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Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

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Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#81

Post by kingstnap »

paulcole wrote: post #54
criddell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter if it's all fraud? You track 47 sales over some period. What was the ad spend for that period? Combine that with previous data and that should be enough to figure out if it was a successful campaign or not. When a company puts up a billboard or an ad on the bus, they don't care if the ad is seen by dashcams and dogs. All that matters is impact on the bottom line.

> Does it really matter if it's all fraud Uh, yes. If you get 47 sales on $10k in ad spend (pay per click) and $9900 of that $10k was fraudulent then you got 47 sales on $100 of ad spend. Imagine if you could stop those fraudulent clicks.

You can't just "ignore" fraudulent clicks as though those aren't baked into the original price. The only thing you should care about is your own sales vs your own ad spend.

Your calculations make as much sense as pouring out 90% of a can of beer, claiming you have just made vodka, and simultaneously trying to pay only for the 10% of beer that is left.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#82

Post by ceedan »

criddell wrote: post #34
simul007 wrote: post #2

Hi HN. I run a marketing agency and fell down this rabbit hole after a client's analytics made no sense (50k visitors, 47 sales). I ended up building a simple script to track user behavior and analyzed 200+ small e-commerce sites. The average was 73% bot traffic that standard analytics counts as real. The bots are getting creepily good at mimicking engagement. I wrote up my findings, including some of the bizarre pat…

Does it really matter if it's all fraud? You track 47 sales over some period. What was the ad spend for that period? Combine that with previous data and that should be enough to figure out if it was a successful campaign or not. When a company puts up a billboard or an ad on the bus, they don't care if the ad is seen by dashcams and dogs. All that matters is impact on the bottom line.

yes, it matters.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#83

Post by jason_zig »

I run a survey product for ecommerce stores [1]

A lot of our customers use post purchase surveys and on-site surveys to help with this sort of thing. For example a really common use-case is an attribution survey which appears after a sale is made. The survey will ask something like "how did you hear about us?" which helps determine what actually drove the sale so they can get some clear insights outside of Google and Meta. It's not perfectly reliable but it's an additional data point that helps with the mess out there...

[1] https://www.zigpoll.com/

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#84

Post by bad_haircut72 »

criddell wrote: post #34
simul007 wrote: post #2

Hi HN. I run a marketing agency and fell down this rabbit hole after a client's analytics made no sense (50k visitors, 47 sales). I ended up building a simple script to track user behavior and analyzed 200+ small e-commerce sites. The average was 73% bot traffic that standard analytics counts as real. The bots are getting creepily good at mimicking engagement. I wrote up my findings, including some of the bizarre pat…

Does it really matter if it's all fraud? You track 47 sales over some period. What was the ad spend for that period? Combine that with previous data and that should be enough to figure out if it was a successful campaign or not. When a company puts up a billboard or an ad on the bus, they don't care if the ad is seen by dashcams and dogs. All that matters is impact on the bottom line.

When you talk to Google sales they want to know how much you make per customer, so theyre able to figure out exactly how much they could charge to take 80% of the margin. The cream on top is taken by Google in the form of fake bot clicks.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#85

Post by SoftTalker »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4
simul007 wrote: post #2

Hi HN. I run a marketing agency and fell down this rabbit hole after a client's analytics made no sense (50k visitors, 47 sales). I ended up building a simple script to track user behavior and analyzed 200+ small e-commerce sites. The average was 73% bot traffic that standard analytics counts as real. The bots are getting creepily good at mimicking engagement. I wrote up my findings, including some of the bizarre pat…

“All clicks are click fraud” isn’t that far from the truth.

I've never intentionally clicked on an ad, ever. I've accidentally clicked a few, due to tricks or fat fingers.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#86

Post by mwexler »

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #16
bodantogat wrote: post #3

Not really surprised. I spend a ridiculous amount on time banning bots every week.

doesn't cloudflare have block bot traffic out of the box?

It blocks the most egregious and give a bot score that you can use to get more aggressive at the next layer. That score seems to miss a lot of bad traffic, making it not very useful in it's current state.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#87

Post by corford »

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #16
bodantogat wrote: post #3

Not really surprised. I spend a ridiculous amount on time banning bots every week.

doesn't cloudflare have block bot traffic out of the box?

They do but it's largely useless against all but the most unsophisticated of bots.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#88

Post by arichard123 »

whistle650 wrote: post #72
paulcole wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it really matter if it's all fraud Uh, yes. If you get 47 sales on $10k in ad spend (pay per click) and $9900 of that $10k was fraudulent then you got 47 sales on $100 of ad spend. Imagine if you could stop those fraudulent clicks.

And imagine how much more you’d have to pay for each of those clicks if everyone could stop those fraudulent clicks. In equilibrium it shouldn’t change the total ad spend.

But if you're the only one doing it because the competition haven't figured it out, then you win in until they do. You can outbid on each ad.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#89

Post by jklinger410 »

simul007 wrote: post #2

Hi HN. I run a marketing agency and fell down this rabbit hole after a client's analytics made no sense (50k visitors, 47 sales). I ended up building a simple script to track user behavior and analyzed 200+ small e-commerce sites. The average was 73% bot traffic that standard analytics counts as real. The bots are getting creepily good at mimicking engagement. I wrote up my findings, including some of the bizarre pat…

> I ended up building a simple script to track user behavior and analyzed 200+ small e-commerce sites.

Why not use Microsoft Clarity?

> The bots are getting creepily good at mimicking engagement.

You would think Google Analytics would help a lot with this, but they seem to not care.

Re: Bots are getting good at mimicking engagement

#90

Post by protonbob »

> I was not just counting clicks; I was watching behavior.

> This was not the obvious spam that gets filtered out. This was sophisticated bot traffic designed to fool standard analytics platforms.

> Humans are messy; these bots were clinically precise.

AI slop writing is so tiresome. At least it is somewhat noticeable.

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