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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."
Maybe because "high value consumers" are usually bot-like drooling idiots.
Table-ized A.I.
Where do I get one of these bots?
I don't want the money, I just want to make sure Madison Ave doesn't have it either.
Basically they host a website and sign up with Google or some other company to display ads. Google shares some of their revenue that they receive from the companies that pay to have their ads displayed. The people committing the fraud use scripts, bots, or some other automated program to fake visits to the site and clicks on the ads, which increases the amount of money the person running the site receives.
Imagine it as if were a company that would pay you if you filled out a survey about your interests and you handed them hundreds of fake surveys in order to get more money.
That's because a "high value customer" doesn't behave much different than a bot. Sadly, it's not the other way around.
Perhaps advertisers should finally move away from the current revenue system that pays per-click and should instead move towards a profit sharing system where the referring website receives a commission based on any sales or executed transactions.
I've been reading about click fraud for over a decade now. I don't expect it to go away under the current system.
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.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Seems like everyone in this article though it was a bad idea..but it looks like it does hurt them.
>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.
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.
The only ads I get that are truly targeted come AFTER I've bought something. I bought a freezer a few days ago. Now I get ads for fridges and freezers everywhere because I had looked up some reviews. Do these idiots really think I'm in the market for two freezers? Same thing happened with an engagement ring. I'm STILL getting targeted ads for jewelry even though they're almost a year late. I have made a point to visit a few high profile lingerie sites just so that my targeted ads for the next few months will feature scantily clad models. Just have to go to their homepage then close the tab.