
Google admit advertisers wasted their money on more than 50% of Internet ads - known
http://qz.com/307204/google-admits-that-advertisers-wasted-their-money-on-more-than-half-of-internet-ads/
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dane
"That uncertainty reached a new high this week, as Google announced that 56.1%
of ads served on the internet are never even “in view”—defined as being on
screen for one second or more. That’s a huge number of “impressions” that cost
money for advertisers, but are as pointless as a television playing to an
empty room."

I don't understand the issue here. Unless things have changed over the years,
the vast majority of Google advertisers would be paying "per click" (CPC)
rather than "per impression" (CPM). When I was advertising it was quite
difficult to pay on a "per impression" basis, and the offers to enable this
were after considerable data had been calculated using the "per click" method.
Switching to "per impression" was optional and appeared to average your
existing "per click" spend rather than some program to hide your underlying
click spend.

As a "per click" advertiser I don't care if my ad is only "in view" half the
time it's displayed. I care that a person is clicking and they intended to
click.

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zygotic12
Nothing new in the world:
[http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1992.html](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1992.html)

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kardos
And if they had a 100% delivery rate, they price would be (at least) twice as
high. So what's the difference?

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StefanKarpinski
That means that 50% of ads weren't a waste of money, which is a very good
return rate for ad spend.

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vannevar
The figure is closer to 43%, and no, it doesn't follow that those ads weren't
a waste of money. It only means that someone actually saw them. Google doesn't
have clean hands on this, because they take a cut regardless of whether their
advertisers are being defrauded, and they pay those who are committing the
fraud. In the past I think they've largely looked the other way and cashed the
checks. This admission is an indication that they realize they have to go
legit, which in the end is going to mean taking a big revenue hit down the
road.

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0x006A
But is that better or worse than lets say TV advertisement?

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_almosnow
I'd guess worse because there aren't much TV's playing to empty spaces.

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mhoad
Based on what exactly? Are you suggesting that people don't get up in
commercial breaks to go do something else, or that Tivo wasn't a huge thing
for this exact reason?

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M-S-B
This isn't a new story :D

