Wow, even if this is a little true the implications are big.
Is this similar, or related to other ad space inflation? I'm reminded of Google (and others)(1) sending out free $75 adwords coupons to easily allow the costs of bids to inflate since it's not my own real money (thereby increasing the percentage of real cash being made on the ads)?
How come, everytime some company does (or seems to be doing) something shady, there is always a bunch of people like this saying "not as bad as Y doing something else that might or might not be true or related". This is not middle school anymore, pointing the finger at other kids is not proper discussion ...
If genuinely curious: I'm drawing a direct comparison of the potential inflation of ad costs in one playground (google) with another (facebook) through both common and unique means. Another common issue to both is click fraud and it's effects on the said cost of ads. My mistake for assuming this was obvious and known.
The relevance of such a comparison? It's not a one off, as uncommon as we think. Has nothing to do with pointing fingers.
Didn't mean to come across as off topic. To me, if someone upstream and in the past was doing this, chances are it might happen later in time downstream too, and there might be something to see in the forest instead of pointing at one tree or another.
Unless you're buying ads for popular affiliate stuff, handing new AdWord users $75 in credit doesn't have much of an effect (other than some percentage of those users going on to spend real money). I have gotten similar offers from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and a lot of othe advertising companies.
Yeah, lots send it out, but how many end up using them is relative to how big of a player in search (and search related advertising) the player is.
I've used Google coupons, none with anyone else that I can remember. I also spent ads on google way before any other system and remember the 10 cent clicks going up to $1.00 for not much more traffic.
Is this similar, or related to other ad space inflation? I'm reminded of Google (and others)(1) sending out free $75 adwords coupons to easily allow the costs of bids to inflate since it's not my own real money (thereby increasing the percentage of real cash being made on the ads)?
(1)Edited and clarified