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I've always been a bit baffled by why it's called ad-fraud online, but nowhere else. You don't call it fraud if your TV ad is aired and I miss it because I'm m

by adwf 10y ago

I've always been a bit baffled by why it's called ad-fraud online, but nowhere else. You don't call it fraud if your TV ad is aired and I miss it because I'm making a cup of tea. No matter how many viewers you were told the show has. It's not fraud if I don't notice your roadside billboard because I'm focusing on driving. No matter how many cars you were told drive by. Advertising has always been a crapshoot with a lot of supposed "TV viewers, magazine readers, eyeballs, etc.", but those figures have always had an assumption of "nobody knows which advert works". That's why an advert's success is generally measured solely by the increase in sales after it has been displayed (ignoring brand ads for the mo, although arguably they're the same). It's the same when I've placed internet ads with Google myself. I place the ad, if I get more profit than the ad costs, it's a success. The % of ad clicks that are actually real does not matter. If the ad costs more than I make back, I stop the campaign. As Google run an auction system, if enough people stop bidding, then the ad price will go down and my campaign might become viable again. Either way, I'm not being defrauded anymore than I am by people making cups of tea during an ad break... I think the only reason why people like to call it fraud is because the internet has given advertisers for the very first time, some hard(-ish) data on how many users are being influenced by their ads. In reality, it's just the old crapshoot, but with a little more accuracy than before.

fullshark 10y ago
What they describe is arguably fraud beyond what you describe. Ads placed on ineligible websites and fake views/clicks. This is comparable to a TV station selling ads for 8 PM and showing it instead at 11 PM, or selling ads based on fradulent Nielsen ratings.
- adwf 10y ago
  Perhaps, although an alternative analogy for ineligible would be to compare an advertiser going after an adult market by airing the ad at 9 PM, but finding out there were still some kids watching at that time. It's all wasted views as far as an advertiser is concerned. The only difference is that offline they couldn't track it. (I'd also point out the computational absurdity of perfectly monitoring eligible websites for their content type - nigh on impossible). As for fake views, they're already factored into the price as far as I'm concerned. If say 90% of views were fake and I'm paying £1 per click, all that would happen if you could magically crack down on fakes would be that my cost per click goes up to £10 as it's a far more valuable ad service. As I mentioned above, the real equation is whether my ad generates more profit than it costs. The only difference between online and offline is that advertisers can finally track the percentage of viewers who are not actually looking at their ad at all. That % has always been there, offline or on. As long as your ad is profitable, keep running it.
Xyik 10y ago
I'm not too familiar with how Television ads work, but online advertising has a clear-cut billing model based on very dubious measurements. When an advertiser decides they want to bid CPM or CPC they want impressions and clicks from real people, not bots, crawlers, mis-clicks, hidden ads that still count as an impression but is difficult for anyone to actually see, etc etc. Then there is the whole problem with view-based attribution - or attribution in general. The fact that a 1d view attribution is commonly accepted is ridiculous when you think about it, particularly in re-targeting.
shimn 10y ago
I was under the impression that ad fraud was more seen as how those sites put 6 iframe windows of ads one on top of another so while they were all loaded and "seen" by visiter, only one of them was visible. The main thrust of ad fraud was "this ad cannot possibly be seen by a consumer". As with all things, some may pervert the definition for gain but on the whole: you'd call it fraud if you paid for a billboard and the company put up your ad but then plastered somebody else's ad on top of it.
- adwf 10y ago
  Yeah, and the world would be better off without that, but it's incredibly hard to detect. My point however, is that it is already factored into the price. When a TV station says this show has 10 million viewers, the advertisers understand that it's actually only 5 million who are going to be watching their ad, because of channel flipping, fast-forwarding, cups of tea, etc. It is already an understood factor in the pricing. Whereas online, they don't appear to want to make the same concession towards bots/iframes and so on. You could argue, particularly for free-to-air TV channels, that anyone not watching the ads is breaking the "social contract" and defrauding the station. That's the exact same argument that Wired makes when they block adblocking readers. There's always a percentage of your ad buy that will go completely unseen offline. It's no different online.

by adwf 10y ago

fullshark 10y ago

What they describe is arguably fraud beyond what you describe. Ads placed on ineligible websites and fake views/clicks. This is comparable to a TV station selling ads for 8 PM and showing it instead at 11 PM, or selling ads based on fradulent Nielsen ratings.

adwf 10y ago
Perhaps, although an alternative analogy for ineligible would be to compare an advertiser going after an adult market by airing the ad at 9 PM, but finding out there were still some kids watching at that time. It's all wasted views as far as an advertiser is concerned. The only difference is that offline they couldn't track it. (I'd also point out the computational absurdity of perfectly monitoring eligible websites for their content type - nigh on impossible). As for fake views, they're already factored into the price as far as I'm concerned. If say 90% of views were fake and I'm paying £1 per click, all that would happen if you could magically crack down on fakes would be that my cost per click goes up to £10 as it's a far more valuable ad service. As I mentioned above, the real equation is whether my ad generates more profit than it costs. The only difference between online and offline is that advertisers can finally track the percentage of viewers who are not actually looking at their ad at all. That % has always been there, offline or on. As long as your ad is profitable, keep running it.

Xyik 10y ago

I'm not too familiar with how Television ads work, but online advertising has a clear-cut billing model based on very dubious measurements. When an advertiser decides they want to bid CPM or CPC they want impressions and clicks from real people, not bots, crawlers, mis-clicks, hidden ads that still count as an impression but is difficult for anyone to actually see, etc etc. Then there is the whole problem with view-based attribution - or attribution in general. The fact that a 1d view attribution is commonly accepted is ridiculous when you think about it, particularly in re-targeting.

shimn 10y ago

I was under the impression that ad fraud was more seen as how those sites put 6 iframe windows of ads one on top of another so while they were all loaded and "seen" by visiter, only one of them was visible. The main thrust of ad fraud was "this ad cannot possibly be seen by a consumer". As with all things, some may pervert the definition for gain but on the whole: you'd call it fraud if you paid for a billboard and the company put up your ad but then plastered somebody else's ad on top of it.

adwf 10y ago
Yeah, and the world would be better off without that, but it's incredibly hard to detect. My point however, is that it is already factored into the price. When a TV station says this show has 10 million viewers, the advertisers understand that it's actually only 5 million who are going to be watching their ad, because of channel flipping, fast-forwarding, cups of tea, etc. It is already an understood factor in the pricing. Whereas online, they don't appear to want to make the same concession towards bots/iframes and so on. You could argue, particularly for free-to-air TV channels, that anyone not watching the ads is breaking the "social contract" and defrauding the station. That's the exact same argument that Wired makes when they block adblocking readers. There's always a percentage of your ad buy that will go completely unseen offline. It's no different online.