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Company Claims 80% of Facebook Ad Clicks Are From Bots
pitchpipe writes "A start-up company, Limited Run, claims that 80% of its ad clicks on Facebook have been coming from bots and will be deleting their page. Their Facebook page reads: 'Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do ... We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on ... The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs.'"
Don't go there, porno image.
Since the ads require Javascript to be visible, yes. If you don't believe me just disable Javascript on Facebook and watch as all the ads disappear until you reenable it.
The percentage of real users with javascript disabled is much lower than 80%... so if these numbers are real It seems reasonable that the bulk of them are bots.
No, but you also won't be clicking on the ads since they are no longer visible without Javascript.
RTFA. They did the analysis. 98-99% of their direct-clicks had javascript. 0nly 20% of the ones from Facebook had javascript.
Sorry if I RTFA. I'll try not to next time.
Upshot: Facebook stock tanks again.
It's easy to confirm. Disable Javascript on Facebook and the ads disappear. It's pretty unlikely most people are disabling Javascript then finding alternative means to click the ads anyway unless they're a bot.
Simple. Go to Facebook and disable Javascript. Ads are now no longer visible. How else other than through a bot or some extra effort do you guess that these ads are being clicked when the ads aren't visible?
"For the past week, I've been running a very successful small business via Facebook. It is called VirtualBagel and more than 3,000 people from around the world have decided they "like" it - despite the fact that it does, well, absolutely nothing. But in running this non-existent firm I have learned quite a bit about the value of those "likes" prized by so many big brands, and the usefulness of Facebook's advertising".> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18819338
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
you've never used wget have you?
1. Download the page the ad appears in
2. Download the javascripts using the referral page
3. grep the javascripts for links
4. hit all the links
Repeat.
So if you want to burn a specific company, you only click their ads. Since Facebook is the beneficiary of the ads, this is clearly facebook's problem. Go back in time to the ad scam eFront ran"
http://www.echostation.com/efront/
http://news.cnet.com/A-question-of-numbers/2009-1023_3-255030.html
There's a pretty simple fix for that issue. Don't click on random links while at work. Geeknet doesn't give two fucks that you did something that stupid.
Each user, by using Geeknet Sites, may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Each user must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content.
They then decided to put a logger on the site to track where the users were coming in from and what they were doing. From this, they determined 80% of the clicks from FB were bots.
Others have also done these types of analytics in regards to Facebook, with results in the 70%-are-bots range.
Here's a quote from the LA Times blog article (admittedly, it is pretty poorly edited):
In a Facebook status post as well as a blog posted Monday, Limited Run said it built its own analytics program, which found that 80% of its ad clicks were coming from users with JavaScript turned off, which makes it difficult for analytics software to verify clicks. The company added that in its staff's experience, only about 1% to 2% of clicks typically come with JavaScript turned off. As a result, the company built a page logger on its site, and that led the company to find that all those clicks were coming from bots.
I suppose all of this could be bunk, but it sounds pretty reasonable to me.
*psst* you missed the part where he's not a consumer, he's one of the people that actually gives Google money. They like money. They pay attention to the people who give them money. It's just the rest of us who are SOL.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Just to confirm: you're saying that for your wife's business, Facebook ads are 8 times more effective than Google ads.
Gack! Sorry, I got the ratio reversed. They are eight times less effective. Thanks for catching this.
Someone modded this troll?
So, how many times have you seen a vapourware product on this site and gone to their site to see:
A) How much it costs
B) Where to buy it
and been REALLY FUCKED OFF to find that this information isn't available?
Advertising, Slashvertising and posting 250 words over 6 pages of ad-infested blog wipe doesn't sell products. It sells hype and only marketing get rich off hype.
Here is the perfect advert:
For rent: NATALIE PORTMAN
Comes with HOT GRITS, NAKED.
NPORTMAN.COM, UPS delivery to continental US only, $200 per night. Availability is 1/per customer, per night, first come first served.
And I think that makes the word "amirite" necessary here.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Not to be rude or offensive, but you failed at it because you didn't know what you were doing. I know several people (for companies not themselves) spending six figures a month with facebook and generating sales numbers larger than that. It's working great for them. If I tried that I would have the same results as you until I learned what I was doing. To do it "right" it requires a custom software and understanding of all the analytics. I've asked them in the past about their budget for testing new ads and products. They will blow a couple grand just getting everything dialed in. Unless you're copying someone verbatim (and that would require hacking them and seeing everything on their back end not just their fb ads) $50 isn't even close enough to begin getting a campaign profitable.
Something else they will do is literally upload hundreds of different ads with different pictures, text, etc. Then they'll choose the ads that have the highest CTR (click through rate). Apparently one of the metrics fb uses for click prices is the CTR. If you're getting a crt of around .1% or higher you'll be getting some great click prices. Which is why they upload so many creativities. They have software that will take images, titles, bodies and generate ads for all the permutations and set very specific demographics for each set (a set would be the total permutations) of ads then upload them to fb. That allows them to see which ads work best for which demographics.
Click fraud is a huge problem though. A lot of ad networks will reimburse you for bot clicks if you can prove they were in fact bots and not real people. A lot of times it will be a small percentage and you eat the cost, because it's not worth the trouble of fighting for it. Think of it as theft if you were running a retail store, because that's essentially what it is. However, at 80% that's just crazy and this company has every right to be upset regardless of the amount they spent. They didn't get what they paid for.
After saying all of that. I'm sure if you had the money to burn you could figure it out and make a nice side income. You would have to treat it like any business though and expect to lose money for a while until you learned the ropes.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware