3 ms·

Do you feel like advertisers know that now? I feel like I hear about clickspam/ad fraud operations getting closed down (and nigh-instantly popping up elsewhere)

by c256 7y ago

Do you feel like advertisers know that now? I feel like I hear about clickspam/ad fraud operations getting closed down (and nigh-instantly popping up elsewhere) on a constant basis. Is this like intrusive DRM in PC games, where all the studies show that it increases producer costs and complexity, annoys consumers, and doesn’t actually improve sales revenue, but some companies do it anyway because “what about piracy?”

Nebasuke 7y ago
I think one big difference with DRM for PC games, is that piracy of PC games is normally not a money making activity for the pirates. It might prevent companies from selling a game to certain people, but there is no clear cut evidence that person would have otherwise bought it. For advertising however, you can first of all incur a cost to an advertiser (since costs are calculated per click, view, etc), but furthermore, pirates can even profit from it by having a website and generating fake clicks for that website. If you would not try to prevent this ad fraud you would have bad actors siphoning off complete company advertising budgets to their accounts.
- mikeash 7y ago
  You don’t have to use a model which allows this. Pay-per-placement, for example. You pay a fixed amount to put your ad in a specific article (or on the entire site or in whatever rotation people like) and then there’s no way to rip off advertisers with click farms. You still need to measure your audience to get advertisers to pay the price, but this is decoupled from the individual ad buys so it can be done differently.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Ha, please have a little trip to any of the open air electronic markets of Eastern Europe(even of those countries that are within the EU) and every other stall has DVDs of almost any PC game/software you can think of. Signs like "newest game releases here!", "Windows 10 all versions no key one dvd!", "Blu-ray movies - 10 per disc!" Are still common. They are not even trying to hide this even though the police are meant to be on a look out for that stuff, but I can guarantee that I could come back with a backpack absolutely full of pirated PC games from one of these markets - that is making people money, no one is doing this out of charity even if prices are low.
  - chii 7y ago
    > that is making people money the people buying the pirated software would not have otherwise spent the money on the official/real version. This is the stickler - counting "loss" from this kind of sale is at best immaterial and at worst fraudulent.
Negitivefrags 7y ago
Are their studies that show that? I have heard the opposite. Every day you can stop a game from being pirated is quite a lot of sales earned back. Dunovo has been quite effective at this in the past. If you can stop your game from being pirated for a week a lot of people who want the game right now will switch to buying instead. After it’s been cracked a lot of publishers will then patch out the DRM since it doesn’t matter anymore.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > After it’s been cracked a lot of publishers will then patch out the DRM since it doesn’t matter anymore. This does not happen nearly as much as you think.

by c256 7y ago

Nebasuke 7y ago

I think one big difference with DRM for PC games, is that piracy of PC games is normally not a money making activity for the pirates. It might prevent companies from selling a game to certain people, but there is no clear cut evidence that person would have otherwise bought it. For advertising however, you can first of all incur a cost to an advertiser (since costs are calculated per click, view, etc), but furthermore, pirates can even profit from it by having a website and generating fake clicks for that website. If you would not try to prevent this ad fraud you would have bad actors siphoning off complete company advertising budgets to their accounts.

mikeash 7y ago
You don’t have to use a model which allows this. Pay-per-placement, for example. You pay a fixed amount to put your ad in a specific article (or on the entire site or in whatever rotation people like) and then there’s no way to rip off advertisers with click farms. You still need to measure your audience to get advertisers to pay the price, but this is decoupled from the individual ad buys so it can be done differently.
gambiting 7y ago
Ha, please have a little trip to any of the open air electronic markets of Eastern Europe(even of those countries that are within the EU) and every other stall has DVDs of almost any PC game/software you can think of. Signs like "newest game releases here!", "Windows 10 all versions no key one dvd!", "Blu-ray movies - 10 per disc!" Are still common. They are not even trying to hide this even though the police are meant to be on a look out for that stuff, but I can guarantee that I could come back with a backpack absolutely full of pirated PC games from one of these markets - that is making people money, no one is doing this out of charity even if prices are low.
- chii 7y ago
  > that is making people money the people buying the pirated software would not have otherwise spent the money on the official/real version. This is the stickler - counting "loss" from this kind of sale is at best immaterial and at worst fraudulent.

Negitivefrags 7y ago

Are their studies that show that? I have heard the opposite. Every day you can stop a game from being pirated is quite a lot of sales earned back. Dunovo has been quite effective at this in the past. If you can stop your game from being pirated for a week a lot of people who want the game right now will switch to buying instead. After it’s been cracked a lot of publishers will then patch out the DRM since it doesn’t matter anymore.

cameronbrown 7y ago
> After it’s been cracked a lot of publishers will then patch out the DRM since it doesn’t matter anymore. This does not happen nearly as much as you think.