
Without fraud, the digital media business would collapse - inteleng
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/corey-pein-live-work-work-work-die-excerpt-on-web-fraud.html
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cs702
Key quotes:

"The mechanics of the fraud are complex and technical, but it boils down to
this: Companies that place online ads think they are paying based on how many
potential customers will see their messages, but the ads are ineffective in
actually reaching consumers. Companies in fact frequently pay for ads that are
'seen' only by automated computer programs known as bots, or by low-wage
workers toiling in offshore 'click farms.' The bots and click-serfs drive up
costs for advertisers by faking 'impressions' on their online campaigns —
meaning that any time an ad is recorded as being seen or clicked on, Google,
Facebook, or whoever sold the ad charges the client."

and

"While everyone at the conference was eager to talk about fraud, few were
willing to discuss its implications. That's because the profits from fraud
widely benefit both of Ad:Tech’s namesake industries. If online ad fraud is as
prevalent as I heard at Ad:Tech, it follows that the overall revenues of the
dominant ad-based internet companies — chiefly Google and Facebook — are
significantly inflated by bogus transactions. And that’s a big deal for the
stock markets as a whole."

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asfasgasg
This person has to be familiar with the concept of "cost of doing business,"
but I guess they just haven't made the logical extension to this domain.

Everyone knows there is some amount of fraud. Advertisers price it into their
bids. AdTech companies work relentlessly to fight it. Who actually loses is
very unclear, and may not be a static fact (i.e. it may depend on what given
moment in history you're observing from, or even what subdomain of advertising
you're working on). Depending on elasticity, it may be the customers, it may
be the adtech companies, or it may be legit inventory suppliers.

Without fraud, the digital media business would _most certainly_ not collapse.
Impressions would become more valuable roughly in proportion to the fraction
of impressions that are currently fraud. Everyone would be better off, with
the exception of the fraudsters. If digital media would be crushed by the lack
of fraud, I can guarantee you that the folks in the industry would not be
working so hard to prevent it.

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carbonatedmilk
I've often wondered why I can't set my campaigns to, e.g. "Only show this ad
to people who have bought something from some vaguely legit website in the
last 2 years" You can assume that any impressions you were going to get from
the people this excluded are pretty low quality anyway.

Ad Tech folks: Why doesn't this already exist?

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AlphaWeaver
This article was written with an interesting tone; I had a difficult time
following it when the author made it seem like he was falling victim for the
pop-up scams mentioned.

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ThJ
It had the ironic tone of a causerie, a genre that for some bizarre reason
isn't well-known in the English-speaking world.

~~~
inteleng
Americans often find themselves overwhelmed and put into moral distress by
causeries, unfortunately.

