Share this page!

Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
Twitter logo
28 Feb, 5 tweets, 3 min read
@zsk the money-making does work for some influencers; and there are many aspiring influencers

but once they start to buy followers to make their influence look greater than it really is, the whole thing devolves (for them, the advertisers, and the users tricked into buying)
@zsk follower fraud has been happening since web 2.0

and now, it's fully automated by bots, managing vast quantities of fake accounts

nytimes.com/interactive/20…
@zsk Facebook has removed some 15 BILLION accounts (2X the humans on earth) in the last 3 yrs, and they are barely keeping up
forbes.com/sites/augustin…
@zsk look at the scale of fake accounts that can be created and maintained by botnets

@conspirator0 is a great researcher in this field
@zsk @conspirator0 fake accounts are also used for spreading/amplifying misinformation

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Augustine Fou, PhD

Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @acfou

Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
25 Feb
oh lovely, adtech works

in my 1 cent CPM experimental campaign, you can see the price paid to the publisher - around 0.8 cent CPMs

this 20% goes to 1 intermediary (the DSP); this is the shortest possible programmatic supply chain

data from #FouAnalytics
what do I get for 1 cent CPM ads?

oh goody, look at these devices/IP addresses loading my ad 100s of times, despite my having set freq cap of 1 (lifetime)
oh, and in the 28% of the impressions where "intersection" was measurable, the intersection was ZERO 65% of the time.

this means the ad did not intersection in any way with the viewport (the portion of the browser the user can see)
Read 6 tweets
Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
24 Feb
this is so hilarious, it's not even funny

bad guys don't have to run any ads or use any bots to make lots of money

they've already optimized this supremely. How?
they are flooding the networks with faked bid requests

imagine 1 million QPS (queries per second), all computational (minimal bandwidth used)
even if only 1% gets through (99% caught by some anti-fraud mechanism), that's 3 x 10^8 ads they get paid for (assumes 1 in 100 bid win)

and the good guys are left trying to figure out where the money went and how to get refunds for it, if it is even detected/caught
Read 6 tweets
Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
18 Feb
@RioLongacre @garicruze confirmed.

that is a great example -- basic "due diligence" is what is needed to see the fraud and do something about it

forbes.com/sites/augustin…
@RioLongacre @garicruze and confirmed, less than 50% of an advertiser's dollar goes to "working media" (showing digital ads) when they buy through the long, complex, and non-transparent programmatic supply chain

forbes.com/sites/augustin…
@RioLongacre @garicruze and that's not even taking into account how crappy targeting is (because it's all derived data)

forbes.com/sites/augustin…
Read 4 tweets
Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
16 Feb
Image
good publishers don't have a big bot problem; they've been consistently clean all along

forbes.com/sites/augustin… Image
+ @Chronotope @jarroddicker

as long as the publishers don't source traffic and use Taboola/Outbrain everywhere, they don't have a bot problem because fraud bots are practical - they go to sites that pay them for traffic

forbes.com/sites/augustin…
Read 4 tweets
Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
14 Feb
a short story, in 5 frames

1/5
2/5
3/5
Read 5 tweets
Augustine Fou, PhD Profile picture
12 Feb
I literally don't know what they are smoking to make this statement

“The trade in traffic hasn’t been eliminated, but it is substantially harder to buy fake traffic and it’s substantially more expensive to buy realistic-looking fake traffic that will actually get the buyer paid"
the article from @OSchiffey

adexchanger.com/adexchanger-ta…
anyone care to check, just google the words "buy traffic"

1.3 million results
google.com/search?q=%22bu… Image
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @acfou has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @acfou!

Read all threads by @acfou