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What's the point for bots? (12)

07-30-2018 12:22 AM #1 jeremiahandor (Member)
What's the point for bots?

Our great industry seems to be filled with bots. and i mean ALOT of bots.

And we would all make a ALOT more money if they so kindly would fuck off but i dont see that happening. Now there are ways to detect them. And blocking those widgets on native so you get rid of most of the bot traffic.

But what's the actual point of those things.

I mean i know one is for arbitrage so you get money even know only 3000 people visit your website a month not 300k.

But thats for websites. why they all up in my landers like a crazy ex gf on my instas yo. LOL i dont talk like that but i feel gangsta today bro dog homeslice.

But is there another purpose to these sneaky annoying fuckers?

there really starting to piss me off if i say so myself.


- Jeremiah

07-30-2018 05:21 AM #2 fjk87 (Veteran Member)

One theory I've come up with quite some time ago - the smartest and most elegant way I can imagine these bot farms to operate:

Sell traffic to traffic sources, where these bots actually get rebrokered to mediabuyers. It does take some time until there's fraud warning popping up at the advertiser end. Until then, affiliate who's buying is happy with a good performance on his/her campaigns. Now the fraudster ends up with at least 2 layers of protection between his payment and his fraud being busted - he sells on CPM/CPC, the networks sells to the buyer, the buyer sells to the advertiser. Literally impossible to knock down the chain to where it started and another thing, traffic sources do earn money with this obviously, so might be not the most pro-active when it comes to filtering out all fraud.

07-30-2018 07:14 AM #3 stickupkid (Senior Moderator)


there really starting to piss me off if i say so myself.


- Jeremiah
You just a started your first campaign/follow along. How did they piss you off exactly already?

07-30-2018 02:28 PM #4 jeremiahandor (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by stickupkid View Post
You just a started your first campaign/follow along. How did they piss you off exactly already?
I apologize for the confusion. It's my first native campaign not my first camp overall in AM. But unlike all my other ones Imma grind her out and see if i can get anywhere with these.


and @fjk87 yea that does make sense. Just a way for them to make a extra buck. yesterday night i saw this speech from a guy AWC asia in 2017 talking about native and bot's came up. Long story short he said if we didnt have them we would have alot more competition. That kinda made sense. All about how you play things i guess...


- Jeremiah

07-30-2018 05:27 PM #5 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Well, you paid for that traffic ... so the point is someone made money from you.

07-30-2018 07:10 PM #6 zeno (Administrator)

To play the devil's advocate a bit, I think that the impact of bots is very real but the impact of removing them will be a lot less than people think.

It's great to imagine a scenario where 25% of your traffic is bots, you wipe them out and immediately your margins go up due to the costs you have avoided.

However, most of the traffic sources we work with are open marketplaces where people bid for traffic based on what they can afford. What you can afford depends on how much revenue the traffic is making for you. If that revenue goes up due to bots being removed, you can naturally bid more, and people probably will.

The end result would be a "rising tide" effect where the CPMs naturally go up. In a sense this is already obvious when you compare the traffic quality between different placements, platforms and media entirely.

On the other hand, removing bots certainly reduces a technology tax (more hits to tracking systems) and burdens of analysis, so if I had to choose between zero bots and higher CPMs and the current state, I would certainly choose the former.

07-30-2018 09:09 PM #7 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
To play the devil's advocate a bit, I think that the impact of bots is very real but the impact of removing them will be a lot less than people think.

It's great to imagine a scenario where 25% of your traffic is bots, you wipe them out and immediately your margins go up due to the costs you have avoided.

However, most of the traffic sources we work with are open marketplaces where people bid for traffic based on what they can afford. What you can afford depends on how much revenue the traffic is making for you. If that revenue goes up due to bots being removed, you can naturally bid more, and people probably will.

The end result would be a "rising tide" effect where the CPMs naturally go up. In a sense this is already obvious when you compare the traffic quality between different placements, platforms and media entirely.

On the other hand, removing bots certainly reduces a technology tax (more hits to tracking systems) and burdens of analysis, so if I had to choose between zero bots and higher CPMs and the current state, I would certainly choose the former.
^^ this is it exactly ^^
Removing bots wont really lower the prices we pay, in the long they would most likely increase, but god ... the optimization would be so much easier So yeah, I'm all for higher CPM and lower amount of bots ...

07-30-2018 09:24 PM #8 jeremiahandor (Member)

All very good points and new insights that i never really thought about. Always great seeing other people point of view that have been doing it for quite a long time. Thanks guys, Much appreciated!



- Jeremiah

07-30-2018 09:49 PM #9 milehighclub (Member)

Welcome to 2008....

Bots exist the same reason cocaine is cut.... MOAR PROFITS.


Side Note: I dont always cut zones with lots of bots. For example Ive had a zone with 60% bot rate do 300% ROI yet another zone with 5% bot rate doing -20% ROI.

07-30-2018 10:25 PM #10 sean3 (Member)

I just feel that we need to cut IDs with low conversion at the earliest detected time. Thinking about avoiding bot traffic is more costlier in terms of time and energy rather than just optimising your campaigns


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

07-31-2018 01:04 AM #11 jeremiahandor (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by milehighclub View Post
Welcome to 2008....

Bots exist the same reason cocaine is cut.... MOAR PROFITS.


Side Note: I dont always cut zones with lots of bots. For example Ive had a zone with 60% bot rate do 300% ROI yet another zone with 5% bot rate doing -20% ROI.
AHHH the good ol coke days. They sure dont do em like that no more. Nuh uh.

And thats really interesting how do u figure out the percenatage of bot traffic on a particular placement?

None the less i am going to have to be quite aggressive ATM with my placements and cutting them out due to my VERY tight budget. But ill work with what i got. A little bit of action is still better than a year of studying. And ive been studying for more. SO HERE WE GOOOOOO

And all of you all have good points thank you for everyones input may the gods/god of this world bring you many monies and happiness.


- Jeremiah

08-06-2018 01:22 PM #12 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by sean3 View Post
I just feel that we need to cut IDs with low conversion at the earliest detected time. Thinking about avoiding bot traffic is more costlier in terms of time and energy rather than just optimising your campaigns


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums
The optimization is actually the only problem to me, I don't care about the % of BOTs all that much, as long as I can still make that traffic work... but what some people fail to realize is that BOTs can totally screw up the optimization process.

Trackers simply rotate the LPs and offers that we are testing, they dont care whether its a bot click or not ... so in many cases, you send way more bots to one offer than to the other one, which could mean you will pick the wrong offer. In theory, with high % of BOTs, you might actually end up with pure bot traffic being send to one offer ... which will mean 0 conversions obviously. This is the worst thing about the BOTs ...

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