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

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

#51

Post by Ninjinka » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #30

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 Can you elaborate on this?

Yes, please elaborate, targeting seems very effective.

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

#52

Post by nkingsy » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

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…

Seems like a lot of banning. Why not just prosecute the ad network for conspiracy to commit wire fraud whenever a fraud case is tried that involved online advertising?

It’s one thing for a platform to not be responsible for free content, but entirely another to take money from a fraudulent enterprise and enable their fraud.

Edit: to be clear the reasonableness legal concept would be in play here in the US. Plenty of frauds could slip by a reasonable advertising network review. Some clearly would not.

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

#53

Post by mFixman » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #36

dantheman wrote: post #17

If I'm going to see ads, I'd prefer targeted ones personally. Show me something I might want - product discover is actually hard, if an ad can show me something that solves a need/want I have that's great for me and for the company.

I'm the literal opposite. If I have to see the ads, I don't want my data harvested, stored, and shared in an effort to serve them to me. Identify the target audience of the site you're buying ads from, and identify if that is a target audience that you can appeal to. Then buy ad time. Like TV. That way my data is safe, and I'm still exposed to your ads that are relevant to people visiting 'x' site.

I'm an immigrant, and Facebook shows me a lot of targeted ads for local companies that sell snacks from my native country. The TV constantly shows me ads for cars despite the fact that I don't even have a drivers licence.

The first one is useful for me, but the niche of people who would buy it is so small that it wouldn't make sense to target it to everyone. I hate the second ones, but the majority of people love buying cars.

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

#54

Post by wtracy » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #45

dantheman wrote: post #17

If I'm going to see ads, I'd prefer targeted ones personally. Show me something I might want - product discover is actually hard, if an ad can show me something that solves a need/want I have that's great for me and for the company.

Targeting as it is currently done collects an insane amount of data which is an ever-growing liability which will inevitably blow up when that data leaks or becomes resold/misused.

I think there's a world of difference between saying that targeted advertising as it is done now is unacceptable, and saying that targeted advertising is fundamentally unacceptable.

The first one I'm actually sympathetic to. The second I vehemently disagree with.

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

#55

Post by avery42 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #47

mountainb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off an ad blocker for a day after years of running one and you will routinely get solicitations for fake tech support lines, fake crypto ransom demands, and so on even if you are only browsing mainstream sites. This even goes for both iOS and Android phones. Digital display ads are major vectors of crime and the websites and the ad networks that serve them should be held liable for the damages that they cause to…

Given the hyper targeted efficiency of the modern ad networks, are you sure the fake crypto and tech support ads are going to everyone and not just to you?

It's the ad network's responsibility to never show scam ads, this has nothing to do with targeting.

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

#56

Post by cj » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #17

If I'm going to see ads, I'd prefer targeted ones personally. Show me something I might want - product discover is actually hard, if an ad can show me something that solves a need/want I have that's great for me and for the company.

I think the average (non-technical) person would agree.

I know a lot of very non-technical people, some of who dislike facebook in general, talk about how good facebook is at showing them ads that actually get them to discover and buy new products.

The people I've heard this sentiment from don't feel like they were manipulated into buying something that ultimately didn't meet expectations. I commonly hear things like "I can't believe how good the Facebook ads are. I only see ads for really nice Blouses in colors and sizes that I like. I've bought nice things via Facebook ads".

Granted, it's usually followed up by "I can't believe Facebook is able to be that good at showing me the right ads" ... but people I've talked to seem to feel neutral about the creepiness of it, I'm guessing because the upside is they get to discover and buy cool new things that they otherwise wouldn't have known about.

(Personally I don't like ad targeting on the basis of companies abusing / selling / harvesting data about me... but for the average person I think seeing well targeted ads is positive UX compared with showing non-targeted ads)

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

#57

Post by gpm » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #48

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…

> Never allow dynamic ad content! Ads should be individually approved by publishers and not subject to change after approval. Partially agree. Publishers should definitely be able to blacklist advertisers. However, networks like Google get thousands of ads that run for only a handful of impressions. Asking publishers to manually approve every single ad that might run is onerous. I would like to see approval required…

> You want a system where either you pay five figures to reserve a time block, or you don't get to play.

No reason timeslots can't be sold in the minutes, seconds, or even miliseconds on high traffic sites. Five figures assumes a long timeslot.

You could even do "every 100th impression during the timeslot" or so on without doing anything that would offend the user you are replying to.

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

#58

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #42

acoard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert, but one observation I had is podcasts seem to follow this model. Most podcast ads I hear are read by the hosts themselves, though a small number splice in targeted advertiser-provided audio (eg a UK soccer podcast will play me local Canadian ads). For the podcasts that follow the former model, they don't seem to rely on timeslots (i.e. payment just for ad being shown), though some may be involved. Inst…

Spotify will be inserting targeted ads into their podcast streams, if they haven't started already. Something to keep in mind for anyone who was thinking of listening to podcasts on Spotify. I think Stitcher does this as well.

Even if you pay for premium?

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

#59

Post by weare138 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

danpalmer wrote: post #7

I get the impression that Reddit's ad network is just immature. We're finding that Reddit ads perform well and are cheap, suggesting that there isn't much competition for clicks. More mature ad networks such as Google's and Facebook's are better at reducing spam clicks. Google bought a company focused on this about 10 years ago, I'm sure Facebook put similar effort in. I'm sure this is something they'll work to impro…

The issue though is the complete lack of transparency with the major online ad networks. We're relying on the fox to guard the hen house. They get paid whether the click is valid or not. I don't think we should reasonably expect the Google's and Facebook's of the ad world to spend money preventing fraud when that generates less profit overall. Until we start regulating the industry, no ad company is going to spend money to lose money, especially when there's no real repercussions to begin with.

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

#60

Post by Allower » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

dantheman wrote: post #17

If I'm going to see ads, I'd prefer targeted ones personally. Show me something I might want - product discover is actually hard, if an ad can show me something that solves a need/want I have that's great for me and for the company.

You are also implicitly agreeing to have this data harvested by governments, political parties and other nefarious groups that only wish to exploit such data to generate dystopian citizen scorecards, suppress dissent and generally destroy a free society.