Startup Claims 80% Of Its Facebook Ad Clicks Are Coming From Bots

Oof, that might be a reason to short FB

Wouldn't surprise me.

check out the comments, seems to be a pretty widespread phenomenon

I can see it now, "Facebook sued by advertisers for use of computer algorithms to artificially increase clicks-per-user." Or something far more snappy than that....

I genuinely think Facebook is a great medium term short. The only way that company can make money is by increasing advertising revenue which came in at just over $1 per user in Q2. Unless they can a) get ads to work well on mobile without pissing off users and b) get more people clicking on adds, they will never make money.

$100bn valuation? Please.... At $25bn it might get interesting.

I fucking love this.

It's a great way of fucking up your competition and you can do it in your free time. Fake profiles are easy, I have one set up to see what data facebook mines off me.

I can readily believe a small group of people inside facebook found a way of earning off this, and decided to act on it to keep revenues up. I doubt it's a decision that came from the top, but like the criminal activity at the banks, when people are making it rain, noone asks how.

You really think that if this is happening inside facebook, the people at the top don't know? Come on dude, these are some smart people, of course they know how the sausage is made. It would be pretty hard not to know that up to EIGHTY PERCENT of your revenue stream from some customers -- a lot of customers judging by the website comments -- is not legit. Personally, I hope it is coming from fb and that comes to light -- would looooove to see that piece of shit implode even more and get sued by everyone.

Story picked up by forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhanlon/2012/08/01/is-fb-becoming-bs/

The issue of fraud traffic – and in particular bots – within the media buying business is staggering.

Experiences at UK tech start-up TrafficCake.com - http://www.trafficcake.com - showed even reputable ad-networks delivering 30%+ fraud traffic, whilst some of the smaller traffic sellers, particularly those targeting small affiliates and internet marketers unashamedly send 100% bot traffic. They continue to operate with impunity, often from territories beyond the grasp of authorities. When their website or Pay-Pal account is shut down they simply open up new identities.

Traffic buying needs to be more safe and transparent. Knowledge is important – traffic buyers need to know what steps they can take to protect themselves.

And don’t forget if 30%+ of all online marketing ad spend is fake – that’s a lot of money going missing from legitimate parts of our economy.