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Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

wsj.com

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Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#3

Post by kurthr »

Operyl wrote: post #2

Off topic, ish, but this is the first WSJ article I’ve looked at in a loooong time that didn’t paywall me. Did they change their practices on that recently?

Some newspapers are opening their paywall for a couple of days due to Hurricane Harvey.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#4

Post by adventured »

Operyl wrote: post #2

Off topic, ish, but this is the first WSJ article I’ve looked at in a loooong time that didn’t paywall me. Did they change their practices on that recently?

No, not all of their content gets paywalled. They treat different sections of the site very differently.

For example, if you check the section the article belongs to (CMO Today):

https://www.wsj.com/news/cmo-today

you'll notice this particular article doesn't have a key next to it indicating a paywall. CMO Today seems to be heavy on the non-paywalling, for whatever reason.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#5

Post by Operyl »

adventured wrote: post #4
Operyl wrote: post #2

Off topic, ish, but this is the first WSJ article I’ve looked at in a loooong time that didn’t paywall me. Did they change their practices on that recently?

No, not all of their content gets paywalled. They treat different sections of the site very differently. For example, if you check the section the article belongs to (CMO Today): https://www.wsj.com/news/cmo-today you'll notice this particular article doesn't have a key next to it indicating a paywall. CMO Today seems to be heavy on the non-paywalling, for whatever reason.

Huh, good to know. I guess I just managed to always look at their paywalled content.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#7

Post by bittermang »

Rjevski wrote: post #6

Couldn't have happened to a nicer industry. :) Just imagine for a second the total human time lost due to ads and all the productivity that could've been done in that time.

I was some of the human time and productivity lost due to ads.

Getting them to admit any wrong, from a technical issue, to anything, is like pulling teeth from a live dinosaur.

Good. Hopefully they take their refund and invest it in something useful. But knowing the industry, the refund was in the form of an account credit, and that money is already lost to the system regardless.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#8

Post by madars »

In related news, certain subreddits have been promoting the use of https://adnauseam.io/, a fork of uBlock origin that automatically clicks all the ads encountered. The same redditors also encourage searching for high-CPC terms (e.g. insurance or rare medical conditions) to maximize the impact.

Re: Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard

#9

Post by camus2 »

A big chunk of "google's ad traffic" is fake and always has been. It's hard to quantify though, it's up to each business to evaluate whether paying for ads on google makes sense.

http://adland.tv/adnews/googles-ad-traffic-news-fake/2940245...

Personally I don't think it does.

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