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What about the rampant fraud, bots and arbitrage between exchanges that do nothing to provide real value and that exchanges have no incentive to correct and acc

What about the rampant fraud, bots and arbitrage between exchanges that do nothing to provide real value and that exchanges have no incentive to correct and according to some prominent advertisers are actually happy about all the bots and fraud? As someone paying for advertising space, why do I need to spend time and money just figuring out which of your placements are bot traffic to exclude them, and which of your publishers are just arbitraging taboola's traffic?

malchow 10y ago
Arbitrageurs bother me a lot. You're certainly about that. Unfortunately, a lot of bad behavior in ads is desired by every piece of the chain: adtech companies, exchanges, publishers, advertisers, and consumers who do not want to pay for entertainment. App install ads are one example of this. Relatively bad for consumers but good for every other link in the chain. Some of the largest blue-chip companies you've heard of buy these things.
- davemel37 10y ago
  Of course Arbitrage bothers you a lot, it means that you aren't capturing the full value of the impressions you sell/broker. Bad behavior is not desired by performance advertisers. The blue chip advertisers you refer too are getting wined and dined by agencies and ad tech companies swindling them into believing it's impossible to quantify emotion and storytelling and brand building. After all, it's not their money, it's their shareholders money. Find me one media buyer, where its actually his own money that doesn't demand accountability. What kills me is that letting this bad behavior thrive is short sighted. It's great for keeping VCs happy about growth, but at the end of the day, it devalues all your other high value inventory and forces advertisers to underwrite the risk in their bidding. It's really bad for business long term...but as long as VCs fund publishers and ad tech companies their incentive is only short term growth and bots and fraud help those numbers. Someone, Somewhere needs to force accountability on every piece of the chain, or we'll continue down this path where 99% of advertising isn't working.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    The idea that media purchasers don't track return on ad spend is utterly disconnected from any reality in the adtech industry. Here's what actually happens: a DSP is given a $30-$50k trial buy from either a company or their agency. While it's certainly true that a dsp is expected to spend the entire budget, the returns on that budget are carefully tracked. If you don't perform, you get $0 next quarter. If you do perform, you call the buyer and demand 2x the budget next quarter where the entire justification is the cost-per-[conversion, click, etc] that you delivered.
    - davemel37 10y ago
      You can make data tell any story you want with enough creativity. They use ridiculous attribution modeling to justify all sorts of ROI that doesnt really exist. They aren't actually truly measuring impact, they are justifying an expense where there are no ramifications if their modeling doesn't reflect reality. I worked for a company that lived and died by paid media. If something really didn't work, people lost their jobs. Without that level of accountability...it is just a bunch of BS people sell themselves to justify their decisions and/or make themselves look good. You and I both know that ad tech spin data in all sorts of ways to make them look good. I mean, do you really think a below the fold, unseen ad impression that was delivered to someone who bought 3 weeks later should get any credit for that sale? Do the exchanges report on view through conversions? Of course they do... Even, an above the fold impression, that was seen by a human being, is still 90% of the time ignored by ad blindness, but if that guy buys 29 days later, they'll still call it ROI. Let's not pretend there is true accountability in digital media today. We both know thats just not true. Edit: I thought I was replying to someone else and said "your exchange and corrected it to the exchanges."
      - x0x0 10y ago
        Conversion modeling has it's issues, but run eg a state-wide geo fenced test and the ads work. And, again, all fraud and/or fake conversions or whatever it is you believe is rampant gets priced into what companies pay for ads. With 0% fraud you can pay up to (discount x conversion value) / (ad count). With fraud, the numerator doesn't change. Buyers just spend less on ads. There's lots of ad buyers making lots of money buying ads and they're going to keep making lots of money buying those ads. And, to repeat myself, the idea that buyers don't push on how conversions are calculated plus run their own calculations is true only in a fantasy world.
x0x0 10y ago
If you buy ads on adx / high quality networks, it certainly minimizes the pain. That plus a little human review of top demand partners and you'll be ok. If you want to go after every scrap of traffic and chase bottom tier ad networks, you get what you get. And from the perspective of an ad buyer, the fraud gets priced into what they pay anyway.
- davemel37 10y ago
  > the fraud gets priced into what they pay anyway. Does unsustainable medical costs worry you? Because all they did was price in the malpractice insurance and fraud. It's just not good enough to say, its ok to pay for fraud because we dont care to fight it. There is very real opportunity cost for every dollar going to all the stakeholders in the advertising chain.

malchow 10y ago

Arbitrageurs bother me a lot. You're certainly about that. Unfortunately, a lot of bad behavior in ads is desired by every piece of the chain: adtech companies, exchanges, publishers, advertisers, and consumers who do not want to pay for entertainment. App install ads are one example of this. Relatively bad for consumers but good for every other link in the chain. Some of the largest blue-chip companies you've heard of buy these things.

davemel37 10y ago
Of course Arbitrage bothers you a lot, it means that you aren't capturing the full value of the impressions you sell/broker. Bad behavior is not desired by performance advertisers. The blue chip advertisers you refer too are getting wined and dined by agencies and ad tech companies swindling them into believing it's impossible to quantify emotion and storytelling and brand building. After all, it's not their money, it's their shareholders money. Find me one media buyer, where its actually his own money that doesn't demand accountability. What kills me is that letting this bad behavior thrive is short sighted. It's great for keeping VCs happy about growth, but at the end of the day, it devalues all your other high value inventory and forces advertisers to underwrite the risk in their bidding. It's really bad for business long term...but as long as VCs fund publishers and ad tech companies their incentive is only short term growth and bots and fraud help those numbers. Someone, Somewhere needs to force accountability on every piece of the chain, or we'll continue down this path where 99% of advertising isn't working.
- x0x0 10y ago
  The idea that media purchasers don't track return on ad spend is utterly disconnected from any reality in the adtech industry. Here's what actually happens: a DSP is given a $30-$50k trial buy from either a company or their agency. While it's certainly true that a dsp is expected to spend the entire budget, the returns on that budget are carefully tracked. If you don't perform, you get $0 next quarter. If you do perform, you call the buyer and demand 2x the budget next quarter where the entire justification is the cost-per-[conversion, click, etc] that you delivered.
  - davemel37 10y ago
    You can make data tell any story you want with enough creativity. They use ridiculous attribution modeling to justify all sorts of ROI that doesnt really exist. They aren't actually truly measuring impact, they are justifying an expense where there are no ramifications if their modeling doesn't reflect reality. I worked for a company that lived and died by paid media. If something really didn't work, people lost their jobs. Without that level of accountability...it is just a bunch of BS people sell themselves to justify their decisions and/or make themselves look good. You and I both know that ad tech spin data in all sorts of ways to make them look good. I mean, do you really think a below the fold, unseen ad impression that was delivered to someone who bought 3 weeks later should get any credit for that sale? Do the exchanges report on view through conversions? Of course they do... Even, an above the fold impression, that was seen by a human being, is still 90% of the time ignored by ad blindness, but if that guy buys 29 days later, they'll still call it ROI. Let's not pretend there is true accountability in digital media today. We both know thats just not true. Edit: I thought I was replying to someone else and said "your exchange and corrected it to the exchanges."
    - x0x0 10y ago
      Conversion modeling has it's issues, but run eg a state-wide geo fenced test and the ads work. And, again, all fraud and/or fake conversions or whatever it is you believe is rampant gets priced into what companies pay for ads. With 0% fraud you can pay up to (discount x conversion value) / (ad count). With fraud, the numerator doesn't change. Buyers just spend less on ads. There's lots of ad buyers making lots of money buying ads and they're going to keep making lots of money buying those ads. And, to repeat myself, the idea that buyers don't push on how conversions are calculated plus run their own calculations is true only in a fantasy world.

x0x0 10y ago

If you buy ads on adx / high quality networks, it certainly minimizes the pain. That plus a little human review of top demand partners and you'll be ok. If you want to go after every scrap of traffic and chase bottom tier ad networks, you get what you get. And from the perspective of an ad buyer, the fraud gets priced into what they pay anyway.

davemel37 10y ago
> the fraud gets priced into what they pay anyway. Does unsustainable medical costs worry you? Because all they did was price in the malpractice insurance and fraud. It's just not good enough to say, its ok to pay for fraud because we dont care to fight it. There is very real opportunity cost for every dollar going to all the stakeholders in the advertising chain.