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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.'"
If you don't have javascript, you're a bot?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's rude.
Don't go there, porno image.
Ad rotator services and click-throughs are WORTHLESS.
The internet gives you the power to directly connect with people and most companies still only understand advertising through broadcasting which is like tossing thousands of coins waiting for one to land on its edge.
I hope they've learnt their lesson before someone actually punches their monkey.
No, but you also won't be clicking on the ads since they are no longer visible without Javascript.
Facebook is a TERRIBLE advertising platform. I've tried it, and had nothing but rubbish. In fact, I read an article about it not long after I tried it, saying that Facebook Advertising just doesn't work, and the only way they keep it up is by new people going 'Well, all these other people are advertising, I'm sure I can try that too'. Then they give it up as a bad job, but not before someone ELSE sees it and goes 'Hmm. FB Advertising'...
So, basically, I wasted $50, and learned that trying to appeal to the facebook crowd with something they have to pay for just doesn't work.
Schlock Mercenary.
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.
dammit. too little too late. that'll be forever ingrained in my oh nvm. my brain has ARC
Can a mod delete that link please? This is most surely against TOS and may get people fired from work if using /. at work.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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?
This is most surely against TOS
You would be wrong:
Geeknet does not control the Content posted to the Geeknet Sites and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. Under no circumstances will Geeknet be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, liability for any errors or omissions in any Content or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed or otherwise transmitted via Geeknet Sites.
Oops forgot this last part:
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.
LOL. I wasn't going to click until I read your comment.. i saw porno and clicked. you should have been more specific.. its gay porno... not my thing.
Can a mod delete that link please?
No.. Homey don't censor... Learn how to tune out.
"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"
With some Facebook bots starting at $30 to $50 to build, of course people are doing that. Facebook has bigger problems than giving a crap about this company's complaints or requests. If our SEC wasn't a toothless corporate captive, the company would already have been halted for securities abuse.
Which is highly unlikely since most users don't turn off Javascript.
And only an idiot clicks on random image links when they are at work...
We use adwords from time to time and had similar experiences a few years back with the "content network".
We analyzed our stats and even went as far as manually browse access logs. The hits we got were crap just like the sites most of the referrals came from.
There is a huge sesspool of scum on the Internet funded by leeching off ad revenue wherever it exists.
If companies are not on top of it and not careful about how they are spending their advertising dollars this kind of fraud could easily eat into a sizable chunk of their budgets and they might not even know it.
Do your homework before you throw your money away.
Maybe the bots are genuinely interested in Mom's Old Fashioned Robot Oil.
I google for "whiplash" or "loans" and click on all the ads.
Because they are upset with facebook for this issue as well as a completly unrelated issue where they changed their company name, but facebook won't let them change the name of their page for less than 20 k in ad purchases.
Really. There are large costs associated with company name changes. That is not news. Anyone else starting a buisness would be advised to choose a name they really want before lanching, or pay the associated costs.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Well, if they're using NoScript they could have Facebook's scripts enabled but not this company's. That said, it's very unlikely that they'd be more than 1% or so.
Dilbert RSS feed
Advertising on the Internet is based on click-fraud. Where have you been for the last 10 years?
Who profits from BOTS pumping the FACEBOOK advertising system?
In practice it will be effectively impossible to identify the person-or-company who is *originally* responsible for this clickvertising pumping scheme.
But I know who I'd be betting on.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
and subsequent public trading of Facebook are both good ideas, and this company's shares are definitely not overvalued. . . . . .
I'm not sure what you are getting at. If a person opens a porn picture at work, in most cases they can be fired. Since this is not hosted a pr0n site, it will make it past many proxies and filters. All it will take is for someone to see their screen and report them, proxy/FW logs will do the rest.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
However much truth there is in this story, there's one notable thing about Facebook's advertising. It's that they don't- or at least didn't the last time I looked into it (late 2011 IIRC)- provide any proper tracking or analytics service that you can easily integrate into your own website. Yes, they'd tell you how many clicks you got on your Facebook page, but so what?
IIRC apparently they'd had some analytics/tracking code available at one point but *supposedly* they were worried about the data it provided being misinterpreted, so they withdrew it. They were still providing it, but only to their large corporate customers. Hmm.
One could still use specialised third-party tracking solutions, but (e.g.) getting it to work properly with Google analytics proved more complicated than it might at first have appeared, involving faffing about with funnels and the like (which I still don't think I got working properly, as I was distracted by more important things shortly afterwards).
Given that this was around the time stories were starting to come out explaining how Facebook- which everyone had assumed would be the holy grail of targeted advertising- was in truth delivering very poor results for advertisers, a cynic might assume that it really wasn't in Facebook's interest to make keeping close tabs on the effectiveness of its advertising easy for customers. This might or might not have been the case, but I'm pretty sceptical.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Sure you could, but you are part of a small minority of users. A far cry from the 80% they are seeing.
If Facebook was gaming the stats to boost their ad revenue, there are smarter ways.
What seems more likely is an near infinite army of bots, trying to steal information to build profiles, and going to every advertising link while they are at it.
Other internet advertising businesses have everything to gain by stealing from the biggest treasure trove of personal info on the net. And they everything to gain by driving up the costs of advertising on Facebook while providing no benefit.
I believe you mean rickholed.
I've advertised on quite a few platforms (although have yet to try Facebook), and this is a common problem. In 2006, there were lawsuits against Yahoo and Google for click-fraud.. both were settled (I was included in the settlement for both.... got virtually nothing.. something like $20 refund for $100k in clicks.)
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10294.asp
Google does a pretty good job, which is probably a large reason why they control such a large portion of the online ad market. Yahoo, depending on their platform of the week, can be hit-or-miss. They usually do a good job, but there have been a few times when it is just terrible. When Yahoo announces a change to their search.. watch out. (Bing's ad performance has been pretty good over the past couple of years at least)
I've seen some ad platforms that just ignore the problem, and it's easy to spend several thousand dollars and not get a single customer from it on those platforms. If facebook does nothing to control the problem, I'm sure there will be another class action.. probably won't cost them much to settle it, but might destroy the trust they have with advertisers, their stock price, and business.
How did you survive the days of goatse?
How dare you hold him accountable for his actions!
It is not against the slashdot TOS, but it is against the imageshack TOS. Report to imageshack, the link breaks, and all is well again.
You're an annoyance. Please delete yourself.
Someone say porn? I feel misled.
This signature intentionally left blank.
Stretching exercises and a huge cork.
Any idea about who the bots are run by? You don't directly benefit from clicking ads, unless they're Facebook, and even if it is possible that they're inflating their ad clicks numbers for a variety of reasons that seems unlikely as it would hurt them more in the long run. Another possibility would be someone wanting to hurt the start-up in question, but they don't look threatening and you need pretty motivated enemies to actually bother to run a botnet against you. The last possibility I see is someone wanting to hurt Facebook by decreasing their global attractiveness. If other advertisers get similar figures that could be huge. That seems the most likely considering the kind of money in play. But who precisely? And if it's not this, what else ?
I doubt it occurred to him because it's unrealistic as an explanation for a click flood. Online advertising just isn't that effective.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Disabling Javascript doesn't eliminate FB ads. Try it. Turn off Javascript for all sites, clear cache, and load www.facebook.com.
I see ads, clickable ads that reach their destination. Looking at the page in the developer tools, there's no JS being executed (pause does nothing), and neither the Scripts nor the Resources tabs reveal anything resembling a script.
Further, all the ads link through the same base URI, what is likely a FB redirector script: https://www.facebook.com/ajax/emu/end.php. I've written ad software for websites that doesn't use a bit of JS, and it appears that FB is capable of doing the same.
Reenabling JS shows the ads have both the base URI AND a mousedown handler with function reference of a similar name: a.emuEvent1.fbEmuLink.image.fbEmuImage
Finally, advertisers and the agencies that put their ads on FB don't have to rely on FB for click metrics, it's normal practice to redirect through a third-party agency that counts ad clicks.
It's possible that this company didn't understand the incoming requests. I'd love to see their analysis of User-Agent signatures and client IP addresses.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
No, just that 80% of Facebook users fail the Turing test.
The remaining 20% ate the test.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I always considered goatse, tubgirl and lemonparty to be some kind of initiation rite. Once you learned NOT to click on any link presented (or to deal with the consequences) you were considered a member of the internet and not just a tourist anymore.