Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reverse-engineering Google’s "Skip Button Guarantee"

checkmyads.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 103 posts

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

#91

Post by janalsncm »

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…

I’m unfamiliar with how Google Video Partners works, but how could anyone go about randomly sampling the sites their ads are running on? According to the article Google won’t tell you where your ads are running. And just finding shady video websites is also not an unbiased method.

Also just to be clear, clicks are not likely to be randomly distributed between legitimate and spam sites. If advertisers are paying for plays, they need to be able to see that information as well.

If I was spending money on video ads now I would be somewhere between cancelling my ad spend and calling a lawyer.

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

#92

Post by yunohn »

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…

I think HN is one of the least-informed places about ads/marketing. The vast majority of commenters here are reactionary and refuse to understand how things work. They also believe they’re completely immune to marketing, while commenting on a forum dedicated to the startup funnel.

Super cool interactive ad BTW!

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

#93

Post by carlosjobim »

plorkyeran wrote: post #82
carlosjobim wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I watch a youtube video and the youtuber shills me some product along with a promo code. A week later I decide to buy the product, but I don't remember what video had the ad or what the promo code was so I just don't bother with it. How are you going to attribute this sale to the youtuber?

In those cases you can't attribute, but that's okay. With normal ads you have zero certainty of attribution.

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

#94

Post by carlosjobim »

8note wrote: post #81
carlosjobim wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you can figure out the attribution, I'd say you've infringed on privacy. You know what the buyer was looking at

That's not an infringement of privacy in any way. Likewise then you know what the buyer purchased, since you sold it to her.

And nobody is forced to use a discount code.

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

#95

Post by lolinder »

Sai_ wrote: post #88
lolinder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an opinion piece or a study, it's a pretty straightforward application of the law of diminishing returns. It doesn't matter if you're talking about fraud or uptime or test scores, the cost of a 100% success rate is almost never worth the extra effort it takes to get there.

The law of diminishing returns is not natural law - it is just an observation of something that happens in practice but not always. E.g., people often choose to spend time and treasure treating an incurable cancer or send the Coast Guard to search for five people in a submersible. Patio11's soundbite as often shared puts the cart before the horse. He says that the "optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" as if allowing…

You keep calling it a soundbite—did you actually read the article, or just the title? It doesn't sound like you actually disagree with him.

> The law of diminishing returns is not natural law - it is just an observation of something that happens in practice but not always. E.g., people often choose to spend time and treasure treating an incurable cancer or send the Coast Guard to search for five people in a submersible.

Most of the time we choose to value human life at approximately infinity (especially our own lives!). When one side of the equation is near-infinite, it makes sense to keep going long after the curve has begun to flatten, but that doesn't prove that returns don't diminish, just that the value of the goal is extremely high.

Diminishing returns isn't a natural law in its own right, but it's the direct result of natural laws. It has its parallels in half lives, in the inverse square law, and in basic probability theory. While the probability of something is high, it's easy to find and eliminate because random chance is on your side. When it becomes lower, random chance starts to work against you.

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

#96

Post by blincoln »

paxys wrote: post #64
hedora wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's in the original report, which several other people have already linked to:

https://adalytics.io/blog/invalid-google-video-partner-truev...

There's a detailed methodology section. I haven't verified their results, but they report finding things like muted, autoplaying ads even on big-name sites like the New York Times.

A few key quotes:

"For one major infrastructure brand approximately 73% of their TrueView skippable in-stream budget was spent on Google Video Partner sites or apps whose ad delivery does not appear to be consistent with the TrueView or in-stream requirements."

"A major consumer goods brand had 75% of their TrueView budget delivered against Google Video Partner (GVP) sites or apps. 56% of their total TrueView budget was spent against websites which served TrueView ads in muted or non-in-stream video players [...] 19% of their TrueView skippable in-stream ad budget delivered against ineligible mobile apps which are not video streaming apps[...]"

"A Fortune 500 brand had approximately 57% of their total TrueView in-stream ad budget served on GVP sites and apps. 35% of their total TrueView budget was spent against websites which served TrueView ads in muted or non-in-stream video players [...] 8% of their TrueView skippable in-stream ad budget delivered against in-eligible mobile apps which are not video streaming apps."

I'm no marketing expert, but 43-73% of one's ad budget basically being thrown away seems like not great results.

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

#97

Post by sofal »

Sai_ wrote: post #89
sofal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the tradeoffs discussed in that article are unproven?

The tradeoffs are not unproven but the soundbite suggests that the tradeoffs are a necessary precondition. That's the crux of my issue with the soundbite.

So the tradeoffs are proven, but not necessary?

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

#98

Post by Sai_ »

lolinder wrote: post #95
Sai_ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law of diminishing returns is not natural law - it is just an observation of something that happens in practice but not always. E.g., people often choose to spend time and treasure treating an incurable cancer or send the Coast Guard to search for five people in a submersible. Patio11's soundbite as often shared puts the cart before the horse. He says that the "optimal amount of fraud is non-zero" as if allowing…

You keep calling it a soundbite—did you actually read the article, or just the title? It doesn't sound like you actually disagree with him. > The law of diminishing returns is not natural law - it is just an observation of something that happens in practice but not always. E.g., people often choose to spend time and treasure treating an incurable cancer or send the Coast Guard to search for five people in a submersib…

> don’t disagree with him

You should (re)read my comparison of Patio11’s framing of our acceptance some amount of fraud with our acceptance of some amount of animal remains in coffee. It couldn’t be more obvious that I don’t agree with his framing.

Also, Patio11 himself says this quote ended up on the cutting room floor and treats it as a catchy sound bite in his article. Which is to say I did read the article and not just the headline…

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

#99

Post by Sai_ »

sofal wrote: post #97
Sai_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tradeoffs are not unproven but the soundbite suggests that the tradeoffs are a necessary precondition. That's the crux of my issue with the soundbite.

So the tradeoffs are proven, but not necessary?

The trade offs happen but they aren’t the reason to say “the optimal amount of fraud is non zero”.

The correct framing is “since we accept some fraud, the optimal amount of fraud must be non-zero”.

As written, it sounds like society can only function if there is some amount of fraud.

I gave this analogy to a sibling comment of yours. Maybe it will help clarify my point. We accept some adulteration (let’s say it is 2% for conversation sake) in coffee. That’s not the same as “the optimal purity of coffee is 98%”. The optimal purity of coffee is 100% but since we can’t guarantee that some not-coffee stuff has mixed in with coffee, we live with 98%.

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

#100

Post by mwint »

Sai_ wrote: post #99
sofal wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the tradeoffs are proven, but not necessary?

The trade offs happen but they aren’t the reason to say “the optimal amount of fraud is non zero”. The correct framing is “since we accept some fraud, the optimal amount of fraud must be non-zero”. As written, it sounds like society can only function if there is some amount of fraud. I gave this analogy to a sibling comment of yours. Maybe it will help clarify my point. We accept some adulteration (let’s say it is 2%…

This is somewhat pedantic. With this logic, you could say that the purpose of a car is to get somewhere, and therefore the optimal speed is c.

But that would be a completely useless thing to say, because we can’t get your Camry to c. There is a whole system of tradeoffs that we all know exists.

Google could easily lower ”bad things” to 0 by shutting down tomorrow. The government could easily eliminate racism by nuking everyone. None of those are interesting or intellectually stimulating discussions.

“Optimal” is different than “perfect”. Everyone else here is talking about it from a system view.

Post reply on HN