Hey, Reddit. Quick question. All those clicks on my ads. Were they actually real?
- Reference: 1715426293
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/11/reddit_sued_ad_clicks/
- Source link:
The [1]complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a US federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform that relies on AI. It says the biz booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022; as the name suggests, the advertiser pays a little bit for every click on one of its adverts.
That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that LevelField's ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the like. But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract.
[2]
Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser. These ad interactions may come from competitors who wish to inflict charges upon a rival or by publishers who wish to increase the fees they collect, among other possible scenarios.
[3]
[4]
Ad fraud of this sort has been a persistent problem in the industry, which is why ad buyers commonly demand performance audits and sellers often refund invalid clicks. But the amount of detail vendors provide to clients varies.
Reddit, in its [5]S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a precursor to its public stock offering in March, addresses ad integrity concerns directly. "To help advertisers understand if their reach was effective, we offer solutions such as Oracle Moat-verified viewability, audience verification through NCSolutions, and DoubleVerify for fraud," the document explains.
[6]
Its cautionary boilerplate also calls out click fraud as a potential risk. "While we invest in efforts to detect and prevent inauthentic content or invalid traffic, including investments in proprietary technologies to detect and address content and vote manipulation, we may be unable to adequately detect and prevent such abuses," the S-1 says.
[7]IBM sued again for alleged discrimination – this time against White males
[8]Dell customer order database of '49M records' stolen, now up for sale on dark web
[9]Prof asks court to protect his Unfollow Everything 2.0 extension from Facebook's ire
[10]Lawsuit claims gift card fraud is the gift that keeps on giving, to Google
LevelFields argues that Reddit is in a particularly good position to track click fraud because it's serving ads on its own site, as opposed to third-party properties where it may have less visibility into network traffic. And the social media player, it's claimed, has provided rebates for illegitimate ad clicks in the past.
Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses."
The investment firm argues this is false "because Reddit has to know where traffic was coming from for security and monitoring purposes." And in the event that it doesn't, the biz argues, Reddit has failed to meet minimal standards for security and click monitoring on its platform. The plaintiffs aspire to have their claim certified as a class action.
According to [11]Juniper Research , 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion.
[12]
Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ®
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[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.429255/gov.uscourts.cand.429255.1.0.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zj@WGob0GBuBA4yyQbjyswAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zj@WGob0GBuBA4yyQbjyswAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zj@WGob0GBuBA4yyQbjyswAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zj@WGob0GBuBA4yyQbjyswAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/ibm_red_hat_discrimination_lawsuit/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/dell_data_stolen/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/02/meta_facebook_tool/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/07/google_sued_for_profiting_gift_card_fraud/
[11] https://fraudblocker.com/ad-fraud-data-facts
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zj@WGob0GBuBA4yyQbjyswAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: The good clickAI
I know you're joking(?) but this has already been done, without the AI.
[1]https://adnauseam.io
[1] https://adnauseam.io
Re: The good clickAI
Joking? yes and no.
Adnauseam is nice, but it requires me to actually visit a site before it fucks with the ads and that leaves a trail.
My suggestion is to create a very massively distributed spider network with only one purpose: blindly click on ads. Let many millions of zombie browsers automatically click on all ads found as they go. And, of course, implement random google searches and click on ads presented. No need for interaction. Just a plain distributed fuck-the-ads-and-the-adpushers statement.
Seems real to me?
Considering almost every ad I see on reddit has been downvoted into oblivion , I assume most impressions the ads get are from real users... Bots would be told to upvote the ads to see them more often and click them more.
Oracle??
Why would anybody use an Oracle product for something like that?
"Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser"
So every time I click an ad to see more info and I then don't buy anything, the advertiser can accuse me of fraud? I don't click anyway on the few ads I see, but that implication is rather troublesome for me.
When I watch any commercial channel on TV I always have bbc news as my last channel to switch to during ad breaks; either that or I record the program, watch it later and skip the ads. Fuck 'em all.
> "Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser"
Yeah, that's a low bar for "fraud". I need to be more careful to not fat finger my phone then.
Are the clicks fake? YES!
Because screw you, that's why. I hate you, and I hate your ads. So when I'm not just blocking them, I use an extension that clicks on ALL of them so you have to pay money for NO actual human clicks.
Wanna help? [1]AdNauseam
[1] https://adnauseam.io/
Re: Are the clicks fake? YES!
Done
The good clickAI
According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion.
That is not enough. We can achieve nearly 100% if we focus!
I suggest we pool our internet resources, create a new AI and use it to click on any ad encountered anywhere it (spider-) finds them. Lets bankrupt the ad industry by making them pay for our collective click of nothingness. And, of course, we only click in a real sandbox. The clickAI will be contained and we never knew it existed.