3 ms·

Hypothesis: most of advertising has always been fake. The subscription numbers of newspapers did not equal the number of people seeing your ad, and even if the

Hypothesis: most of advertising has always been fake. The subscription numbers of newspapers did not equal the number of people seeing your ad, and even if they did see it they probably didn't pay much attention. The 70's TV-watcher would use the commercial break to go to the restroom. People listening to a 30's radio serial would talk to each other about it during the ad, I bet. Anything driven by ads, is inherently going to be mostly fake, since it is not usually information that the user wants, but you're trying to convince the user that they want it. Which is easier, forcing the user to pay attention to the ad, or convincing the person paying for the ad, that it happened when it did not? The latter will always be easier.

rossdavidh 8y ago
I have given this hypothesis about 2 minutes' thought, so it could be wrong, of course.
coffeefirst 8y ago
Yes and no. TV audiences were measured through surveys. You have margins of error and some percentage of viewers going to the bathroom, but by and large, you were paying for placement in a show with 500k viewers. Some of them wouldn't see it, but you're getting what you paid for. The rampant fraud we're talking about involves making a fake website (or taking a real one and hot-swapping its ad code) pointing a farm of devices at it and tricking the analytics services AND the buyers into thinking they were put in front of the audience of 500k people, give or take, when 0 of them are human. The only way a scam like this works is because the ads are sold by robots, bought by robots, and measured by robots in lots of small batches, so a person can't just look at the site on their laptop and confirm that their ads are running even if they wanted to.
- DrScump 8y ago
  TV audiences were measured through surveys. ... and live metering services like Nielsen, who installed their own metering hardware in participating households' TVs and VCRs and polled them daily over a dedicated phone line.
orev 8y ago
The old adage in advertising is "I know that only 50% of advertising works, I just don't know which 50%". That is not new. Also, the goal of advertising is often not to convince the user they want something, it's to get them familiar with something through repeated exposure so when they do have a need, they choose the thing they have been made familiar with through the ad campaign.
- smegger001 8y ago
  "Also, the goal of advertising is often not to convince the user they want something, it's to get them familiar with something through repeated exposure..." familiarity breeds contempt. And in the end we hate the ads and the products.
  - naniwaduni 8y ago
    And then we go on and buy the products anyway, because we've never heard of the competitors.

rossdavidh 8y ago

I have given this hypothesis about 2 minutes' thought, so it could be wrong, of course.

coffeefirst 8y ago

Yes and no. TV audiences were measured through surveys. You have margins of error and some percentage of viewers going to the bathroom, but by and large, you were paying for placement in a show with 500k viewers. Some of them wouldn't see it, but you're getting what you paid for. The rampant fraud we're talking about involves making a fake website (or taking a real one and hot-swapping its ad code) pointing a farm of devices at it and tricking the analytics services AND the buyers into thinking they were put in front of the audience of 500k people, give or take, when 0 of them are human. The only way a scam like this works is because the ads are sold by robots, bought by robots, and measured by robots in lots of small batches, so a person can't just look at the site on their laptop and confirm that their ads are running even if they wanted to.

DrScump 8y ago
TV audiences were measured through surveys. ... and live metering services like Nielsen, who installed their own metering hardware in participating households' TVs and VCRs and polled them daily over a dedicated phone line.

orev 8y ago

The old adage in advertising is "I know that only 50% of advertising works, I just don't know which 50%". That is not new. Also, the goal of advertising is often not to convince the user they want something, it's to get them familiar with something through repeated exposure so when they do have a need, they choose the thing they have been made familiar with through the ad campaign.

smegger001 8y ago
"Also, the goal of advertising is often not to convince the user they want something, it's to get them familiar with something through repeated exposure..." familiarity breeds contempt. And in the end we hate the ads and the products.
- naniwaduni 8y ago
  And then we go on and buy the products anyway, because we've never heard of the competitors.