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Fraud Bots Cost Advertisers $6 Billion
Rambo Tribble writes A new report claims that almost a quarter of the "clicks" registered by digital advertisements are, in fact, from robots created by cyber crime networks to siphon off advertising dollars. The scale and sophistication of the attacks which were discovered caught the investigators by surprise. As one said, "What no one was anticipating is that the bots are extremely effective of looking like a high value consumer."
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That's because a "high value customer" doesn't behave much different than a bot. Sadly, it's not the other way around.
So in order for a website to remain free for the users use, they will need to post more advertisements to make up for it.
If you don't like advertising on you favorite site. Then you better find them a business model where they can keep running (as it isn't free for them) and feed their family's. Otherwise just suck it up as the cost of having free access to their data.
If they can't 'feed their families' on the income of their website, and they don't wan't to add a subscription tier to the site, maybe they should get actual jobs.
It's not my job to find their business model. If no one wants to pay for their content then the have worthless content. People are not owed money just because they put up a website.
>If you don't like advertising on you favorite site. Then you better find them a business model where they can keep running (as it isn't free for them) and feed their family's.
>Otherwise just suck it up as the cost of having free access to their data.
Oh hay look, the old "if you don't like ads and block them you're stealing from the mouths of the children" argument.
It would be fine if I could trust the ad networks to not serve up malware, but even my own favorite sites have hosted malware from their ad networks from time to time.
Blocking ads is a much more of a security issue more than a convenience issue.
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BMO
They could just host the ads first party based on CPM statistics like a god damn newspaper, but then they would have to do actual work instead of plugging in some 3rd party malware laden ad engine.
Trouble with that is it'd still require a means by which to know from where the consumer came from, and that could get problematic if the consumer came in several times from different sites before finally purchasing. Who gets credit and who gets credited for the assist? How do you subdivide that? What if the customer clears their browser history? How long does the retailer need to store referrer information in order to be fair to those sites advertising?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A thousand times this.
I would much rather have 99% of the web disappear than have it continue in its current state (ads everywhere, selling my info, letting advertisers control content, forcing me to watch an ad and type "I LOVE MCDONALDS" before showing me content, etc.).
The vast majority of content is worthless. Not just to me but to the vast majority of people.
Costs are going DOWN, and have been for ages. If you want to run a blog without ads under your own hosting account, that will cost you less than nearly any other hobby you could think of, even if your blog features adorable corgis that have gone viral. If you want to post videos of yourself playing video games you'll have an upfront cost of capture equipment, a webcam, and maybe some editing software. The PC, consoles, games, and ISP bill were shit you would be paying for regardless.
The majority of "content producers" on the web have little to no cost and produce little to no original content, let alone worthwhile content. Even for the subset of content I personally enjoy, I recognize that it is worthless - I would not pay a single cent to access it. If it were paywalled I would simply go without it. Serving ads alongside content makes me enjoy the content less, so I block those ads. If you fight against this, your content becomes less enjoyable.
TL;DR: The web would be better without ads, even if the majority of ad-supported content became paywalled or disappeared (as determined by what viewers feel is worthy of their $). The vast majority of content on the web is produced at little to no cost anyway. If you want your web content to be your job, then charge for it. If you want it to be your hobby, then pay for it as you would any other hobby.
Advertisements do not pay for the internet.
The net existed long before advertisers got a hold of it and ruined it. Advertisers are not sponsoring the net there just cashing in on its popularity. The article calls the bots "a criminal network." it should call them heroes of the fucking universe.