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Google Issuing Refunds to Advertisers Over Fake Traffic, Plans New Safeguard
- Operyl 9y agoOff 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?
- kurthr 9y agoSome newspapers are opening their paywall for a couple of days due to Hurricane Harvey.
- adventured 9y agoNo, 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 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.
- Operyl 9y agoHuh, good to know. I guess I just managed to always look at their paywalled content.
- stephengillie 9y agoContent can't cost more than its advertising, or it's a loss. You're probably attracted to more-valuable articles, which likely cost more than their ads generate.
- peter_mcrae 9y agoThe people regularly reading CMO today has to be a very valuable audience -- they probably make a ton of money selling that data as anyone selling into Marketing departments would pay a lot to be able to target those folks.
- Rjevski 9y agoCouldn'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.
- feelin_googley 9y ago"Just imagine for a second the total time lost due to..." Did this many times over the years with respect to time lost as result of being forced to use a substandard operating system. Because it came preinstalled on PCs like the ones in used offices and there was no 386BSD yet. The www did not come "preinstalled" with ads. But some companies want it to seem that way. False claim: "If no ads, then no www."
- bittermang 9y agoI 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.
- vosper 9y agoThe account credit probably goes to the agency, and the actual customer is none the wiser. Or it gets credited to some kind of covering-our-asses fund that can be used by the agency to make the click-through cost look a little less bad at the end of the next quarter.
- madars 9y agoIn related news, certain subreddits have been promoting the use of https://adnauseam.io/ 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.
- cft 9y agoThis could be a coordinated 4chan attack https://files.catbox.moe/6ueduv.png https://files.catbox.moe/6ueduv.png
- MichaelGG 9y agoYes, it's seen as, probably correctly, the only way to do anything that'll affect Google. Outside of getting laws changed, that is. It probably won't be effective - the people handling ad fraud are probably not the ones pushing their censorious politics. But hey, unlike most slacktivism, this causes them real damage. I imagine the response will be to ban people's Google accounts, for those dumb enough to sign in while using AdNauseum. (Anything more forensic might be a target for trolls.) We'll see if Firefox caves to pressure like Pale Moon did.
- cat199 9y agowhich, aside from being ironic, could create network effects to move people out of gapps and back towards more federated solutions.. things could get interesting.. or, more likely, they could not.
- tanilama 9y agoThere is no proof it does. Even before it Google has estimated the fraud traffic compositing of 20% to 30% of all its inventory. I think 4chan bros are too caught up with themselves to think that a bunch of ideologists can cause tens of billions of damage. http://www.businessinsider.com/thepartnership-msix-and-adloox-ad-fraud-2017-2017-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/thepartnership-msix-and-adloo...
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- camus2 9y agoA 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/294024572 http://adland.tv/adnews/googles-ad-traffic-news-fake/2940245... Personally I don't think it does.
- vosper 9y agoWhen you're on the inside the fake traffic is not so hard to quantify. Problem is that if you've taken the time to quantify it then your staff might start feeling obligated to do something about it. Like talking to customers. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sharkweek 9y agoPardon my rudimentary understanding here, but I sort of assumed in such a wide scale auction, pricing would reflect acceptance of a certain level of fraud, and that the price would balance out at a point where these fake clicks were part of the equation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hi3980 9y agoUp to a point. After some threshold of noise the system becomes unstable. Similarly, after some threshold of fraud the advertisers lose faith and leave. I.e. mostly shit is not a place you want to be at.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoJudging by my competitor's bids I don't think many advertisers have an 'equation'.
- ssharp 9y agoNever underestimate the amount of dumb money in advertising.
- 55555 9y agoThis is basically true, but it's not a perfectly efficient market and it doesn't react immediately. But basically yea, every network has ad fraud and you just build that into your max CPC because at the end of the day everything runs on a CPA/cost-per-conversion basis.
- baybal2 9y ago>pricing would reflect acceptance of a certain level of fraud, and that the price would balance out at a point where these fake clicks were part of the equation. This is how it is, bur nobody says it aloud
- hi3980 9y agoSome of us tried to sound the alarm on fake traffic before Google IPO'd and WSJ or some other major news source wrote about it at the time days before their IPO, but no one cared at all. Everyone wanted Google to become the greatest in history based on a business model that acknowledges fraud but regards it as mere noise as opposed to mortal threat. Well, the whole point of warning the public before their IPO was to prevent the giant economic disaster that this can lead to. But Google was clever and managed to find a profitable business with Android and maybe other streams of revenue. I wonder how this will play out.
- fakeads 9y agoYou got the business part wrong. Google is like 88% ads. The rest is barely profitable or run at a loss.
- hi3980 9y agoI wonder if this is in response to firing of that dude that said women are biologically disadvantaged at coding LOL. It probably is. What a pity that it took sympathizers/supporters of a sexist asshole to standup to Google.
- nindalf 9y ago> I wonder No it seems completely unrelated. To be honest I don't know how you linked these two events in your mind.
- hi3980 9y agoEasy. March on Google was planned in support of that guy. So why not an electronic protest to follow? What is the hard part about making the connection. Wait, a trick question, right? You're baffled...
- jnbiche 9y agoThe subreddits mentioned above are alt right subs like /r/The_Donald . They are openly protesting the firing of the memo author by using extensions like AdNauseum that interfere with Google's revenue stream.
- narrator 9y agoI always thought it was funny that Google's billion dollar revenue model essentially relies on a trusted client.
- z3t4 9y agoI wonder what will happen when the Google revenue is threatened, we'll probably see something like ad DRM
- throwaway2048 9y agoSo about Google AMP...
- tyingq 9y agoI suspect part of the uptick in fraud was Google's release of headless chrome. It uses less memory than other approaches, so any click farm converting over would have more capacity.
- nerd7473 9y agoYou'd hope that Google would be better at such... Oh well, everything is compromised eventually.
- nerd7473 9y agoNot compromised... But you know what I mean.... :/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DinoDano 9y agoGoogle is shameful organisation. They are fake and liars!
- runeks 9y agoI find this really interesting. We’re all familiar with exploiting vulnerable software, but this appears to be exploiting a vulnerable business model. Does this attack work with Facebook as well? I think the difference in client authentication might prevent this attack on Facebook (just ban accounts that click too many ads). But, on the other hand, Google might be able to use IP-addresses to accomplish the same. Taking it to the next (morally questionable) level would be a virus that infects regular consumer devices, and delivers fake clicks from seemingly honest clients.
- chillydawg 9y agoA lot of people are perma logged into Google these days due to Gmail. They've got their claws in deep.
- Drdrdrq 9y agoAnd even without the account, there are many ways to track users across sessions.
- runeks 9y agoPossibly profitable attack vector: 1) Accumulate short position in Google stock 2) Develop and deploy malware that delivers fraudulent clicks from regular users 3) Cash in on now-profitable short position, caused by negative media attention regarding Google’s business model 4) Repeat
- MichaelGG 9y agoStep 3 is actually "lose everything because Google announced something neat" or "lose everything because that quarter Google announced better fraud control and increased revenues".
- paulgb 9y ago> a virus that infects regular consumer devices, and delivers fake clicks from seemingly honest clients. Click fraud has been one of the ways to profit from a botnet of virus-infected computers for years.
- tannhaeuser 9y agoClickfraud has been a problem for as long as online ads exist. Its widespreadness has caused ad revenues to decline to the point of non-profitability years ago, and many web media outfits to close shop. On what basis should customers be refunded without actual, objectively measured clickstream data? This piece feels like a media campaign to make AdSense appear as premium service over alternatives to me. The point is that, without incentives for quality content creation, there aren't that many web resources worth searching anymore. Have you checked your web usage recently? Do you actually go to Google search for your daily web consumption? Or could your search needs be fulfilled by, say, better StackExchange search? Google is struggling to keep growth as ad revenues go to more evil companies such as Facebook, as their AMP project shows.
- bartread 9y agoThat's an interesting point and I suppose the answer is maybe but what I've found is that the best, or certainly the easiest, way of searching StackExchange is Google.
- drewmol 9y agoI agree, but wonder if it's mostly habit(been using that single search box for over ten years, and I'm reluctant to add one more click/step to the process when I can just press enter right now and then filter through the results page). I still have to remind myself to use the !bang function of DDG even though it's often a faster, more direct path to the results I want. For me, only after it slowly becomes habit does it truly feel easier
- baybal2 9y agoSmall time bloggers switched to affiliate schemes ages ago
- RichardHeart 9y agoGoogle, I'll take my refund for childrens foreign language learn your ABC's and Peppa pig traffic anytime you like. Or reimburse for hours wasted on phone to your Indian call center.
- machtesh 9y agoWhile the article talks about Adsense fraud, there's a ton of fraud happening on Adwords as well like competitors or bots that click on your ads to deplete your ad budget. Google provides refunds for some of those fraudulent clicks as well. I'm a developer at https://www.clickcease.com/ https://www.clickcease.com/ a company that's been fighting click fraud for the past few years. If you're affected by click fraud, we can detect fraudulent ad clicks and automatically file refund claims with Google.
- cyphar 9y agoDespite what your opinion might be on the ethics and justifications of the people involved, I find it quite concerning that they're being painted as "ad fraudsters". This sounds like the same Orwellian re-definition of words as "piracy". There is no implicit or explicit, social or legal contract that says if I click an ad that I must then purchase the product. Nor is there any agreement that if I click an ad that I have to be interested in the product. So you couldn't really argue it's deception. And most importantly, I have no financial gain from doing it (EDIT: assuming that I'm not the person who is making money from the ads). The term "fraud" is an intentional misuse of the word to frame the conversation in a way that is quite deceptive. Is exploiting a flaw in the existing CPC advertising system "fraud"? No. Is it unethical? Possibly, depending on what your view is on the justification. You could argue that devaluing the worth of tracking-based advertising is trying to do a net good, and that it might counteract Google's attempts to become a monopoly in online advertising. But you could also argue it's going to ruin small businesses that rely on advertising as a significant part of their income.
- Gustomaximus 9y agoIt is a soft form of fraud when they know bots and dodgy apps are being allowed to take clicks as legitimate advertising. There are tools that pick this up as well as analysis to encourage refunds from AdWords but for some reason Google have lagged on this technology, dispute a massive information advantage. Maybe it is innocent reasons. But I don't believe that. So I feel they are doing fraud in a light form by not improving tools as well as they can to remove bad clicks and take the payment.
- rcdmd 9y agoI think you're missing the point of "click fraud[1]". Unscrupulous actors are using botnets to "click" ad network links on their sites, which they then get money for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud
- reefoctopus 9y agoI'm penalized about 15% of my revenue every month due to invalid traffic. 99% of the traffic is organic, and google doesnt give me any idea where this invalid traffic is coming from.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cat199 9y agoGood to see this - I've often questioned the somewhat symbiotic nature of scam sites and googles ad revenue - if things were too easy to find, there would be less need for ads in the first place.. Not that the simple existence of such a program precludes this.. they could just be using it to tune the equation when the sides get out of balance..
- James_Owens_69 9y agoThat's what they get for censoring people on youtube and google I guess.
- fatjokes 9y agoPeople just want free stuff. Google did introduce a program (Contributor) which would allow users to pay to fund their content creators without seeing ads. Last I heard that program was not doing well.
- whipoodle 9y agoMy problem with such programs is they require you to be logged-in to work. As soon as you use incognito mode, sorry chump.
- kyrra 9y agoHow do you expect to pay for something and have it work without being logged in to some system? Be it some over arching login system like Google or per logins per website.
- finnthehuman 9y agoThe parent poster didn't say it was a problem with a solution, they said it was a problem. Systems can have inexorable negatives, and it's fine to take issue with them.
- whipoodle 9y agoI don't expect that, I just think it's a fundamental limitation that makes it not worth it for me.
- revelation 9y agoPatreon is doing very well I believe.
- mcbits 9y agoPatreon itself seems to be going strong, but I've only seen a handful of users making anything close to a livable income, and I check out profiles almost every time someone plugs theirs. Usually it's a laughably small amount. The successful users are popular enough to make still an order of magnitude more with ads, sponsorships, etc. I love the model and hope it keeps growing, but it's not there yet.
- osrec 9y agoI am finding Google adverts less and less effective for an e-commerce business my parents run. I think it may be because consumers are getting better at ignoring the ad-noise on the web, and this is potentially quite worrying for Google and other ad based businesses. It's not beyond the realms of imagination that this fake traffic could be an attempt re-bolster their main revenue stream, and they've been caught out by their customers!
- fancy_pantser 9y agoDon't forget the rising rates of adblock shifting which demographics actually see the ads. https://pagefair.com/downloads/2017/01/PageFair-2017-Adblock-Report.pdf https://pagefair.com/downloads/2017/01/PageFair-2017-Adblock...
- remline 9y ago> It's not beyond the realms of imagination that this fake traffic could be an attempt re-bolster their main revenue stream It basically is beyond imagination unless you think they have a new income plan that just needs one more quarter. Google's long-term value is in the conversion rates of long-term advertisers: drop conversions in half with fake traffic and next month they are going to offer you less than half the bid or nothing if they have high site costs per visitor. I.e. licensed booking listings. Probably partners that share immediate revenue with Google but are less invested/secure in their portion of the long term value of that stream are behind it.
- osrec 9y agoI don't disagree with your comment, however, I am often surprised by the short-termism demonstrated by executives. It may not be Google's strategy, but I am sure they are well aware of it happening, and in that sense it feels like a lie of omission. Apologies if I sound cynical, but I would guess that a company that has been running an ad platform for the past 17 years clearly knows the difference between authentic and fake traffic.
- remline 9y ago
- redm 9y agoA few honest questions for anyone who's an ad buyer for mixed media: I've wondered how advertisers look at broadcast advertising compared to digital. For one there's no direct correlation (as in a click) with broadcast television. There's also no direct accounting of who actually saw it, just a best guess based on Neilson numbers. It seems to me that DVR's are akin to ad blockers as well. Why is digital so conversation obsessed (clicks/purchases) and not focused as much on the branding values (CPM)? Is broadcast advertising so much cheaper than digital that it makes sense to just blanket ads and hope for the best?
- jackgolding 9y agoI've worked with buy side teams and a lot of it is ignorance. I think you'd be horrored with some of the slots that your company gets purchased (and that process, in Australia anyway.) Things like having 1/3 of your 5 figure weekly budget spent on one advert.
- scottshapiro 9y agoBroadcast TV also has 70 years of inertia.
- teej 9y agoThe way people handle it is to triangulate on the value based on a couple different sources. For example, you may test your TV ad in a handful of markets first and see if you experience lift in those areas. In addition, you may offer a unique coupon/promo code in that ad and measure uptake. Then you survey customers and ask them how they heard about you. So maybe in your test regions you saw 2% promo uptake, 3% lift, and 5% survey responses saying they saw the ad. You'll pick an estimate somewhere from 2-5% depending on how conservative or aggressive you want to be. That's how you approach it at a small to medium sized company that actually cares about how their marketing budget is spent. I've also seen an ad agency attempt to measure incremental website traffic gain in the test regions during the time slots the ad aired. If your traffic is large enough to have a clean baseline or the ad response is massive this is probably okay, but I'm skeptical of this methodology. If you're a bigger company, there are also ways to get better viewthru conversion metrics. Shazam offers something to this effect, where they allow you to Shazam a commercial. Shazam can then tell you of people who viewed the commercial who went on to convert. Nielsen may sell this too. With TV if you can't get the numbers to work on a pure customer acquisition basis, you'll measure brand recognition and recall in your test regions. If your ad makes an impact there you can then justify spending some of your brand budget in addition to the marketing budget to justify the overall expense.
- reallynice 9y agoIt's interesting they did this, because it's not consistent with their customer service on their ad platform. For the most part it's difficult to contact a real person at Google. More than a few people became so frustrated they sued them just to get the tech giant to respond. While Google's users usually don't notice, Google's algorithms for just about everything besides searching are deficient. The abuse and reporting system is almost laughably easy to convince to nuke competitors content off search results. Or people. Like everyone else, it is simply a vote counter. The "winner" receives a boot. But that's not really exceptional. Where Google distinguishes itself is in how heavily it relies on heuristics and machine learning. Most people outside the field think it must be good because it sounds very smart and Google "just works". What they don't see is how legitimate content is silently deranked based on keywords or association with sites that have been deranked. The AI isn't audited. It can't be, because nobody can get ahold of anyone at the tech giant to tell them. I've read many, many security analysis' by Google. It's a funny thing: They never consider if Google itself might be the security problem. That's usually one of the first things a competent security analyst asks: "Is it our own processes that might be creating vulnerability?" Of course people only hear about new and "cool" applications of AI. Nobody cares about the nuts and bolts. Doubly so when the corporate cultures of these businesses are so youth-centric there's nobody old enough in their organizations to know where the landmines are. Older people have seen enough failure and fucking up to avoid a lot of it. They're also more reactive to feedback from others, though it's still something the industry is deficient in at all levels of expertise to an abnormal degree. Between culture and attitude, it's created an invisible crisis in the field. It's also giving newcomers to the field unrealistic expectations. A lot of people who enter the field leave a couple years later when they find out most of our field is less cutting edge and more fire axe. The majority of us clean up the messes the technology leaves - or the people who use it. Failure is the norm; It's success that's aberrant. This disconnect between action and consequence has created a culture of arrogance and overconfidence. It must have been a very obvious exploit for them to act. Or, more likely, someone threatened to sue. They claim they'll be creating "new safeguards". I'd bet dollars to donuts it'll be some half baked AI that worked in the lab. But the moment it goes into production it'll fall flat on its face. That's common to most IT projects -- but the managers are generally cognizant of the failure, even if action isn't taken. It seems to be the trend lately for Facebook, fistfuls of startups, etc., to not be aware, or admit, to a problem. They are often actively hostile to the possibility. I recall awhile back Zuckerberg claiming "Young people are just smarter", even as the dumpster fire that was his website was prompting legislators in a dozen countries to consider legislation and programs aimed at limiting exposure. It is causing psychological disorders in youth -- including stress, anxiety, addiction. It's even being linked to an increased risk of suicide and an epidemic of "cyber bullying". The disconnect is palpable -- Google and Facebook's corporate culture has much in common, but they have good company. Many companies try to emulate those two. It's a little off-topic -- but this is also why we have programs like the H1-B visa program. Those of us on the front line often criticize it because there's plenty of IT talent right here at home. That's true, but a lot of that talent got a good look at the shitshow that is this industry and left. Rather than improve industry practices and reforming culture, they just turn to foreign labor to keep prices low. They can't get enough kids ignorant of the realities of the field to work long hours for peanuts, subsisting largely on the false promises of riches and living on the edge. The bottom line is, Google (and many others) isn't a beacon of success, but rather a lighthouse warning us to keep away from a veritable charybdis of poor judgement and toxic culture. We shouldn't be trying to emulate it, but the appearance of success is often so seductive people don't ask what it cost. Like a rip tide, most people don't see it until it's too late.
- EvilDictator 9y agoLooks like 4chan is trying to take credit for this. http://i.imgur.com/pKeniSx.png http://i.imgur.com/pKeniSx.png They use an adblocker called adnauseum that sends a click through to every ad blocked.