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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.
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.
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
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.