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Is there any incentive for a company to remove fake traffic[0] from its stats and analytics? I guess there is no incentive in most markets. Facebook, etc make

Is there any incentive for a company to remove fake traffic[0] from its stats and analytics? I guess there is no incentive in most markets. Facebook, etc make only a token effort to reject non-troublesome bot traffic. [0] bots and other automated traffic which cannot generate revenue or human ad views

nemomarx 1y ago
In theory if you have a lot of fake traffic then ads on your site will have an even worse conversion rate than normal?
- curiousObject 1y ago
  if you have a lot of fake traffic then ads on your site will have an even worse conversion rate than normal? Yes, if you only count purchase/sale conversions Maybe no, if you also count clickthrough and view conversions, perhaps even lead conversions sometimes (because fake sign ups are possible). But you’re right. Purchase conversions are one incentive
  - kijin 1y ago
    Next thing you know, the bots will learn how to purchase products, and we'll have come full circle. I'd love to have an agent that goes online whenever I'm running low on toilet paper or something, browses all the stores and clicks all the ads, and automatically orders the best deal it can find.
    - technothrasher 1y ago
      I certainly wouldn't want to be caught in that arms race where sites continually attempt to find sneaky ways to convince my agent to buy things I don't actually want.
    - sanex 1y ago
      By clicking on all the ads you're raising prices in the long run and just funneling money to google and meta, forcing the toilet paper companies to make scratchier tp to try and squeeze out more margin. My bhole would thank you for not doing this.
      - kijin 1y ago
        Or maybe if everyone does it, market forces will suppress the cost per click and we'll be back to square zero.
        sanex 1y ago
        That's interesting. Drive ad value to zero or force them to start blocking crappy traffic. I think the issue is this could take us down the device attestation drm for the web path to discern legitimate traffic which is bad for the open web.
blakesterz 1y ago
I guess the answer is no, and there's a couple quotes in there near the end: One rep I had known for years finally admitted the truth off the record. "Dude, we know," he said. "Everyone knows. But if we filtered it all out properly, our revenue would drop 40% overnight, and investors would have a meltdown."

nemomarx 1y ago

In theory if you have a lot of fake traffic then ads on your site will have an even worse conversion rate than normal?

curiousObject 1y ago
if you have a lot of fake traffic then ads on your site will have an even worse conversion rate than normal? Yes, if you only count purchase/sale conversions Maybe no, if you also count clickthrough and view conversions, perhaps even lead conversions sometimes (because fake sign ups are possible). But you’re right. Purchase conversions are one incentive
- kijin 1y ago
  Next thing you know, the bots will learn how to purchase products, and we'll have come full circle. I'd love to have an agent that goes online whenever I'm running low on toilet paper or something, browses all the stores and clicks all the ads, and automatically orders the best deal it can find.
  - technothrasher 1y ago
    I certainly wouldn't want to be caught in that arms race where sites continually attempt to find sneaky ways to convince my agent to buy things I don't actually want.
  - sanex 1y ago
    By clicking on all the ads you're raising prices in the long run and just funneling money to google and meta, forcing the toilet paper companies to make scratchier tp to try and squeeze out more margin. My bhole would thank you for not doing this.
    - kijin 1y ago
      Or maybe if everyone does it, market forces will suppress the cost per click and we'll be back to square zero.
      - sanex 1y ago
        That's interesting. Drive ad value to zero or force them to start blocking crappy traffic. I think the issue is this could take us down the device attestation drm for the web path to discern legitimate traffic which is bad for the open web.

blakesterz 1y ago

I guess the answer is no, and there's a couple quotes in there near the end: One rep I had known for years finally admitted the truth off the record. "Dude, we know," he said. "Everyone knows. But if we filtered it all out properly, our revenue would drop 40% overnight, and investors would have a meltdown."