10 ms·

Print can charge for ad placement, not impressions. But that's only possible because the number of subscribers, size and number of print runs, circulation are w

Print can charge for ad placement, not impressions. But that's only possible because the number of subscribers, size and number of print runs, circulation are well known and hard to fake stats. The web cannot do that without tracking...

kzrdude 4y ago
Big sites (newspapers) could do it the same way - maybe independent reach surveys could be the data that they use to back up their web ad pricing.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I think that's one of the points though. Big sites can back up their digital reach claims such as by using third parties. But if vetting yourself for advertisers was to become a requirement, advertisers just might not bother with small sites. Though admittedly Google makes money off small sites--but I bet most of those small sites don't make enough to make note of.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Google's vetting of small sites is pretty minimal. Instead they use fraud detection: vetting the traffic itself.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Right. Which is the point both of us are making I think. If you can't do some minimum floor of fraud detection more or less transparently and cheaply, you fall back on more heavyweight mechanisms and probably screen out any site that isn't "big."
contravariant 4y ago
Depends what you call tracking. Just like a newspaper company knows how many copies they distribute a website would know how many copies they've sent over the line. You might not trust them but I don't see why you'd think a newspaper would have a harder time claiming they've made more copies than they have.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Sending out a newspaper is much more expensive than sending out a pageview. If a million bots visit my site everyday I can point at server logs showing very high numbers of pageviews, but you wouldn't want to use that to pay me! Now, you could say don't do business with people who are trying to defraud you, but one of the more impressive things about the ad ecosystem is that it works without advertisers and publishers trusting each other. I can sell the space on my site and advertisers don't need to figure out how much to trust me in particular. It's easy to have ad fraud that's plausibly deniable and maybe even not on purpose. Let's say you're a publisher and you want more people to come to your site. You look around and you find someone who says they run a newsletter and would be willing to include links to your stories for a small fee. When you multiply out the cost per visitor this looks like a pretty good deal; you say yes. This traffic turns out to be entirely bots, but you can't tell because we got rid of ad fraud detection.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > but one of the more impressive things about the ad ecosystem is that it works without advertisers and publishers trusting each other. I can sell the space on my site and advertisers don't need to figure out how much to trust me in particular. For a person who worked in ads you are surprisingly oblivious to how both Facebook and Google defrauded advertisers and publishers. - Facebook Lied About Video Metrics and It Killed Profitable Businesses https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/ https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/ - Google Hit With $268 Million Fine Over Unfair Ad Practices https://gizmodo.com/google-hit-with-268-million-fine-over-unfair-ad-practi-1847045369 https://gizmodo.com/google-hit-with-268-million-fine-over-un... Ad industry should burn in the fires of hell.
    - klvino 4y ago
      There was a second flaw in the premise between print publishers and websites. Some print publishers inflate circulation numbers when attempting to sell ad space in an attempt to make the ad space appear more valuable. Similar double-selling of television ads take place as well. A network ad may run in the network feed and will appear in the network affidavit logs as having run. Local affiliates supercede network feeds all the time and in some of those cases they do so during a network ad pod and run station-sold ads. Consumer sees only one of the TV ads but both get reported as run. Fraud in advertising isn't something new or isolated to the online medium.

kzrdude 4y ago

Big sites (newspapers) could do it the same way - maybe independent reach surveys could be the data that they use to back up their web ad pricing.

ghaff 4y ago
I think that's one of the points though. Big sites can back up their digital reach claims such as by using third parties. But if vetting yourself for advertisers was to become a requirement, advertisers just might not bother with small sites. Though admittedly Google makes money off small sites--but I bet most of those small sites don't make enough to make note of.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Google's vetting of small sites is pretty minimal. Instead they use fraud detection: vetting the traffic itself.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Right. Which is the point both of us are making I think. If you can't do some minimum floor of fraud detection more or less transparently and cheaply, you fall back on more heavyweight mechanisms and probably screen out any site that isn't "big."

contravariant 4y ago

Depends what you call tracking. Just like a newspaper company knows how many copies they distribute a website would know how many copies they've sent over the line. You might not trust them but I don't see why you'd think a newspaper would have a harder time claiming they've made more copies than they have.

jefftk 4y ago
Sending out a newspaper is much more expensive than sending out a pageview. If a million bots visit my site everyday I can point at server logs showing very high numbers of pageviews, but you wouldn't want to use that to pay me! Now, you could say don't do business with people who are trying to defraud you, but one of the more impressive things about the ad ecosystem is that it works without advertisers and publishers trusting each other. I can sell the space on my site and advertisers don't need to figure out how much to trust me in particular. It's easy to have ad fraud that's plausibly deniable and maybe even not on purpose. Let's say you're a publisher and you want more people to come to your site. You look around and you find someone who says they run a newsletter and would be willing to include links to your stories for a small fee. When you multiply out the cost per visitor this looks like a pretty good deal; you say yes. This traffic turns out to be entirely bots, but you can't tell because we got rid of ad fraud detection.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > but one of the more impressive things about the ad ecosystem is that it works without advertisers and publishers trusting each other. I can sell the space on my site and advertisers don't need to figure out how much to trust me in particular. For a person who worked in ads you are surprisingly oblivious to how both Facebook and Google defrauded advertisers and publishers. - Facebook Lied About Video Metrics and It Killed Profitable Businesses https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/ https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/ - Google Hit With $268 Million Fine Over Unfair Ad Practices https://gizmodo.com/google-hit-with-268-million-fine-over-unfair-ad-practi-1847045369 https://gizmodo.com/google-hit-with-268-million-fine-over-un... Ad industry should burn in the fires of hell.
  - klvino 4y ago
    There was a second flaw in the premise between print publishers and websites. Some print publishers inflate circulation numbers when attempting to sell ad space in an attempt to make the ad space appear more valuable. Similar double-selling of television ads take place as well. A network ad may run in the network feed and will appear in the network affidavit logs as having run. Local affiliates supercede network feeds all the time and in some of those cases they do so during a network ad pod and run station-sold ads. Consumer sees only one of the TV ads but both get reported as run. Fraud in advertising isn't something new or isolated to the online medium.