
Quantifying Online Advertising Fraud: Ad-Click Bots vs Humans [pdf] - McKittrick
http://oxford-biochron.com/downloads/OxfordBioChron_Quantifying-Online-Advertising-Fraud_Report.pdf
======
justhw
For some reason, I guess because domain had the word "Oxford" and the file was
PDF, I thought it was a pure academia publication, but apparently it's from a
company that's selling bot fraud software [http://oxford-
biochron.com/](http://oxford-biochron.com/)

~~~
rahimnathwani
How to get more credibility for blog posts:

\- s/tldr/Abstract

\- Use LaTeX, and convert to PDF

------
hayksaakian
I know this is anecdotal but i don't find their findings to be true in
practice -- at least as far as facebook.

If facebook tells me I got 180 clicks, my javascript detects 100 page views,
and 45 people fill out my form, then I know at least 25% of those clicks were
real people, or bot sophisticated and motivated enough to actually continue
through filling out a form on the destination page.

There is certainly click fraud on every platform -- clicks that only
facebook/linkedin/google report, but never appear on server logs.

I'd be interested in knowing what your personal experience has been, I know
there are many people on hacker news who've advertised something in the past.

~~~
fchollet
The large majority of bots nowadays use Javascript, and are almost
indistinguishable from humans if you don't look at their activity over time.

Filling a form with coherent content is a reasonable proof of humaneness, but
only if you're looking at bots that weren't designed for handling that type of
landing page.

~~~
hayksaakian
That's what I wonder about.

Someone could write a facebook ad that links to a captcha test, and then post
results.

That would provide some useful results...

I should also mention that my targeting is news feed exclusive. In the past
I've used sidebar ads, but their results are garbage compared to news feed
ads.

------
tdaltonc
A little bit of LaTeX can bring a lot of authenticity to what is basically a
corporate blog post. How about some of the actual data used to make this
claim?

------
FallDead
[http://oxford-biochron.com/who-we-are/](http://oxford-biochron.com/who-we-
are/) Conflict of interest much ? writes a paper saying they did research on
this.....

~~~
mixologic
Actually, thats really awesome. I've been researching maxmind, threat-metrix,
and neustars offerings to protect a large site that gets targeted with a lot
of spam. Threat-metrix and neustar are both too expensive, and maxmind didnt
really work all that well.

This paper basically touched on everything I wished for in a bot detecting
product, at a price that seems totally reasonable.

------
etrain
The authors are selling a product to detect click bots. Take the results with
a grain of salt..

------
digitalneal
With all those 5 bucks for 1000 page likes companies, there are a ton of
people who are just paid to click like on things. Its not bots, its humans
from places that are not the US. These humans, to avoid detection just click
on random things to like in the US just to make it less obvious when they are
paid to click like on things.

------
aslewofmice
The problem with display advertising is that too much of the industry is
focused on clicks. Anti-fraud companies can come up with ways to try to
mitigate click fraud but it won't do much of anything as they can, and will
be, gamed by black hats - there's too much money at stake.

I deal with it every day and the best method is to educate the client by
explaining why a click is a poor indicator of performance. Work with the
client to come up with measurable goals to track click-through/view-through
conversions on these goals and ultimately try to measure impact on ROI. It's
really not THAT difficult for most campaigns.

The most difficult part is that the client becomes aware of all those wasted
dollars on previous campaigns that they thought were high performance because
of a high CTR.

~~~
jackgavigan
Aren't most advertising campaigns focused on acquisitions these days?

~~~
blumkvist
No, and they are not focused on clicks either. The majority of the adspend*
cares about impressions, viewability and lift.

*display adspend

~~~
aslewofmice
> Aren't most advertising campaigns focused on acquisitions these days?

Nope, much of it is branding. Some are focused on clicks, some are focused on
viewability... it's sort of a turning point in the industry...

> No, and they are not focused on clicks either. The majority of the adspend*
> cares about impressions, viewability and lift. *display adspend

Most or not, it's still a significant amount. The clients you mention may be
more concerned with impressions/viewability/lift, but they're still vulnerable
to be gamed the same way as someone who cares about clicks. Viewability is
already being manipulated by the same bots that generate fraudulent clicks.
It's a great metric in theory, but take it with a grain of salt.

If anything, these companies (Moat, IAS, Oxford...) are the ones who should be
most concerned about combating bots.

~~~
blumkvist
> The clients you mention may be more concerned with
> impressions/viewability/lift, but they're still vulnerable to be gamed the
> same way as someone who cares about clicks.

No arguing there. I was just pointing out facts to the previous comenters.

I don't know about the turning point tho...

------
xenator
Looks like snake oil sellers push their marketing b###t with scientific sauce.
Recent report from ComScore [http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Ad-Fraud-
and-NonHuman-...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Ad-Fraud-and-NonHuman-
Traffic-How-Rampant-is-the-Problem) have absolutely different numbers.

------
jackgavigan
Most click-fraud is carried out by setting up plausible-looking websites,
signing them up to ad networks, and then clicking on the adverts that are
served up on those sites.

There's nothing in this article about what kind of sites the adverts were
being served on, which is a fairly glaring omission.

------
colinbartlett
This document looks official, and replicates the format of a proper scientific
paper. But it's extremely short, offers almost zero details about their
"analysis" and produces dramatic conclusions that further the business goals
of the authors.

I personally would not trust this at all.

------
splike
Could someone fill me in on the business model of these click farms? How do
they profit from clicking other people's ads?

I'm sure it will be perfectly obvious in hindsight.

~~~
x0x0
they also own some of the sites on which ads are clicked

~~~
splike
I don't believe that Facebook and Google are clicking their own ads

------
gress
I wonder what Google's internal research shows. Are they themselves not
committing fraud by failing to publicize this to their customers?

~~~
birken
Google has massive teams that are devoted to detecting click fraud and getting
rid of it. They _really really want_ to detect and remove click fraud.

If I'm selling a product that makes $50 profit, all I care about is how much I
have to pay to get a conversion. If it takes 100 clicks for a conversion at
$0.50 per click, that is same ROI as 50 clicks for a conversion at $1 per
click. So if half the clicks are from bots, I'm just going to bid half as
much. Maybe in the short term I'm not going to, but certainly I will adjust in
the long term.

Which of course is _not_ what Google wants. Google doesn't want to make money
at the expense of creating long term customers. Google wants the conversion
rates on their platform to be better than the conversion rates on other
platforms, which is directly comparable at the customer end.

So by detecting and controlling click fraud, Google gets higher CPCs (which
they like), their platform has higher user end conversion rates (which they
like), it builds trust and consistency in their platform (which they like),
and in the long term they don't even lose money because CPCs will just adjust
upwards as fraud goes down.

~~~
gress
I don't dispute that it is in Google's interest to reduce click-fraud, but it
is also in their interest to reduce the appearance of click-fraud too!

------
jacobsimon
This is disturbing to say the least.

------
beaknit
Don't tell Facebook

------
jimjohn2323
uhh, the first point references wikipedia... I'm not sure if I trust the
authors

~~~
rob_lh
Unless this some academic joke flying over my head, the author's contact info
is listed as "firstname.lastname@oxford-biochron.com". This report seems
hastily thrown together, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate the results.
It'd be interesting to see others run it or comment from Google.

~~~
mhlakhani
That's commonly done in a bunch of academic papers where authors are from the
same institution - saves space mostly

