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Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

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

#61

Post by makestuff »

riku_iki wrote: post #49
makestuff wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in adtech and yeah if there is a discrepancy the advertiser will 100% contact their account manager about it. Same goes for the supply side, publishers maintain what they expect to be paid and will raise any discrepancies as well.

and does account manager help sometimes, or just retrieve standard template response?

Usually it is just a misunderstanding of the metrics, but if there is an issue they will always open a ticket with the engineering teams. They also expect some level of discrepancy since the volume of data is so large.

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

#62

Post by tiotempestade »

The way I see it..

1. Internet ads were supposed to solve the “who’s watching” problem. By letting advertisers target their audiences and display ads on vetted sites.

2. *but* Advertising companies also offer stuff (either browsers or product features) that are on the “bleeding edge” when it comes to protect their users privacy.

3. Marketing departments anywhere from big to small sized companies know and/or deal (kinda..) with advertising fraud cuz they want to “show work”/“good quarterly results”..

4. Most of the users, just want to freely access content in order to trick their minds into feeling amused when in reality their just bored

5. Only a small fraction of the remaining users (from 4.) are capable of understand and deal with all this..

So.. The Internet is either doomed if this continues, or in the process of becoming an even bigger trash can if “they” get way with this :/

Anyone here up to starting Internet 2.0?! :)

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

#63

Post by hedora »

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…

All available credible evidence says they’re sending money to sanctioned entities and intentionally defrauding their customers. The fraud rate is somewhere between 50-90% of revenue, and adds up to billions.

The article cites specific examples of fraudulent spend, with screenshots, etc., on comically easy to detect domain names, including ones that other parts of Google block.

Also, they’ve progressively taken action to expand the percentage of advertisers they can defraud, and also to ensure the fraud is difficult to detect.

On top of all that, it is only possible due to monopolistic bundling of YouTube and the ad networks, in a scheme that could be a textbook example from “anti-trust litigation 101”.

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

#64

Post by paxys »

hedora wrote: post #63
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…

All available credible evidence says they’re sending money to sanctioned entities and intentionally defrauding their customers. The fraud rate is somewhere between 50-90% of revenue, and adds up to billions. The article cites specific examples of fraudulent spend, with screenshots, etc., on comically easy to detect domain names, including ones that other parts of Google block. Also, they’ve progressively taken action…

Why not post this "credible evidence" then?

> The fraud rate is somewhere between 50-90% of revenue, and adds up to billions.

This is the only part that is relevant, and if you have a source for this then do share it.

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

#65

Post by Dylan16807 »

totallywrong wrote: post #57
doctorpangloss wrote: post #9

This story is complex. If there was an obvious way for CMOs at major brands to distill this issue, such as a metric, they would do it. But instead, if they are brand advertising, they want a CPM that "looks right," and Google delivers that to them with garbage inventory. If they want pure return-on-advertising-spend, Google will show to people it knows will impulse buy, but the ads will be insanely expensive. You can…

> At the end of the day, either you make a good creative or you don't. Everything else is noise. There used to be great ads. Campaigns on TV and print media that people would talk about. That just doesn't happen online, and every single ad to me is, as you say, noise.

I see a lot of talk about the current mcdonald's campaign. The game boy game got a ton of attention on HN.

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

#66

Post by x-complexity »

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%?

> How about actively keeping that at 0%?

Practically impossible. A sufficiently well-developed bot is indistinguishable from the least technically-savvy legitimate users that clicked on an ad. Unless you have a novel way of filtering out the 2 from each other, the costs for performing such filtrations compound linearly at best & exponentially at worst.

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

#67

Post by hsjqllzlfkf »

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…

Of COURSE google says "yeah tottally below %".

I'm reminded of that quote "a man doesn't understand when his pay depends on him not understanding". Do you by any chance work in the advertising industry? (To be absolutely clear, if you work for google the answer to that question is yes)

Edit: not just a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely waiting for an answer to this.

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

#68

Post by makeitdouble »

whatshisface wrote: post #42
makeitdouble wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a concept from polling called a "random sample" which would apply here. If you take 10,000 clicks and sort them into legitimate and illegitimate, as long as you were able to rule out any way that your sample would be significantly more or less fraudulent than the whole pool, you would understand (roughly) the ratio in the greater pool. It's like taking a sample of a swimming pool, to check the chlorine level…

This would be a good measure for your own site, and you could get back to Google to say your results are garbage.

But you would have nothing to retort if they tell you you're an outlier, or your specific niche has bad actors that skew the results and they'll look into banning one or two of them (and come back to us again when they get replaced, we'll again clear a few token users)

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

#69

Post by paxys »

hedora wrote: post #60
mwint wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The title doesn’t generalize to “the optimal illegal ad spend at sanctioned websites and countries is non-zero”. They’re running EU ads on household-name Russian government propaganda sites in the middle of a war. Manual curation of a block list should’ve caught that!

Is there a block list of every Russian propaganda site in existence? Who maintains such a list? Or should Google have to manually review every website every day to check if it is part of that set?

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

#70

Post by carlosjobim »

candiddevmike wrote: post #33
janalsncm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You use promotional codes for attribution, then you have complete knowledge. So it's extremely easy, and a solved problem. No need for analytics, no need to infringe on privacy.
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