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As an advertiser on Facebook, I can attest to the fact that Facebook's recent increase in click fraud has become UNBEARABLE. What started with 1-2% of clicks b

As an advertiser on Facebook, I can attest to the fact that Facebook's recent increase in click fraud has become UNBEARABLE. What started with 1-2% of clicks being fraudulent, has progressed to some ad campaigns recieving 10 real clicks to 90 fake clicks. And this is over 10,000s of clicks. FUCK Facebook because they do nothing about it, simply providing a boilerplate email. EVEN an IP exclusion tool would help, but Facebook doesn't have that. But what the fuck do you expect? They treat their customers like shit. They have "Ad reps" on their platform who serve only one purpose: to increase your daily budget on their platform. Ask them anything else and they are totally fucking clueless. Also, apologies for the recurring vulgarity but this has been an issue for me for the past month. It's money.

aristus 17y ago
It takes time to turn a big boat. I think it's naive of them to not have anticipated this kind of problem. It would also be naive of us to expect an "Ad Rep" who was probably a PolySci student 2 months ago to be able to fix it. If it's really such an UNBEARABLE problem you don't have to bear it. Suspend your ads and come back when it's fixed.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  No. Sorry, just no. If you buy a Mercedes and they deliver a Yugo, you've been defrauded. Fine, maybe they can't get you the Mercedes back right away but they sure as heck can refund your money. Facebook appears to not even be talking to these customers beyond a form letter. That's just plain wrong. Yes, problems can take time to fix but working with the customers you have just screwed over to compensate them can be done RIGHT AWAY. Apparently they aren't doing this, and that is the problem.
  - aristus 17y ago
    Bad customer service, yep. It's ok to be angry, but that doesn't invalidate my point: click fraud often takes companies by surprise (though it shouldn't) and that it will take a non-trivial amount of time to fix (I'll guesstimate 3 months once it gets serious attention from management) but it will be fixed. It's like an ant infestation. In the meantime given the bad customer service and probable time frame, the best thing to do is suspend your ads. FB will pay a LOT more attention to that than how many customers call up to verbally abuse their salespeople or vent on forums.
    - TrevorJ 17y ago
      It will take time to fix the root of the problem, sure, I buy that. What I don't buy is that Facebook has no ability to make it right with the customers before that time.
      - aristus 17y ago
        Well, they can't throw money out of helicopters just yet. There's no quick magic fix ("here's your $9.46 back, sorry") because they don't full apprehend the problem, nor do they have a workable filter to separate legit and fraud clicks. Maybe you are hoping for some reassuring words + action, but I've been there and it can take awhile before a competent manager notices there is a problem to be fixed in the first place. Then they need to do a lot of analysis to make their own definition of "fraud" (a misleading term that covers a large spectrum of behavior), which may not be possible to unambiguously apply to historical data. As my business advisor Barbie likes to say "CPC is hard! Let's go shopping!"
mynameishere 17y ago
This problem just seems really, really trivially easy to fix. Advertise elsewhere.

aristus 17y ago

It takes time to turn a big boat. I think it's naive of them to not have anticipated this kind of problem. It would also be naive of us to expect an "Ad Rep" who was probably a PolySci student 2 months ago to be able to fix it. If it's really such an UNBEARABLE problem you don't have to bear it. Suspend your ads and come back when it's fixed.

TrevorJ 17y ago
No. Sorry, just no. If you buy a Mercedes and they deliver a Yugo, you've been defrauded. Fine, maybe they can't get you the Mercedes back right away but they sure as heck can refund your money. Facebook appears to not even be talking to these customers beyond a form letter. That's just plain wrong. Yes, problems can take time to fix but working with the customers you have just screwed over to compensate them can be done RIGHT AWAY. Apparently they aren't doing this, and that is the problem.
- aristus 17y ago
  Bad customer service, yep. It's ok to be angry, but that doesn't invalidate my point: click fraud often takes companies by surprise (though it shouldn't) and that it will take a non-trivial amount of time to fix (I'll guesstimate 3 months once it gets serious attention from management) but it will be fixed. It's like an ant infestation. In the meantime given the bad customer service and probable time frame, the best thing to do is suspend your ads. FB will pay a LOT more attention to that than how many customers call up to verbally abuse their salespeople or vent on forums.
  - TrevorJ 17y ago
    It will take time to fix the root of the problem, sure, I buy that. What I don't buy is that Facebook has no ability to make it right with the customers before that time.
    - aristus 17y ago
      Well, they can't throw money out of helicopters just yet. There's no quick magic fix ("here's your $9.46 back, sorry") because they don't full apprehend the problem, nor do they have a workable filter to separate legit and fraud clicks. Maybe you are hoping for some reassuring words + action, but I've been there and it can take awhile before a competent manager notices there is a problem to be fixed in the first place. Then they need to do a lot of analysis to make their own definition of "fraud" (a misleading term that covers a large spectrum of behavior), which may not be possible to unambiguously apply to historical data. As my business advisor Barbie likes to say "CPC is hard! Let's go shopping!"

mynameishere 17y ago

This problem just seems really, really trivially easy to fix. Advertise elsewhere.