI for your marketing budget?

You can do first-party tracking where every ad would link to your website with a different query parameter ( https://example.com?campaign_id=XYZ ). You then just count the number of purchases from each campaign, compare that with the amount you spent on that campaign and there's your ROI.

Sorry, I misunderstood your post then. So you are in favor of tracking...

The OP question was about banning all tracking.

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