1154
Wanna buy a(nother) humidifier? (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/tumblr@lemmy.world
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[–] 39 points 8 months ago (20 children)

After reading an article about ad metrics I realized this is ad fraud.

What is going on is a business buys ads and pays one rate for ads shown but pays a higher rate if the ads resulted in a conversion (a sale). But the ad contracts are monthly or longer. So a business buys ads for their product and the ad company after noticing you bought it, stuffs your feeds with ads for what you just bought so they can bill those ads at the higher conversion rate.

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago

    It's just lies and deceit all the way down it seems... Every corner of almost every aspect of our lives, these kind of things keep cropping up. Kinda makes me feel like there might be an underlying reason to it all... Hmm....

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (16 children)

    But that doesn't make sense. The way they know it's a conversion is the ad url you click on tracks you through the purchase process.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (15 children)

    Yes but ads shown that result in a conversion are paid higher than ones that don't. If you pay for 1000 ads in a month and it results in a conversion you pay more for those all ads in the block because you got that conversion. You don't pay just for the one ad that resulted in a sale. You say "I only got one sale." They say, "It was those 999 ads that the consumer saw that generated the sale."

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    Right, but to know the ad resulted in a conversation the customer would need to click on the ad before purchasing. Showing you the ad after you bought the product without clicking on an ad wouldn't count.

    A company isn't going to pay more without the platform providing evidence that the conversion happened on their platform. If a company runs ads on Google, Instagram, and TikTok, Google can't just claim that every sale was because of ads on their platform.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (13 children)

    A company isn’t going to pay more without the platform providing evidence that the conversion happened on their platform.

    The proof is the sale. What isn't shared is exactly which ads ran when because they purchased a block.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    How is there proof of a sale due to an ad on a platform if the customer never interacted with the ad?

    I can guarantee you that no one is going to sign an advertisement contract if they have to pay more solely because the company sold something within that timeframe.

    The platform they advertise on is the one tracking the customer through the purchase, but that can't happen if the customer buys a product before they're shown an ad.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    You vastly overestimate the nuance in ad spend.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    No I don't. I'm saying that a company isn't going to pay an advertising platform more money just because.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    the problem is that you're assuming rationality and competence, which in many many many cases just isn't there.
    Especially with smaller companies it's incredibly common for the decision-makers to simply be dumb and make terrible decisions on a daily basis, like how mom&pop stores will prioritize the 4 people who show up in a car over the 20 people who want to bike to the store.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I think you overestimate how much time the companies buying ads spend on analyzing the data, or if they even get that data.

    The company selling the ad also doesn't have much interest in transparent reporting.

    The end result is that neither the company selling the ads or the company buying the ads have any interest in the ads. They both only care about their own sales numbers. Fuck the consumers, fuck the product, fuck the ads. Only sales.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (6 children)

    I can guarantee you that no one is going to sign an advertisement contract if they have to pay more solely because the company sold something within that timeframe.

    I used to spend a million a year on TV ads without ever knowing if I got a sale from those ads.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    And did you have to pay extra just because you made a sale in the time span the ad was running?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (4 children)

    If they sold a package "X ads for X dollars depending on proof of conversion." it might have been something I signed up for. Realistically if they could have done it, they wouldn't have offered any other option.

    "Do you want to run ads? This is our package. You pay $X and if you get sales from those ads you pay $X + $Y because we proved the ads made you money. Take it or leave it. We own 85% of the ad market."

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    You pay $X and if you get sales from those ads you pay $X + $Y because we proved the ads made you money.

    That's the problem. In your original scenario the advertising platform isn't proving ads resulted in sales. They're showing the ads after the sale occurs.

    You said the company would be self-reporting their sales to the advertiser so that they'd have to pay the advertiser more money. But companies often run ad campaigns on multiple platforms and even multiple campaigns on one platform. They're not going to pay extra multiple times to multiple companies because they made a single sale.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    They’re not going to pay extra multiple times to multiple companies because they made a single sale.

    The premise is that the package is ads that resulted in a conversion are paid higher. It's not an individual ad that creates a conversion is singularly billed higher. It's an ad package where a conversion happened, therefore a higher price for that entire package.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    But you can't know a conversion happened due to a specific ad package unless the customer interacts with an ad from that package.

    And platforms can definitely give you detailed enough metrics to know how many conversions happened due to customers interacted with your ads. It's part of what tracking cookies are for.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    And platforms can definitely give you detailed enough metrics to know how many conversions happened due to customers interacted with your ads

    Yes that you got a sale and they proved it is why you had to pay more. Every ad doesn't cause a conversion. But the more ads show can cause more conversions.

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