Traffic Fraud Inflates Video Site Popularity

Dotnaught writes "A new study by spyware researcher Ben Edelman finds that spyware-driven traffic inflation is common, particularly at video sites. The study identifies Bolt.com, GrindTV.com, Broadcaster.com, Away.com, RooTV.com, and Diet.com as the beneficiaries of spyware-driven traffic. 'Our measurement systems are inaccurate for the amount of trust we'd like to put into them,' Edelman said. 'So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?'"

Comments

Who??

[Mr2001]

I've never heard of any of those video sites. Is this an actual problem affecting well-known sites, or just these no-names?

Re:Who??

[psaunders]

I care even less...in fact, I only came in here because the footer below the abstract said "7 of 9 comments". Ripped off, she's not even here.

Re:Who??

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I've never heard of any of those video sites. Is this an actual problem affecting well-known sites, or just these no-names? I don't think it matters. With yoogle poised to do "revenue sharing" for videos hosted on their systems, the described abuse seems likely to become more popular. Both directly for profit and indirectly as "clumsy" joe-jobs to deprive the 'competition' from receiving valid income.

I believe the fundamental question about building an advertising based economy on untrustable numbers is indeed key. This attack is the equivalent of someone figuring out how to plant a remote-controlled tv remote-control in every Nielson living room and using it to fool Nielson's tracking into thinking the families where all watching certain shows - ones for which the producers had paid the remote-control controller a fee. If that were to happen, billions of dollars of tv advertisment revenue would be at risk.

The internet makes such an otherwise impossible attack relatively easy. I suspect the only long-term solution is to not base the economy on advertising. Find another way, my personal favorite being something along the lines of "global co-op comissioned work with release to the public domain." In other words, pay for actual creative work done, not unreliable statistics about eyeballs and promotion.

Re:Who??

[tinkertim]

I've never heard of any of those video sites. Is this an actual problem affecting well-known sites, or just these no-names?

Many web sites will gladly sell you a place to put one of your banners. They will charge you a fee that is justified by the amount of visitors who will see your banner, further justified by estimating how many of those visitors would be likely to click on your banner and why.

For sites that depend on selling advertisement space to monetize, traffic scores calculated by third party sites like Amazon make or break your ability to get prime bucks for prime space on your web sites.

Comapnies who need to show an instant boom in traffic sometimes employ the use of spyware that can be signaled from a remote connection to begin "surfing" a given site from the visitor's IP address proporting to be the user's default browser type. Instantly, millions of people start surfing the target site completely unaware they're even doing it. Its a booming business, building and renting these networks.

You may not have heard of any of these sites, but I'm sure you'd pay top dollar to advertise there once you saw their traffic scores. Its a new cottage industry that thrives on Windows / IE users.

Re:Who??

[owlnation]

How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?

Find a way to get someone to post an article on your noname site on Slashdot -> get loads of visits.

No, I've never heard of the sites either.

Re:Who??

[QuickFox]

I don't think they can afford to mix-and-match Good Google/Bad Google Unfortunately they can. They actively promote and encourage domain squatting.

This is how...

[Duncan3]

How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?

There's a sucker born every minute. Customers and advertisers both. Google proves it every day. Even the price comparison sites are becoming bogus.

Widget online: $3
Shipping & "handling": $25
Markup for the ad we had to buy to get you here: $47
On sale at the local mall: $2

Now that Google is taking over the entire ad space, it's one simple entry in the ad blocking software to eliminate most ads. Get Adblock properly configured and you'll rarely if ever see an ad.

Re:This is how...

[Dogtanian]

Now that Google is taking over the entire ad space, it's one simple entry in the ad blocking software to eliminate most ads. Get Adblock properly configured and you'll rarely if ever see an ad. That's ironic, because Googles ads are generally the ones I feel no need to block; they're not particularly intrusive. By contrast, the reason I switched to Google from Yahoo in the first place was specifically the annoying popup ads (mainly for X10).

Let's make this clear; Yahoo lost me permanently as a user (rare email use aside) *specifically* because of the annoying popups; and ones mainly aimed at one advertiser at that. Now, I'm probably not enough of an ad-clicker (either at Yahoo or Google) that they'd shed any tears over the loss of people like me. However, I wonder how many profitable users Yahoo lost because of one annoying short-term ad-campaign on their site.

It's like a TV station showing obnoxious advertising (*) during peak/mealtimes. It makes me wonder about people changing the channel in the face of this and the subsequent loss to other advertisers- and potential loss of the audience altogether if something more interesting was on the other station.

(* One unpleasant example- skip if you're having your lunch- woman discussing the consistency of their "stools" in a cafeteria. No, not the ones they were sitting on. Yes, this is a real advert in the UK. Can't remember if they showed it at peak or mealtimes, probably because I don't watch the kind of programmes it would appear with very often).

It's a problem everywhere

[Evets]

This problem has been around since the begining of web stats in general. There was a time not long ago when people didn't differentiate between hits and page views or visits. 100,000 hits on a given site could mean anywhere between 1,000 and 50,000 page views.

Some people intentionally inflate their stats, others end up inflating them unintentionally. Drudge reports an absurd amount of page views in their advertising page, but if you stay on the home page for any length of time you see the page auto-refreshing. Does that count? If you are selling CPM advertising, it probably does. If you are buying it, you hope it doesn't.

In the end, advertisers either are doing brand advertising or conversion advertising. If they are doing conversion advertising it's simple - identify potentially good advertising locations and figure out the comparitive ROI with a trial run. If you are doing brand advertising, you can base your dollars on alexa or nielsen or some other marketshare stat vendor, or you can simply research the site niches yourself to determine the extent of their advertising power within the community.

Advertising has been wrought with snake oil vendors since the beginning. Nothing has changed and nothing ever will. Like anything else - if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. And just because a deal is priced in congruency with the rest of the market doesn't mean that you can accept it at face value. PR firms don't just exist to put out a public image, they exist because they are supposed to understand the advertising marketplace better than most people would ever care to.

possible idea

[dosboot]

Maybe we could create a simple way for people to report forced traffic from their browsers? I'm thinking of having a button on the toolbar and when a pop-up opens you click the button to report it as forced (and have the button simultaneously close the window naturally). If you recieve widespread reports for a certain site then there is a degree of certainty that this site is really getting forced traffic (and not just malicous people playing with the button). With this information you can compile a public list of sties that get forced traffic.

Re:Advertising is inherently untrustworthy

[timmarhy]

thats not strictly true. i've encountered advertising thats discrete, gave me the information i was looking for and was very handy. unfortunately thats a rare thing. all those dating and "your our millionth visitor you've won" ads need to fuck off.

Easy

[kjart]

How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?

Just do what TV studios do - pretend that the numbers are real.

Re:Simple

[jambarama]

Use a different measurement system sure, but what measurement system? You can pay by the number of clickthroughs, but if these sites are willing to build up fraudulent page views, fraudulent clickthroughs wouldn't surprise me either. The best system I can think of is to do a revenue sharing plan--tell a site they get X% commission for each sale referred from their site. It is a lot harder, more expensive, and more clearly illegal to fake a credit card purchase--so I can see this being effective, even if sites don't like this model.

Anyone have any better ideas?

Party over.

[ajs318]

'Our measurement systems are inaccurate for the amount of trust we'd like to put into them,' Edelman said. 'So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?'

Short answer: You don't.

Advertisers are parasites that manage to hook into both ends of the food chain. They suck producers dry under the false pretence of bringing consumers to them; and they suck consumers dry by inflating the prices of goods (to pay for the adverts that they are ignoring).

We have now reached a saturation point: there is literally nowhere left for the advertising industry to plaster their garish advertisements. Everywhere you look, there's a f***ing advertising hoarding. Then they got clever and used "time-domain multiplexing" -- revolving hoardings that can fit three posters into the space of one! People wander round in clothes made in third-world sweatshops, that boldly display the manufacturer's name; yet they actually paid good money to do that. (Unless they bought the better-quality counterfeits, and the real manufacturer still gets the benefit of advertising either way.) The only watchable TV channels -- unless you've got Sky Plus -- are from the BBC. And don't think you can get away from it in the cinema. First they advertised before the movie. Then they advertised the tie-in merchandise for weeks after the movie. Nowadays the whole movie is one long advert!

When the advertising industry is dead, there'll be one MOTHER of a queue to dance on its grave.

Re:Party over.

[king-manic]

Advertising does create value for someone. You need to know whats out there and no one has prefect knowledge. Advertising provides a base point to get more info. Suppliers too. Like it or not A great product with little advertising (Linux/stewarts soda) will always be beat by a okay product with good advertising (Windows/coke). With marketing being equal then other factors comes into play (VHS vs Beta). So while the consumer gets nothing out of it the retailer/manufacturer has to play the game.

Re:Party over.

[NoMaster]

So, to play devils advocate with a term that was all the rage a few years ago, in order to create a "level playing field" advertising should either be socialised or outlawed?

(Yeah, I know about real 'level playing fields', opportunity, access, etc. I'm using the term in the same way it was presented to the public back then; the "let us do X because we don't think Y is fair!" sense...)

Yes, advertising does "create value". In theory, it does it by affording companies the opportunity to inform consumers of their worthy products.

In reality, it does it by distorting markets almost to breaking point, by convincing people without the time/inclination/wherewithal* to research every purchasing decision that Product A with a huge marketing budget is better than Product B with a slightly less huge marketing budget. Over and over, again, and again, and again, 5 or 6 times an hour even while you sit stationary in front of the television.

The fact is that modern advertising - since the 50's at least - is a gross and unhealthy economic aberration, which actually has a negative effect on the world as a whole...

And, frankly, I don't care for the "without advertising you would have wonderful things such as product/service/website Y!" argument. If I didn't know I needed it, I didn't need it; sure, new things are nice, but not at the expense of my time / money / mindscape - unless I so chose. It's the non-stop inescapable ubiquity of advertising, on everything everywhere - and the fact that it's not only becoming accepted as natural, but that attempts to reduce/remove/avoid it are starting to be seen as wrong and verging on the criminal - that is the problem.

(* And how can even the experienced and dedicated research choices properly anyway? Tried using Google to research any commercial or personal decision lately? Between the spam blogs, fake product "reviews", and out and and out advertising lies, it's impossible.)

Re:Party over.

[sholden]

How is charging different prices shonky?

Different payment methods have different costs as does online and in-person transactions.

Checks and credit cards have the potential to bounce or be charged back. Cash has the potential to be stolen. Surely if something costs the supplier different amounts they can charge the customer different amounts without being branded "shonky"?

Coca Cola branded soda costs more than unbranded stuff at the supermarket because they cost the supermarket different amounts in to buy themselves. Is that shonky?

Re:Party over.

[sholden]

Yes a pound of your money is worth a pound, however if you pay with cash the store has to spend X cents (where X is a very small number) on security /insurance against theft. If you pay with a credit card then the bank probably charges them a fee plus there's the risk of a charge back which amortizes to Y cents (again a very small number). If you pay with a check then there's the risk of it bouncing which again translates to some amortized cost of Z cents.

The store doesn't give a stuff how much you actually pay for the item. They care how much money they get for the item. If you want to use a credit card why should the store pay the fee the bank charges - you're the one choosing to use a card for your convenience so you should pay that fee.

You are being charged the same price for the same goods. You pay extra for the additional costs you inflict on the merchant.

What you are really arguing is that the costs inflicted on the merchant by credit card users and people who want to come into the store instead of order online should be paid for by charging the people who don't inflict those costs on the merchant as higher price. Which seems the shonky way to me.

Note: it may well be that people who pay cash inflict more costs than those who pay by credit card - in the form of security costs, insurance costs, staff costs to transport the money, etc, etc - but the argument is the same just flip the credit card/cash parts...

How?

[kestasjk]

How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?

Micropayments right? Everyone wins (except discount viagra merchants and pornography websites).

How about a "rate the ad" system?

[Opportunist]

When an ad is annoying (like all those in-your-face popups), at best they serve to get the ire of the user, get him to install popup blockers and other means of not having to deal with an ad.

How about a way to "rate" ads. Was this ad helpful? Did it provide information you actually wanted (I know, I know, but those things DO exist. But then, I also believe in the yeti)? Was it intrusive? Or downright nasty and obnoxious?

I'm pretty sure the advertising industry (the industry doing advertising, that is, not necessarily the industry that makes the ads) would be very interested in that information.

And as a nice side effect you get an immediate feedback about popup-abuse. Because they would most certainly be tagged "obnoxious", no matter how good the ad itself may be.

Same problem for the Italian TV, no solution

[YA_Python_dev]

FYI we have the same problem in Italy for the number of TV programs viewers.

There is a corporation, Auditel, which is in teory indipendent but in practice is owned for the 66% by the two biggest TV networks (RAI, the crappy public TV, and Mediaset the crappier Berlusconi's TV).

Their numbers are used for the prices of the ads and the result is that they always greatly overestimate the number of watchers. An infamous case was when, due to a technical problem, the transmission of a big channel was interrupted for 30 minutes and according to Auditel millions of people (a big percentage of the Italian population) continued to watch it anyway, without any interruption and without changing channel!

Re:Same problem for the Italian TV, no solution

[Dogtanian]

In truth, while Raiuno is really bad - like UK tv from the 70s I should point out that the 1970s is considered by many to be the "golden age" of UK television; and that UK television is in general far better than many other countries'. So whether your comment was a valid insult depends on the context you meant it from; was it that of a modern viewer from another country?

A video bubble ?

[mbone]

After the sale of YouTube, video oriented sites are popping up everywhere, and many of them seem to be oriented around a similar exit strategy, so this doesn't surprise me. (Disclosure - I am with AmericaFree.TV and I look at a lot of video sites, but the 6 mentioned were all new to me.)

It is my feeling that this is a weakness of the entire statistically based advertising and ranking model, which looks at the actions of computers and tries to infer the intent of their owners. Using spyware to bring people to your site will piss them off, and they likely won't stick around, but if all you want to do is to artifically inflate your traffic statistics so that you can do a quick sale, what do you care ? This is beginning to remind me of the dot-com days...

Money

[skinfitz]

Seems to me the simple solution is to track the money made from ads rather than the hits. If this happens there will be no incentive to fake hits.

How is that different from anything else?

[argent]

How do you jusdge the value of advertising anywhere? You look at how it effects sales.