6 ms·

As someone who works monitoring ad network traffic at a large ad-tech company (not FAANG, but just below), let me just say: everyone does fraud. Some don't nee

by rayvy 8y ago

As someone who works monitoring ad network traffic at a large ad-tech company (not FAANG, but just below), let me just say: everyone does fraud. Some don't need as much of it (e.g., Google), but quite literally saying "there's fraud in my online traffic" is like saying "there's tomato sauce in my spaghetti". It's quite literally such a normal thing that I've become immune to even getting roused by it (and remember, again, I work to find ad-fraud daily). Does this make it right? No, absolutely not. But is this ever going to change, absolutely not. Too many people are making too much money from this. Just you try to tell an L2 that they can't hit their Q4 Revenue OKR because "we're doing something really immoral by allowing fraud". Don't make me laugh XD

da02 8y ago
What kind of fraud does Google do?
- janesvilleseo 8y ago
  It’s not that they do it. It’s that they allow it. Not outright, but they don’t go out of their way to suppress/stop it anymore more than anybody else.
  - canadapups 8y ago
    When it comes to email spam or fake email accounts, Google not only allows it, they enable it. One scammer can setup thousands of gmail accounts and google doesn't blink an eye. Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. I've reported obvious gmail abuse to Google through their channels, but nothing. Same scammer keeps coming back with new email accounts.
    - lucasmullens 8y ago
      Can't spam detection check if it's the same email with a +1? Seems pretty straightforward. There's no scarcity in available email addresses. If your security depends on people not being able to register new emails, you've already lost.
    - chipperyman573 8y ago
      >Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. This is a well-documented feature that has many legitimate uses. If you're trying to stop fraud, clip any gmail addresses after the +. For example, I believe Facebook does this.
      - canadapups 8y ago
        I do clip it. I have to do many other things too (spending time and money) to counteract scammers usage of google's services. Given google's ability to track people, they'd could do more against fraud, instead of letting scammers use their services freely (hence my comment of them enabling scammers).
    - jlarocco 8y ago
      Tagging email with + has been a feature of email forever, and has nothing to do with Google. Their service would be broken if they didn't support it.
    - Eridrus 8y ago
      So, you've basically outsourced your spam detection to Google, and you're here complaining that you have to do a few small things on your end?
      - canadapups 8y ago
        No, my point is Google allows and/or enables fraud and they could be doing more to fight it. Source: the article we are discussing, "How a Massive Ad Fraud Scheme Exploited Android Phones to Steal Millions". And my experience with scammers using Gmail.
  - Donzo 8y ago
    I'm a small to medium sized publisher and I've had to travel through Google's compliance funnels more than I would have liked. I've never had any compliance issues with any other advertising network. Google works hard to keep the ecosystem healthy because it's good for their long-term interests. But of course, their systems are not perfect.
    - doodliego 8y ago
      If you're removing 700,000 apps a year from your store for violating your own policies, it's fair to say your system is not only not perfect, it's horribly broken.
      - ariwilson 8y ago
        Completely disagree. Could also mean they're doing a great job finding problematic apps.
        chillfox 8y ago
        Another way to look at it is their submission process fails to catch problematic apps. Making it necessary to pull them from the store after they have been published.
        doodliego 8y ago
        They have "only" 2.6 million apps (as of March 2018): https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-availab... 37% fraud-rules breaking rate is pathetic. Maybe they should spend time vetting these things before allowing malware-infested spyware out into the "ecosystem."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
milesskorpen 8y ago
Beyond this, ad spend ASSUMES some level of fraud. It's baked into your ROI numbers, at least for performance advertising. Probably the main people getting stiffed are the publishers who are offering real traffic, and getting a smaller share of dollars relative to the incremental value they deliver.
- cf498 8y ago
  Can you point me towards credible work determining ROI for online advertisement? Whats the current state of the art? edit: I should rephrase, this sounds hostile. I know there is wide work in influencing people to buy stuff when influenced in person. The interpersonal dynamics are widely studied. I also know, that chumming content and goating works to gather more views, but that can only be turned into a ROI by people paying for ads to serve those viewers. There is also the segment of ads, which offer a discount, but what about all the rest? Does banner or clip advertisement actually provide a measurable return of investment? Does online advertisement offer brand recognition, and does it provide a ROI? Are the adverse effects studied, so that people actively despise brands for offensive ads? What are the going rates for views and reactions to online advertisement vs traditional marketing? In short, what is the state of the art of research into online advertisement?
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Also interested. I suspect the lack of noise is a result of lack of impressive results.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - downandout 8y ago
    There are two distinct areas of online advertising: performance marketing, and brand advertising. I'm a performance marketer. I make a profit only when ads result in conversions - usually sales or signups for trial offers, but in some cases we do lead generation campaigns for clients as well. We spend high 5/low 6 figures per month, mostly on Facebook ads, with a monthly ROAS (return on ad spend) that beats Berkshire Hathaway's annual returns. The idea that online advertising cannot work is absurd. The schemes mentioned in articles like this are almost exclusively targeted at brand marketers. My guess is the problem lies in the way that large brands incentivize the people running their campaigns, because the technology exists to knock out the vast majority of this type of fraud. Companies like Coke hire ad firms that send them reports about impressions, and they are thus incentivized to not pay attention to traffic quality, and just maximize impressions. That has to be the problem, because just my internal traffic quality tools that I have written would have shutdown ad delivery on the sites sending such obviously bad traffic within a few clicks from each referrer - and I don't claim to have written the most sophisticated filter out there. There are many ways to do reality checks on traffic, on a per-referrer basis, and cut out much of this stuff. Webview traffic (the kind being taken advantage of here) is among the easiest to detect. As to your question about measuring ROAS it's simple for performance marketers. Take your ad spend and compare it to revenue. I'm not sure that brand marketers have a reasonable way of determining ROAS, either online or in the physical world. I suppose they could take brand recognition surveys and compare before/after a given campaign, but that is hardly an exact science.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
This month we got two unrelated emails (one from Bangladesh, the other from Turkey) with the same scam: "We have hacked your email account, we're emailing you from it, your password is xyz deposit $800 USD in bitcoin or else". These guys just send a bunch of emails using known leaked accounts, and a few of these people are going to be scared because they reuse the same password. Since they ask for bitcoin, anyone can see the transactions of their wallets: roughly $6-12,000 USD each attempt. The risk-reward ratio is ridiculously low, I guess that's the same with ad fraud. Companies would fight a company-sized rat, but not thousands of rat-sized companies.

by rayvy 8y ago

da02 8y ago

What kind of fraud does Google do?

janesvilleseo 8y ago
It’s not that they do it. It’s that they allow it. Not outright, but they don’t go out of their way to suppress/stop it anymore more than anybody else.
- canadapups 8y ago
  When it comes to email spam or fake email accounts, Google not only allows it, they enable it. One scammer can setup thousands of gmail accounts and google doesn't blink an eye. Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. I've reported obvious gmail abuse to Google through their channels, but nothing. Same scammer keeps coming back with new email accounts.
  - lucasmullens 8y ago
    Can't spam detection check if it's the same email with a +1? Seems pretty straightforward. There's no scarcity in available email addresses. If your security depends on people not being able to register new emails, you've already lost.
  - chipperyman573 8y ago
    >Gmail also allows "scammer+1@gmail.com" and "scammer+2@gmail" to be the same account. This is a well-documented feature that has many legitimate uses. If you're trying to stop fraud, clip any gmail addresses after the +. For example, I believe Facebook does this.
    - canadapups 8y ago
      I do clip it. I have to do many other things too (spending time and money) to counteract scammers usage of google's services. Given google's ability to track people, they'd could do more against fraud, instead of letting scammers use their services freely (hence my comment of them enabling scammers).
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    Tagging email with + has been a feature of email forever, and has nothing to do with Google. Their service would be broken if they didn't support it.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    So, you've basically outsourced your spam detection to Google, and you're here complaining that you have to do a few small things on your end?
    - canadapups 8y ago
      No, my point is Google allows and/or enables fraud and they could be doing more to fight it. Source: the article we are discussing, "How a Massive Ad Fraud Scheme Exploited Android Phones to Steal Millions". And my experience with scammers using Gmail.
- Donzo 8y ago
  I'm a small to medium sized publisher and I've had to travel through Google's compliance funnels more than I would have liked. I've never had any compliance issues with any other advertising network. Google works hard to keep the ecosystem healthy because it's good for their long-term interests. But of course, their systems are not perfect.
  - doodliego 8y ago
    If you're removing 700,000 apps a year from your store for violating your own policies, it's fair to say your system is not only not perfect, it's horribly broken.
    - ariwilson 8y ago
      Completely disagree. Could also mean they're doing a great job finding problematic apps.
      - chillfox 8y ago
        Another way to look at it is their submission process fails to catch problematic apps. Making it necessary to pull them from the store after they have been published.
      - doodliego 8y ago
        They have "only" 2.6 million apps (as of March 2018): https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-availab... 37% fraud-rules breaking rate is pathetic. Maybe they should spend time vetting these things before allowing malware-infested spyware out into the "ecosystem."
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

milesskorpen 8y ago

Beyond this, ad spend ASSUMES some level of fraud. It's baked into your ROI numbers, at least for performance advertising. Probably the main people getting stiffed are the publishers who are offering real traffic, and getting a smaller share of dollars relative to the incremental value they deliver.

cf498 8y ago
Can you point me towards credible work determining ROI for online advertisement? Whats the current state of the art? edit: I should rephrase, this sounds hostile. I know there is wide work in influencing people to buy stuff when influenced in person. The interpersonal dynamics are widely studied. I also know, that chumming content and goating works to gather more views, but that can only be turned into a ROI by people paying for ads to serve those viewers. There is also the segment of ads, which offer a discount, but what about all the rest? Does banner or clip advertisement actually provide a measurable return of investment? Does online advertisement offer brand recognition, and does it provide a ROI? Are the adverse effects studied, so that people actively despise brands for offensive ads? What are the going rates for views and reactions to online advertisement vs traditional marketing? In short, what is the state of the art of research into online advertisement?
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Also interested. I suspect the lack of noise is a result of lack of impressive results.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- downandout 8y ago
  There are two distinct areas of online advertising: performance marketing, and brand advertising. I'm a performance marketer. I make a profit only when ads result in conversions - usually sales or signups for trial offers, but in some cases we do lead generation campaigns for clients as well. We spend high 5/low 6 figures per month, mostly on Facebook ads, with a monthly ROAS (return on ad spend) that beats Berkshire Hathaway's annual returns. The idea that online advertising cannot work is absurd. The schemes mentioned in articles like this are almost exclusively targeted at brand marketers. My guess is the problem lies in the way that large brands incentivize the people running their campaigns, because the technology exists to knock out the vast majority of this type of fraud. Companies like Coke hire ad firms that send them reports about impressions, and they are thus incentivized to not pay attention to traffic quality, and just maximize impressions. That has to be the problem, because just my internal traffic quality tools that I have written would have shutdown ad delivery on the sites sending such obviously bad traffic within a few clicks from each referrer - and I don't claim to have written the most sophisticated filter out there. There are many ways to do reality checks on traffic, on a per-referrer basis, and cut out much of this stuff. Webview traffic (the kind being taken advantage of here) is among the easiest to detect. As to your question about measuring ROAS it's simple for performance marketers. Take your ad spend and compare it to revenue. I'm not sure that brand marketers have a reasonable way of determining ROAS, either online or in the physical world. I suppose they could take brand recognition surveys and compare before/after a given campaign, but that is hardly an exact science.

ASalazarMX 8y ago

This month we got two unrelated emails (one from Bangladesh, the other from Turkey) with the same scam: "We have hacked your email account, we're emailing you from it, your password is xyz deposit $800 USD in bitcoin or else". These guys just send a bunch of emails using known leaked accounts, and a few of these people are going to be scared because they reuse the same password. Since they ask for bitcoin, anyone can see the transactions of their wallets: roughly $6-12,000 USD each attempt. The risk-reward ratio is ridiculously low, I guess that's the same with ad fraud. Companies would fight a company-sized rat, but not thousands of rat-sized companies.