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High Speed Click Fraud: Over One Third Of All Internet "Traffic" Is Fake
"When you bundle bots, clicks fraud, viewability and the lack of transparency [in automated ad buying], the total digital-media value equation is being questioned and totally challenged," warns one advertising group executive as the WSJ reports about 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and programmed to visit sites. This means, simply put, that marketers, who are pouring billion of dollars into online advertising, are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud... and the fraud is only going to get worse...
Spending on digital advertising—which includes social media and mobile devices—is expected to rise nearly 17% to $50 billion in the U.S. this year. That would be about 28% of total U.S. ad spending. Just five years ago, digital accounted for 16%.
The big question is whether attitudes will change if signs of fraud increase.
Billions of dollars are flowing into online advertising. But marketers also are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud.
About 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and programmed to visit sites, according to estimates cited recently by the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group.
So-called bot traffic cheats advertisers because marketers typically pay for ads whenever they are loaded in response to users visiting Web pages—regardless of whether the users are actual people.
The fraudsters erect sites with phony traffic and collect payments from advertisers through the middlemen who aggregate space across many sites and resell the space for most Web publishers. The identities of the fraudsters are murky, and they often operate from far-flung places such as Eastern Europe, security experts say.
Big advertisers are in "crisis"
Chief Executive Vivek Shah, the chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, said at the group's annual conference last month that Internet advertising was facing a "crisis."
...
"The clients we work with would love to spend more money in digital," says Quentin George, a co-founder of ad-technology consulting firm Unbound. "But until we give them more control and transparency on how the money is being spent, they will continue to have questions and hold money back."
...
"We're aware of the concerns within the industry about ad fraud and are working to address those concerns as they pertain to our business," a GM spokeswoman says.
One wonders just how "valuable" all those social media companies really are if the bots and fraud was removed? This isn't the first time we have discussed this, but it seems even the advertisers are now doubting the new word order of "social" and "mobile" as the panacea for ad spend.
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please tell me this meaNS WE WILL SEE LeSS ADVERTISING AND LESS pop ups and adds running down the sides of every page
You'll see more and more no doubt. It is funny to see this industry explode on a foundation of provable fraud - which is not only known by the likes of facebook et al, but encouraged by them.
Yes, you will see more ads ... just ask Tyler about it :)
Adblock Plus extension for Chrome browser. Currently blocking 13 ads on Zero Hedge. It blocks over 200 (!!!) ads on Youtube. Free. Check it out.
adblock blocks out the whole of facebook
Dunno if it's been posted here yet, but check out the twitter user exmediaman for more expose of fraud in new media. (Pro tip: To use twitter, it helps if you can type and hold your nose at the same time.)
We get people all the time wanting to advertize for us on the web and they all want us to pay per click. Having grown up with computers, I knew all along how easy it is to scam such a system and we eventually found one offering a pay-per-call system.
Much easier to tell if/when they're bullshitting you this way...
On windows, run notepad as administrator. With notepad, open c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
Edit hosts to add to the list:
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
Chrome browser is a g()()gle product so, hell no. Adblock on Firefox works double plus good.
Comodo Dragon (which I use) and Iron browser are Chrome clones with all the spyware cut out. Just change the DNS servers (IMPORTANT!) and you are out of the Google spy system. A tunneling encrypted internet connection helps too. See ZenMate extension.
With adblock+, ghostery,etc., I haven't been able to use any iteration
of Firefox in a long, long time - it is astonishingly slow.
This is a common, well-known problem running adblock+ w/ Firefox.
Does anyone know if there's a way to resolve it?
Thanks.
Perfect.......this will end well
Support Tyler - click on banksta ads
This is a fake comment
Everything you cannot touch or hold is fake. Oxygen, hydrogen, helium, ozone, atoms, electrons. It's all fake.
This has been well established by the ZH community.
I wouldn't say it's fake but it is easier to lose; See bitcoins "contained" at Mt Glox or radiation "contained" at Fukijima or German gold held in US vaults.
fonestar has never lost a Bitcoin he didn't like.
Why do you always write in the 3rd person?
" GEORGE LIKES SPICY CHICKEN"
Strawman 101. Right there.
fonestar can play simplistic literalist too you see.
very clever. Topical yet still artificial.
You should consider going public.
Download adblock extension, it will change your entire internet experience.
All I know is, I've pretty much alsways had an up to date phone and over the years have never...ever clicked on an Ad. Either the advertisors are idiots or the Agencies have the greatest sales ppl
Reverse it. 1/3 ISN'T Fraud. Fixed it.
Long ChicksWithClicks.com !
Online advertising fraud? Let me Google that...
Sure. Next thing they'll tell us is that companies track our web traffic in order to spam us.
hell if you remove the fraud the entire stock market has no value
I'd hazzard to guess that if fraud, in all things was non existent / eliminated, world GDP would probably be half of what they claim it is.
No surprise. I've used Google ads for my business and swear it was bogus. Plus, how do you prove or disprove it? You have to take their word on it how many people clicked on your ad.
I tried it and came to the same conclusions.
I asked Google how they kept your ad competitors from using up your daily click allotment with phony clicks and never got a response.
GoogleAnalytics states 1,000 clicks costs $5 and should result in 87 sales.
*I made that up but it can't possibly be any more ridiculous than what they really claim.
ClickFraud.com, bitchez!
You need to discriminate between display and search network when you make an assertion like this about Google or Bing. Apples and oranges. The first step to creating a new campaign is to turn off the display network. There's motivation for click-fraud in programs like adsense but the only motivation in google or bing search might be to deplete your competitor's ad budget.
In 2002, or maybe 2003, I helped a company signup for the new AdWords thing. They stopped it after just over a month.
Their product was in a very unknown, at the time niche, and yet they had to bid over $3.84 per click or something. They extrapolated their costs and determined that it would be better to spend the budget on "standard" methods locally and expand and move it from city to city.
They are now a very successful national company.
I talked to one guy a while back while waiting for a flight, and he said that not only does it not work, and is vulnerable to fraud, but "you don't even get brand recognition" because of the ad display limitations.
He said that he had his Web developer, an AdWords supporter, created a duplicate of Adwords with his product along with competing products "advertised." He then put those on his reasonably well trafficked industry/product related blog site. Result: Nada! Not one click he said on any of the ads.
My conclusion, after about 12 years of watching is that the whole thing is a fraud. And I would say, based on other knowledge, a scam run by and for the intelligence communities.
""Can I get an AdWord on 'guillotine?'"
Not to mention that 99.9% of people resent internet ads, and it most likely leads to resentment, rather than interest, for/in the product/brand.
"The big question is whether attitudes will change if signs of fraud increase." The FED has done the same thing over the last several years. Have attitudes changed? No. There is your answer.......
Does Shah and the rest of the idiots at the Interactive Advertising Bureau actually think people visit Facebook to look at advertising?
Related: Bob Cringely fired this volley at Zuckerbergerstein today about DeepFace:
How are you supposedly fighting the NSA and moving invasive data mining forward in leaps and bounds simultaneously, Zuck? I'm going to write my own app and call it DeepCheeks, and I'll give you one guess what that'll let you recognize with 97 percent accuracy.
The ad situation is worse on mobile devices than desktops. This business model is broken.
I wonder how much traffic is NSA mandates?
It wouldn't surprise me if all those "daily updates" aren't uploads of my privacy.
I just ordered a t-shirt from the NSA store that reads "Who just let loose a Stellar Wind?"
Showing hits for the last 24 hours:
-Everything
-Spam
-No spam
-Spider
-No spider
-No spam, no spider *
-Users logged in
-Referrer from search engine
-Referrer from ext link
I had a business that went into this "social media" realm.
My advice. If you want "a Like" - get a dog.
It's all a boondoggle to otherwise "sell" to addle-minded consumer pods that are already in debt.
The valuations on these companies is ridiculous - worst than the original tech bubble of the late 90's.
And what about mistakes on touchscreens. I've clicked through on plenty of ads (always without intent) by accident while trying to navigate the web on a mobile device. I'd say that accounts for another 1/3. Maybe the final third is legit but somehow I bet it's a lot less than that.
Same here, all the pop-ups I get on Zerohedge are one of two things: 1. Mistakes made by me a long time ago, but the spambot still thinks I really do want to see their top 10 dating sites or whatever, 2. On my home machine, things the kids clicked on. But keep trying boys, hey someday 30 years from now I might even buy something.
I guess the Faceplant algos didn't like that article too much.
FB stock quote - Facebook, Inc. stock price - NASDAQ.com
Monkey...want...banana.
Including ZH hits? ;-) ;-)
FraudBook down 5% today. Queue up the buy orders! It's on sale!
I think it would be great if everyone devoted an hour a day to just clicking ads.
67% of all postings on chat boards are fake.
the other 33% are idiotic.
LOL, these companies are gettiong raped by the likes of facebook.
The bot clicked on the camel toe. It wasn't me.
CPC revenue for publishers is shit.
CPC costs for advertisers are extortionate.
Google/facebook makes BILLIONS brokering this scam.
All good here. ONWARD!!!!!
A good number of whom are also running scams. So, let’s call it a scam within a scam within a scam; or if you prefer something more classical, a play within a play within a play.
Yea, I’m going to click on that for sure.
Online advertising works for companies which can measure the ROI directly, e.g. if you use Google AdWords to advertise a product, and customers click-through to buy online. If it pays off, great, otherwise you stop the ad spend. The worst are big F2000 companies with huge advertising budgets who allocate X% on online advertising for 'brand' compaigns, e.g. Coca Cola. I think Coca Cola's superbowl commericals probably had more impact than all of its online ad spend.
tv, every one clicks new channel when adds hit, or dvr and forward thru them, nobody reads news papers ads s who clicks on internet ads? not me...ad agency revenue should be at historic lows, Oh I know roadside bill boards is were it;s at, hard to see them while driving and texting tho..LOL suckers who pay for adds in these mediums are just that suckers.
does this include facebook? I hate that fucking site and can glady say i've never joined or looked at it.
super bowl ads you say, oh right about when they hit, I need to go to the john, or get more finger food and a drink, miss most of em, can't say I remember any I saw, heck the game was between who again?
People: Facebook and Twitter are completely overvalued, yes. However, little to none of their traffic is fake. The 33% is coming from bad exchanges like Appnexus that offer little fraud prevention and sell inventory for sites like jfdshbkejbn.com or sites that illegally stream movies and TV. Ever see 10 ads on top of one another? That's fraud. You know it's fake when sites like jhasdbjhqb.com get more traffic than ZH for instance (70k monthly uniques in Canada according to ComScore)...Kinda like shadow banking only for advertising. Don't use this as fuel for tech overvaluations though because, the big sites aren't guilty of the above mentioned fraud: it's a non-sequitur.
-thanks, management
"the big sites aren't guilty of the above mentioned fraud"
And the Fed is looking after the little guys.
Haha, I was careful with my words for a reason. I said "above mentioned fraud." I'm not in a position to rule out fraud altogether but, this article stems from what the head of the IAB said a few weeks ago and in regards to that fraud: the social sites are not guilty and Google is an industry leader in its prevention. That's not to say other fraud doesn't happen though.
This is supposed to be feckin' news ? At least 33% is fake , more like 66%. Social media stawks are 66% overvalued. Google is a criminl enterprise, Facebook 's Zuckerberg should be jailed.
In the future there will be more web porn. And it will be stuff you couldn't do if you get a professional trainer and practice like you had Olympic sponsorship... but don't give up.
1/3 of zh members are fake
ZH "fake" members are 10* more intellegent than the "fake" members on Facebook and linked in.
ZH "fake" members are actually more entertaining.
This is great news as I can get my wife to stop badgering me about work and other useless shit I've been doing!
FALSE! YOUTUBE CENSORS STUFF and cites "copyright infringement". The Rolling Stones are the only "artists" evil enough to know how to inflict pain with this but the net is evil to use YOUTUBE to CENSOR and HIDE stuff that it doesn't like. Youtube doesn't count clicks legitimately on things they don't like.
FALSE!!! People get paid a dollar to click "like". FALSE: rarely do I watch anything over 3 minutes is due to America's crappy Comcast bandwidth.Google and the government pays them too! THEY ONLY PROMOTE VIDEOS THAT PAYS THEM TO AND GOES ALONG WITH THE POLITICRAT PROPOGANDA GARBAGE. If this was true, Youtube owes me a ton of money plus interest.
"http://www.zenithoptimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ZO2014TopTenTr...
Facebook just blocked me.
Youtube has already hidden my "views" in the same way that Hollywood hides "profits" to avoid paying me.
Hotmail just locked the account that my craigslist account is linked to.
But my adblock works!
You need to grab your bugout bag and leave the house immediately. Proceed to the safe house and locate the gym bag under the credenza. Shelter in place for a week or so. There's beer in the fridge and a bag of Doritos under the counter. Good luck man.
What percentage of Internet traffic is NSA hacking and spyware?
> 50%
I am truly astonished that anybody would ever have assumed that the majority of internet traffic wasn't fake.
The greatest con that Madison Avenue ever pulled off was convincing the world that advertising is actually worth a shit, and they seem to have fooled themselves worst of all.
LOL, i have never clicked on an ad on purpose (but have been 'tricked to) EVER!!!
so in my world Google ad clicks are 100% click fraud.
So 1/3rd of traffic is fake, 40% is netflix, 90% is porn, and the NSA is tracking all of it. I guess that means it's past due time to go long internet providers and fiberoptic cable.
Cue Google to tell us (once again) that they have it pretty well under control, so that their Adsense only bills the advertizers for real clicks...
Soon the 'net will be just like the financial markets, with algorithmic 'trading': a bunch of nodes trading Likes, Clicks and Tweets back and forth, on fake FaceBook, Google, and Twitter accounts.
Humans will continue to use the 'net for porn, video games, and streaming media.
FACEBOOOK IS BY FAR THE WORST OFFENDER -THEY DONT ALLOW CLICK AUDITS
NEVER - NEVER - NEVER - BUY AN ONLINE AD CAMPAIGN THAT IS BASED A PAY PER CLICK MODEL
Please click on me, I'll teach you how to be a thousandaire, all you need to do is click on my name.
Pay for by google ads.