Comment by rybosworld
7 hours ago
I've suspected that google has been turning a blind eye to ad fraud for a few years now. In the early-mid 2010's, ad fraud wasn't nearly as common.
And it's absolutely not the case that google can't detect ad fraud - in fact they are VERY good at detecting it when they want to.
You had huge click farms back in the days.
Today the fraud is perhaps more obvious. YT has served me the same 20 min ad 200+ times over the last few weeks. I let the entire thing play 10 times and 50 times didn't press skip for the first minute (or the view doesn't count) It's so annoying Ive reduced video watching by 80-90%
The idea they have someone pay for this in the hope I will buy the product?
Or do people really intentionally run campaigns like that?
These bug me so much. Those 20+ minute ads do nothing but piss me off. I have to grab the remote or switch tabs or whatever to get past them. To the point where I'm on the verge of adding YT to the permanent block list along with Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.
Serious question: Do you watch a lot of YouTube? Why not just cough up the $16 for YouTube Premium? Creators actually do get paid more for Premium users' views than they do from adsense. You get to see none of these ads that piss you off.
Look, I run UBlock Origin myself. But that's because there's zero other way to look at any Web content without going insane with videos and other garbage popping all over the place, and even when sites have memberships, I use too many distinct ones anyway, and the memberships may not remove the ads and junk.
But when it comes to sites like YouTube that let me choose between "ads" and "non-ads" experiences... I guess I'm just saying I see a ton of ROI on the $16.
4 replies →
Is this a typo? 20 min ad?! I don’t use YouTube.
Sometimes they put one at the start then again 1.5 min into a video and again around 4 minutes. If I don't skip them I may not even remember what the video was about.
I’ve seen the intro to an audiobook be used as an ad.
Those work. You'll remember that brand if you ever need that product.
Well… I’ll remember that I never want to give Liberty Mutual a single dollar.
I was never going to give any of the woo-woo secret health nonsense any money, though.
I could call them, tell them I see their ad, ask questions then call again and again and again and again. I just read one may call a company as often as one wants.
> It's so annoying Ive reduced video watching by 80-90%
This is the opposite of resourcefulness - unless the videos were a distraction, not a real goal of yours.
PS Genuine question: where is the fraud in a 20 minute ad?
Steve Balmer explaining his take on how local governments of the US work was a hilarious ad offering on my non-adblocked device the other day - I’m struggling to see vectors for fraud.
I couldn't imagine someone running campaign like that intentionally but it's apparently cheap to do so. 20 minutes of my time is apparently worth 3 cent. Those 5 hours watching the same ad again and again probably cost the spammer 2 euro.
It's not fraud, more like a cheap ass dystopia. It's some how worse than HP and MS combined.
> ..unless the videos were a distraction, not a real goal of yours.
You are not wrong but all work and no play... I will seek entertainment elsewhere. My apologies in advance HN :-)