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Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

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Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#921

Post by webmaven »

pc86 wrote: post #849
iamacyborg wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds fair! Thanks for the feedback. The article did spur an interesting discussion previously on HN when I published it but seems relevant again given the ongoing discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016532

This is one of those things that isn't a big deal in isolated instances, but becomes an issue if it gets more prevalent, so it's always hard to know when/if to even say anything :)

The other problem is that the worst offenders are the ones least likely to respond to getting or seeing this sort of nudge, so there is some adverse selection going on.

It's probably self correcting over the long term, but meanwhile we lose the sort of links that would (or rather, might) enrich the conversation through overcorrection by posters.

It's the obverse side of the slippery slope, I guess.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#922

Post by webmaven »

hertzrat wrote: post #533
pessimizer wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal was to demonstrate an impact of in-store sales from internet advertising. So the goal was to advertise advertising. A more scientific goal would be to see if there was an increase of in-store sales from internet advertising. Instead they were looking to design experiments that would show a positive effect, with the goal of giving advertisers a dashboard so they could run those experiments themselves.

To let those advertisers do the experiments themselves, and to relate the campaign to in store sales, would require Facebook and google to share a ton lot of internet-user tracking data

> To let those advertisers do the experiments themselves, and to relate the campaign to in store sales, would require Facebook and google to share a ton lot of internet-user tracking data

I think you are misinterpreting what "do the experiments themselves" implies.

Certainly there is a JOIN with Google's or FB's data, but it can still happen entirely in a hosted sandbox with no data sharing necessary.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#923

Post by iamacyborg »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #916
iamacyborg wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true, just that fraud is different on those platforms. I suspect it depends on how you define fraud but certainly if a platform tells me I'm bidding to show adverts to customers who match criteria X, then I expect them to match that criteria. Unfortunately, that's frequently not the case. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2019.118...

Your reference talks about a different set of entities, the information from most data brokers is inconsistent and often wrong (much like display). Because they have first-party information, neither Google nor Facebook suffer as much from this problem (although the most common school attended on Facebook is Hogwarts, so obviously they're not perfect).

> Because they have first-party information, neither Google nor Facebook suffer as much from this problem

Maybe not from the problem outlined in the study, but fraudsters certainly create fake high value "profiles" that they use to commit fraud on those networks.

I spoke with an ad fraud researcher recently for a marketing podcast I started and he spoke in detail about this fraud is carried out. IIRC he referred to it as retargeting fraud.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#924

Post by namibj »

shadowgovt wrote: post #592
Daho0n wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That shows that 1) people are different or 2) you are a fan of Apple hardware. It doesn't show that Thinkpads are bad. IMO they are light-years ahead of anything Apple sells. Source: Me.

Out of curiosity, how do use it without bumping the trackpad while typing?

My trackpad is automatically muted/unresponsive while I'm typing. I suggest you figure out how to get palm rejection to activate/work on your setup, and to look if a different Thinkpad series might better fit your body (ergonomics wise).

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#925

Post by dang »

jodrellblank wrote: post #909
dang wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack and name calling. It only makes things considerably worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I will rephrase as "your comment is boring" rather than "you're boring" in future; my intent was to describe the comment and not to attack the author's person.

That would certainly be better.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#926

Post by jazzdev »

karaterobot wrote: post #210
jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

There was a good piece of reportage on this subject last year: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

This story was on the Freakonomics podcast too. It definitely seems like a bubble, but there's no external pressure to make the bubble pop. With the mortgage crisis, eventually, people can't make the mortgage payments and the bubble bursts. But with people happily spending money on ads that don't work, there's no external pressure to stop. Will this bubble ever burst?

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#927

Post by aerosmile »

SilasX wrote: post #855
aerosmile wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that we have to differentiate between bad employees and the overall effectiveness of ads. The latter is all about incrementality. When you adjust for it, you get the true effectiveness of ads. In some instances, the incrementality will be significant, in others it won't. It looks like that in Uber's case, the incrementality was low. Btw, if you're not familiar with this term, please look it up - there's a…

You think Uber's marketing people are extreme outliers compared to the typical large company?

I interviewed at Uber for a marketing position back when they were small, and decided not to take the job (huge mistake). At least back then, the people I met were super smart (a lot of them were ex Facebook, again back when those teams were super good). I never met Kevin Frisch and don't know if anything he said was taken out of context, but the first impression is not good. Also it's a bit strange for a well-respected Uber guy to go to Intuit - it's not a common career path.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#928

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #923
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reference talks about a different set of entities, the information from most data brokers is inconsistent and often wrong (much like display). Because they have first-party information, neither Google nor Facebook suffer as much from this problem (although the most common school attended on Facebook is Hogwarts, so obviously they're not perfect).

> Because they have first-party information, neither Google nor Facebook suffer as much from this problem Maybe not from the problem outlined in the study, but fraudsters certainly create fake high value "profiles" that they use to commit fraud on those networks. I spoke with an ad fraud researcher recently for a marketing podcast I started and he spoke in detail about this fraud is carried out. IIRC he referred to i…

Sure, but both Google and Facebook have whole teams devoted to stopping these kinds of fraud.

Like, they are definitely not perfect, but they are so much better than the rest of the industry.

I am aware of a bunch of advertisers who refuse to use open-web/app advertising because of the high levels of fraud, and this is a reasonable decision given the state of the industry.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#929

Post by shadowgovt »

namibj wrote: post #924
shadowgovt wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, how do use it without bumping the trackpad while typing?

My trackpad is automatically muted/unresponsive while I'm typing. I suggest you figure out how to get palm rejection to activate/work on your setup, and to look if a different Thinkpad series might better fit your body (ergonomics wise).

There is no option to enable "palm rejection" in the Settings dialog on Ubuntu under "Mouse and Trackpad", as far as I can tell.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#930

Post by namibj »

shadowgovt wrote: post #929
namibj wrote: post #924

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My trackpad is automatically muted/unresponsive while I'm typing. I suggest you figure out how to get palm rejection to activate/work on your setup, and to look if a different Thinkpad series might better fit your body (ergonomics wise).

There is no option to enable "palm rejection" in the Settings dialog on Ubuntu under "Mouse and Trackpad", as far as I can tell.

It might not be that easy, and could require manually installing some packages.
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