7 ms·

I made an ad fraud startup which ran into the exact same problem. With video ads, advertisers will pay 10x more to be in a “user initiated” video player (the u

I made an ad fraud startup which ran into the exact same problem. With video ads, advertisers will pay 10x more to be in a “user initiated” video player (the user clicked or there was a reasonable expectation there’d be a video on that page - YouTube, camera icon on preceding link, etc). But more often then not, those ads are running in an autoplay context (sticky video players in the bottom corner, large players in the footer, etc). I built a mechanism which could tell the difference (viewport, fixed positioning, fingerprint elements on the page, provide a screenshot of the offended page with your ad on it, and various other signals). We ran tests with advertisers, agencies, demand side platforms (dsps), server side platforms (ssps). We’d compare their existing fraud numbers (very low) with our reports (80% fraud). Within each company, we’d have a champion saying “this is going to change everything. Quality supply, better performance metrics, etc etc”. Then we’d get introduced to a team whose compensation was driven by “percentage of spend” - every deal died at this stage. My opinion: if your company is using online advertising tied to conversions (someone buying something, or potentially signing up for something) then you’ll be fine as long as it’s economical. But if your ads are for brand awareness, be extremely careful running on any website which isn’t in the top 10 sites on the internet.

barbariangrunge 4y ago
By top 10, do you mean google / Facebook ads? I have some friends whose online store got a lot do traffic from Facebook but I don’t know much personally
steveBK123 4y ago
A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically targeting this market of "birds for your cats to watch". I have noticed that the YouTube app on my Samsung TV will play for an unbelievable number of hours without any "are you still watching" prompt. Easily 6 hours!! I've been playing them videos almost daily for weeks and only got this prompt this weekend finally. So some companies probably think they are paying for targeted ads to some category like "people interested in cats / wildlife", YouTube collects a cut and pays the content creator a cut. All this for feline-only eyeballs.
- Retric 4y ago
  I have played serval hours of an ambient ocean sounds vid on YouTube and the only advertising was at the beginning. That was years ago, but I suspect they intentionally avoid inserting advertising in the middle of such videos.
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    These videos actually have frequent ads throughout the video like any monetized content And because no one is there to skip them after 5 seconds, my cat gets the full length ad served.. It's hilarious
    - midhhhthrow 4y ago
      That’s not fair to the kitty. Why can’t they skip ads too? Let’s get the European nut bags to draft up some ridiculous legislation like GDPR that forces advertisers to put another pop up warning potential ata they can’t skip these ads
    - Retric 4y ago
      Could be because some people actually watch these videos and click skip occasionally. The sea sounds was a static image so I doubt people just stared at the empty screen for very long.
    - bart_spoon 4y ago
      Ironically, it seems like the best indicator an actual human is there to view your ad would be if they skipped them after 5 seconds or watched the whole thing.
- tomschwiha 4y ago
  Don't undererstimate how much human will actually spend to please the feline fellow.
- vgeek 4y ago
  Maybe the ads are really effective, but you just need a cat translator to know how effective the ads are on your cats? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4
jsonne 4y ago
See I run a DSP and I'm not sure what incentive we would have to be against this? My primary goal is to keep advertisers spending, and the better their results the longer they hang around. I have a vested interest in eliminating fraud if followed to that conclusion. Then again we focus on performance campaigns not brand awareness so we're a bit a different. Most of our inventory too comes from large sandboxed audio apps so while not perfect on the fraud front there is less potential for it from less players. Then again I am a startup and I have seen how some people at very large adtech companies operate. Less sophisticated clients (many of them with huge budgets) can't properly evaluate what they are buying and thus default to cheapest CPMs possible. It's unfortunate and a symptom of the incredibly opaque ads stack and inventory.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  > See I run a DSP Digital Signal Processor?
  - MikeTheGreat 4y ago
    Another post mentioned "Demand Side Platform", which Wikipedia explains like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform But yeah - I'm totally out of my depth here, and while the Wikipedia articles makes some sense if anyone here wanted to throw out (or suggest) a quick primer on this industry I know that _I_ would learn a lot :)
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    The acronym was defined in the post to which they were replying (two levels above your reply), so it would have been a bit redundant for them to define it yet again.
    - MisterTea 4y ago
      I read the thread backwards and missed the GP.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
rkagerer 4y ago
Amidst all this fraud there must be a huge opportunity for a startup with a different model that actually delivers verifiable results (eg. higher fee for a cut of affiliated sales would better align incentives and perhaps encourage a reduction of unwanted spam to end users).
- Cheezewheel 4y ago
  But it isn't even a problem that experts don't know how to solve it. We know how to solve this issue. The problem is that at basically every large company someone's bonus is tied to keeping the current status quo. There are all these measures and statistics around ad revenue and spending, but the problem is that a lot of it is naïve and outdated, but nonetheless John's quarterly bonus is tied to a program that is defunct and wasteful, and often these are business people, they are not going to blatantly work against their own interests. It is like with Google. They have a huge issue with the company spinning up new projects and then abandoning them at the drop of a pin, and it is crystal clear why this happens (people take on impactful[i.e. visible] projects for their promotion packet, but the incentives are for heading a project, not for maintaining it). It isn't a matter of figuring out a solution, the problem is that the problem will persist as long as important stakeholders are financially incentivized to resist change.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

By top 10, do you mean google / Facebook ads? I have some friends whose online store got a lot do traffic from Facebook but I don’t know much personally

steveBK123 4y ago

A funny anecdote that's not fraud but puts a bit more ambiguity into the alleged targeted ad eyeballs even from the big players. There's a good amount of "ambient" content on YouTube these days. Some not targeted at adults or even humans. I have been playing YouTube videos on my TV of birds & wildlife, for my house cats to enjoy. There is one guy who makes 8 hour long videos. There is one content creator basically targeting this market of "birds for your cats to watch". I have noticed that the YouTube app on my Samsung TV will play for an unbelievable number of hours without any "are you still watching" prompt. Easily 6 hours!! I've been playing them videos almost daily for weeks and only got this prompt this weekend finally. So some companies probably think they are paying for targeted ads to some category like "people interested in cats / wildlife", YouTube collects a cut and pays the content creator a cut. All this for feline-only eyeballs.

Retric 4y ago
I have played serval hours of an ambient ocean sounds vid on YouTube and the only advertising was at the beginning. That was years ago, but I suspect they intentionally avoid inserting advertising in the middle of such videos.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  These videos actually have frequent ads throughout the video like any monetized content And because no one is there to skip them after 5 seconds, my cat gets the full length ad served.. It's hilarious
  - midhhhthrow 4y ago
    That’s not fair to the kitty. Why can’t they skip ads too? Let’s get the European nut bags to draft up some ridiculous legislation like GDPR that forces advertisers to put another pop up warning potential ata they can’t skip these ads
  - Retric 4y ago
    Could be because some people actually watch these videos and click skip occasionally. The sea sounds was a static image so I doubt people just stared at the empty screen for very long.
  - bart_spoon 4y ago
    Ironically, it seems like the best indicator an actual human is there to view your ad would be if they skipped them after 5 seconds or watched the whole thing.
tomschwiha 4y ago
Don't undererstimate how much human will actually spend to please the feline fellow.
vgeek 4y ago
Maybe the ads are really effective, but you just need a cat translator to know how effective the ads are on your cats? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuVHCJVYf4

jsonne 4y ago

See I run a DSP and I'm not sure what incentive we would have to be against this? My primary goal is to keep advertisers spending, and the better their results the longer they hang around. I have a vested interest in eliminating fraud if followed to that conclusion. Then again we focus on performance campaigns not brand awareness so we're a bit a different. Most of our inventory too comes from large sandboxed audio apps so while not perfect on the fraud front there is less potential for it from less players. Then again I am a startup and I have seen how some people at very large adtech companies operate. Less sophisticated clients (many of them with huge budgets) can't properly evaluate what they are buying and thus default to cheapest CPMs possible. It's unfortunate and a symptom of the incredibly opaque ads stack and inventory.

MisterTea 4y ago
> See I run a DSP Digital Signal Processor?
- MikeTheGreat 4y ago
  Another post mentioned "Demand Side Platform", which Wikipedia explains like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform But yeah - I'm totally out of my depth here, and while the Wikipedia articles makes some sense if anyone here wanted to throw out (or suggest) a quick primer on this industry I know that _I_ would learn a lot :)
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  The acronym was defined in the post to which they were replying (two levels above your reply), so it would have been a bit redundant for them to define it yet again.
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    I read the thread backwards and missed the GP.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

rkagerer 4y ago

Amidst all this fraud there must be a huge opportunity for a startup with a different model that actually delivers verifiable results (eg. higher fee for a cut of affiliated sales would better align incentives and perhaps encourage a reduction of unwanted spam to end users).

Cheezewheel 4y ago
But it isn't even a problem that experts don't know how to solve it. We know how to solve this issue. The problem is that at basically every large company someone's bonus is tied to keeping the current status quo. There are all these measures and statistics around ad revenue and spending, but the problem is that a lot of it is naïve and outdated, but nonetheless John's quarterly bonus is tied to a program that is defunct and wasteful, and often these are business people, they are not going to blatantly work against their own interests. It is like with Google. They have a huge issue with the company spinning up new projects and then abandoning them at the drop of a pin, and it is crystal clear why this happens (people take on impactful[i.e. visible] projects for their promotion packet, but the incentives are for heading a project, not for maintaining it). It isn't a matter of figuring out a solution, the problem is that the problem will persist as long as important stakeholders are financially incentivized to resist change.