Google admit advertisers wasted their money on more than 50% of Internet ads | Hacker News Reader

Google admit advertisers wasted their money on more than 50% of Internet ads

qz.com

15 pointsknown9 comments

"That uncertainty reached a new high this week, as Google announced that 56.1% of ads served on the internet are never even “in view”—defined as being on screen for one second or more. That’s a huge number of “impressions” that cost money for advertisers, but are as pointless as a television playing to an empty room."

I don't understand the issue here. Unless things have changed over the years, the vast majority of Google advertisers would be paying "per click" (CPC) rather than "per impression" (CPM). When I was advertising it was quite difficult to pay on a "per impression" basis, and the offers to enable this were after considerable data had been calculated using the "per click" method. Switching to "per impression" was optional and appeared to average your existing "per click" spend rather than some program to hide your underlying click spend.

As a "per click" advertiser I don't care if my ad is only "in view" half the time it's displayed. I care that a person is clicking and they intended to click.

Nothing new in the world: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1992.html

And if they had a 100% delivery rate, they price would be (at least) twice as high. So what's the difference?

That means that 50% of ads weren't a waste of money, which is a very good return rate for ad spend.

The figure is closer to 43%, and no, it doesn't follow that those ads weren't a waste of money. It only means that someone actually saw them. Google doesn't have clean hands on this, because they take a cut regardless of whether their advertisers are being defrauded, and they pay those who are committing the fraud. In the past I think they've largely looked the other way and cashed the checks. This admission is an indication that they realize they have to go legit, which in the end is going to mean taking a big revenue hit down the road.

But is that better or worse than lets say TV advertisement?

I'd guess worse because there aren't much TV's playing to empty spaces.

Based on what exactly? Are you suggesting that people don't get up in commercial breaks to go do something else, or that Tivo wasn't a huge thing for this exact reason?

This isn't a new story :D

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