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Everything you just wrote is extremely interesting to me. > he ... is one of the most knowledgable paid Facebook advertising specialists on earth, which is how

by i336_ 10y ago

Everything you just wrote is extremely interesting to me. > he ... is one of the most knowledgable paid Facebook advertising specialists on earth, which is how I came to know him > ... > the tactics he uses to get these ads through their review process are truly elementary I'm not a marketer or advertiser myself, but I'm always interested in learning more about these aspects of the Facebook "scene" just to better mentally map the state of things. Sounds like a lot (if not most) of the things this person has learned are the kind that only keep working if you're quiet about them, but I'm still very curious to hear what could be shared.

downandout 10y ago
Most rogue ads rely on "cloaking" which means showing an acceptable landing page to the ad network reviewers, while showing the bad landing page to everyone else. The LP's are cloaked for all visitors before they are approved and go live, since only the ad network would know the URL. The IP blocks that access these URL's during this time are recorded and permanently cloaked. Most cloakers also cloak all known data center and commercial IP blocks. Facebook sometimes checks LP's from residential and mobile IPs, and often that is how they catch rogue ads, but this isn't often done. Rogue advertisers also setup honeypot URL's, for example by sharing them on closed Facebook groups and adding any IP block that accesses them to the cloaking list. Cloaking isn't perfect, but for those marketers with enough IP data, it is effective enough to make these kinds of campaigns enormously profitable and the occasional loss of accounts only a minor inconvenience.
- i336_ 10y ago
  Wow. That was a bit of an education. Thanks for the information.
- wcunning 10y ago
  I've never heard of this, and yet I've read a number of think-pieces that have been on the front page lambasting the ad networks for letting sketchy ads through. If this is only the trivial end of hiding from the network's policing strategies, it seems like they're a lot less culpable than I thought. Do you have links to more information on the other tactics?
  - downandout 10y ago
    You can Google "PPC cloaking" and get quite a few interesting results. There are also professional cloaking services that maintain large IP datasets. The two most popular of those are called Just Cloak It [1], and, ironically, FraudBuster [2]. Also if you're looking in general for information on this and other black/grey hat marketing techniques, Black Hat World [3] is a great place to start. [1] http://justcloakit.com/ http://justcloakit.com/ [2] http://fraudbuster.im http://fraudbuster.im [3] http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Come on, we're talking about Facebook? They could easily "sample" the actual ads that are displaying for users on their computers, and compare them to the ones that were approved.
- yumaikas 10y ago
  Where did you learn about this kind of stuff? I'd be interested in a larger writeup.
  - downandout 10y ago
    I'd start at http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com . There is alot of crap there, but also a world of valuable knowledge of this and other internet marketing techniques.
- chronial 10y ago
  That seems quite easy to catch. Couldn't facebook just use phones that have their app installed for this? That should of course be opt-in. I can't see any privacy problems with that and if distributed (maybe weighted by app usage) across all users, the bandiwidth usage should also be completeley negligible.
  - downandout 10y ago
    They could. They don't. (though to be fair it's completely legitimate to have landing pages that change their text based on the user's location, referrer, etc., so that wouldn't be a silver bullet).

by i336_ 10y ago

downandout 10y ago

Most rogue ads rely on "cloaking" which means showing an acceptable landing page to the ad network reviewers, while showing the bad landing page to everyone else. The LP's are cloaked for all visitors before they are approved and go live, since only the ad network would know the URL. The IP blocks that access these URL's during this time are recorded and permanently cloaked. Most cloakers also cloak all known data center and commercial IP blocks. Facebook sometimes checks LP's from residential and mobile IPs, and often that is how they catch rogue ads, but this isn't often done. Rogue advertisers also setup honeypot URL's, for example by sharing them on closed Facebook groups and adding any IP block that accesses them to the cloaking list. Cloaking isn't perfect, but for those marketers with enough IP data, it is effective enough to make these kinds of campaigns enormously profitable and the occasional loss of accounts only a minor inconvenience.

i336_ 10y ago
Wow. That was a bit of an education. Thanks for the information.
wcunning 10y ago
I've never heard of this, and yet I've read a number of think-pieces that have been on the front page lambasting the ad networks for letting sketchy ads through. If this is only the trivial end of hiding from the network's policing strategies, it seems like they're a lot less culpable than I thought. Do you have links to more information on the other tactics?
- downandout 10y ago
  You can Google "PPC cloaking" and get quite a few interesting results. There are also professional cloaking services that maintain large IP datasets. The two most popular of those are called Just Cloak It [1], and, ironically, FraudBuster [2]. Also if you're looking in general for information on this and other black/grey hat marketing techniques, Black Hat World [3] is a great place to start. [1] http://justcloakit.com/ http://justcloakit.com/ [2] http://fraudbuster.im http://fraudbuster.im [3] http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com
- ams6110 10y ago
  Come on, we're talking about Facebook? They could easily "sample" the actual ads that are displaying for users on their computers, and compare them to the ones that were approved.
yumaikas 10y ago
Where did you learn about this kind of stuff? I'd be interested in a larger writeup.
- downandout 10y ago
  I'd start at http://blackhatworld.com http://blackhatworld.com . There is alot of crap there, but also a world of valuable knowledge of this and other internet marketing techniques.
chronial 10y ago
That seems quite easy to catch. Couldn't facebook just use phones that have their app installed for this? That should of course be opt-in. I can't see any privacy problems with that and if distributed (maybe weighted by app usage) across all users, the bandiwidth usage should also be completeley negligible.
- downandout 10y ago
  They could. They don't. (though to be fair it's completely legitimate to have landing pages that change their text based on the user's location, referrer, etc., so that wouldn't be a silver bullet).