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Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 i

Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 in extra profit - you're paying too much for ads. The fact that 23% of ad views don't convert just pushes down the price of an "ad view", ie those fake views are priced in to your CPM rates already. This does not effect your ad budget however. People that get hurt aren't the advertisers but the quality publishers who may be struggling to sell ads at higher CPM rates, justifying those with fewer fake ad views. But this is nothing new, ad rates have always varied considerably across newspapers based on their quality and audience, and ad buyers should understand that. It's completely normal to pay hundred times more to show your ad on WSJ compared to PornHub for example. I don't know enough about this, but surely ad buyers have the tools to track conversion rates of different advertising mediums and publishers, thus enabling them to ultimately compute the cost-per-sale?

gergo_v 12y ago
Branded campaigns for example have no such easy way to measure conversions - and since multiple advertisers at the same time get hit by a fraud operation at different rates, the loss is not evenly distributed, not easy to track, etc. Add to that the fact that a lot of companies only care if the ROI is positive, no matter the cost, with the middlemen making money both on bot generated and human generated impressions, and you've got a whole messy business on your hands. Source: our company just won 500k in investment at Slush to battle this specific problem.
illumen 12y ago
Most advert buyers are not sophisticated. So fraud matters.
- unreal37 12y ago
  I don't believe that. I've worked with some companies that spend millions per year with online ads. They are sophisticated.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Being sophisticated might just mean you understand that the current cost of fighting fraud is higher than the cost of the fraud. It doesn't mean you're not getting bled.
    - unreal37 12y ago
      Agree that they understand that fraud exists. And they are not immune to it any more than you or I. But they don't look at it as "being bled". They pay X cents for a click, and they get Y sales per click. And Y has to be greater than X.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Most people speak out of their ass.
Dylan16807 12y ago
>Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 in extra profit - you're paying too much for ads. The fact that 23% of ad views don't convert just pushes down the price of an "ad view", ie those fake views are priced in to your CPM rates already. This does not effect your ad budget however. If you negotiate an agreement where you would make a 15% profit on a transaction, and a fraudster swoops in and takes 12%, would you be content about getting the remaining 3%? Ideally whenever a transaction takes place, both sides would share about half the benefit. Liars should not be able to pull money out of the middle with the sole restriction that both legitimate parties still make some profit.

gergo_v 12y ago

Branded campaigns for example have no such easy way to measure conversions - and since multiple advertisers at the same time get hit by a fraud operation at different rates, the loss is not evenly distributed, not easy to track, etc. Add to that the fact that a lot of companies only care if the ROI is positive, no matter the cost, with the middlemen making money both on bot generated and human generated impressions, and you've got a whole messy business on your hands. Source: our company just won 500k in investment at Slush to battle this specific problem.

illumen 12y ago

Most advert buyers are not sophisticated. So fraud matters.

unreal37 12y ago
I don't believe that. I've worked with some companies that spend millions per year with online ads. They are sophisticated.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Being sophisticated might just mean you understand that the current cost of fighting fraud is higher than the cost of the fraud. It doesn't mean you're not getting bled.
  - unreal37 12y ago
    Agree that they understand that fraud exists. And they are not immune to it any more than you or I. But they don't look at it as "being bled". They pay X cents for a click, and they get Y sales per click. And Y has to be greater than X.
blumkvist 12y ago
Most people speak out of their ass.

Dylan16807 12y ago

>Someone please explain why this is a problem. The way I see it is that advertisers pay for results. If you spend $100,000 on ads and make less than $100,000 in extra profit - you're paying too much for ads. The fact that 23% of ad views don't convert just pushes down the price of an "ad view", ie those fake views are priced in to your CPM rates already. This does not effect your ad budget however. If you negotiate an agreement where you would make a 15% profit on a transaction, and a fraudster swoops in and takes 12%, would you be content about getting the remaining 3%? Ideally whenever a transaction takes place, both sides would share about half the benefit. Liars should not be able to pull money out of the middle with the sole restriction that both legitimate parties still make some profit.