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Can someone explain how the toasted balls play works? Are they arbitraging by buying cheap porn ads then selling higher priced ads to the same traffic? I don't

by dharmon 10y ago

Can someone explain how the toasted balls play works? Are they arbitraging by buying cheap porn ads then selling higher priced ads to the same traffic? I don't see how this would work, except for the paragraph that follows in the article talking about "laundering" traffic to make it appear higher quality, so maybe they get good money for their ads? But still, CPC is generally not cheap compared to CPM.

paulgb 10y ago
I can't speak to this site, but I used to work in adtech fraud detection and often sites would be served inside a hidden iframe on a less legit site. They would sell CPM impressions.
usmannk 10y ago
>Are they arbitraging by buying cheap porn ads then selling higher priced ads to the same traffic? Exactly. An advertiser like Walmart won't buy ads on a porn site so toastedballs is buying ads on porn sites then showing the high quality users from those sites ads from legitimate companies.
mattlondon 10y ago
Buy traffic from porn ads at say $0.05 (I am making these figures up) per 1000 impressions with the hope that perhaps 5% click through to your site (again, making up click-through rates). On your page (i.e. the page where people go if they click your ads), you host advertising from others - that advertising might be pay-per-click or pay per 1000 (CPM). The numbers: So lets say you pay 5c for 1000 ads and you get 50 visits to your site, or to think of it another way $1 gets you 1000 visitors to your site. That means that you either need to find a cost-per-1000 advertiser that is over $1 per 1000, or you need to find an advertiser that pays enough per-click on their ads to cover that $1 cost, e.g. if you get a 1% click-through rate on the ads on your site, that $1 to get 1000 visitors will also get you 10 ad clicks, so if you can find a pay-per-click advertiser that offers more than 10c per click, you're making money.
- AJ007 10y ago
  They are buying pop ups so the user doesn't need to click anything. The ads on the publisher's side are sold on a CPM basis so they don't need to click there either. The math just isn't going to work if you need to buy clicks on one side and sell them on the other. The big magic was basically video ads on the ad exchange. The advertisers paid more and had no actionable metrics to track, much less tracking clicks. There is some smart pricing, so the CPMs do get driven down, but not to 0. The hard part to this is what happens when you don't get paid or worse you get a bill going back months for money already paid out.

by dharmon 10y ago

paulgb 10y ago

I can't speak to this site, but I used to work in adtech fraud detection and often sites would be served inside a hidden iframe on a less legit site. They would sell CPM impressions.

usmannk 10y ago

>Are they arbitraging by buying cheap porn ads then selling higher priced ads to the same traffic? Exactly. An advertiser like Walmart won't buy ads on a porn site so toastedballs is buying ads on porn sites then showing the high quality users from those sites ads from legitimate companies.

mattlondon 10y ago

Buy traffic from porn ads at say $0.05 (I am making these figures up) per 1000 impressions with the hope that perhaps 5% click through to your site (again, making up click-through rates). On your page (i.e. the page where people go if they click your ads), you host advertising from others - that advertising might be pay-per-click or pay per 1000 (CPM). The numbers: So lets say you pay 5c for 1000 ads and you get 50 visits to your site, or to think of it another way $1 gets you 1000 visitors to your site. That means that you either need to find a cost-per-1000 advertiser that is over $1 per 1000, or you need to find an advertiser that pays enough per-click on their ads to cover that $1 cost, e.g. if you get a 1% click-through rate on the ads on your site, that $1 to get 1000 visitors will also get you 10 ad clicks, so if you can find a pay-per-click advertiser that offers more than 10c per click, you're making money.

AJ007 10y ago
They are buying pop ups so the user doesn't need to click anything. The ads on the publisher's side are sold on a CPM basis so they don't need to click there either. The math just isn't going to work if you need to buy clicks on one side and sell them on the other. The big magic was basically video ads on the ad exchange. The advertisers paid more and had no actionable metrics to track, much less tracking clicks. There is some smart pricing, so the CPMs do get driven down, but not to 0. The hard part to this is what happens when you don't get paid or worse you get a bill going back months for money already paid out.