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Startup Claims 80% Of Its Facebook Clicks Come From Bots (19)

07-31-2012 07:00 AM #1 Connaissance (Member)
Startup Claims 80% Of Its Facebook Clicks Come From Bots

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/sta...ing-from-bots/

Thoughts?

07-31-2012 08:28 AM #2 aabdelfataha (Member)

Facebook acting like adon network now ! lol

07-31-2012 09:24 AM #3 sjhunter86 (Member)

I was reading Tijn and Polarbacon's 40-day guide and was going to be starting off with FB... but now I am not sure that is a good idea. I remember something like that happening to me a couple years ago when I advertised my training business with FB ads. Not only did they over-charge my daily budget, but I was supposed to be targeting ONLY a 15-mile radius around my business, and I was getting clicks from various states and countries out of nowhere. Now it is starting to make sense haha

07-31-2012 09:57 AM #4 tijn (Moderator)

Stop buying the spytools and the bots will start to reduce

Theres a good discussion on HN as well re this topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731

Its a hard task though. With noipfraud we block a shit ton a bots, and sometimes this can be as high as 10% of the traffic.

Although Ive not seen examples of the 80% mentioned in the article.

The other challenge with FB is country targeting - Facebook's country targetting is not IP based but your aff networks do use IP based geo location to redirect users to alternatives if they are from a different geogrpahy.

On small reach demo's this can be as high as 50% sometimes. Ie targetting AU, and of the 100 clicks 50 were from US,UK,IE etc.

07-31-2012 10:00 AM #5 richardj (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by sjhunter86 View Post
I was reading Tijn and Polarbacon's 40-day guide and was going to be starting off with FB... but now I am not sure that is a good idea. I remember something like that happening to me a couple years ago when I advertised my training business with FB ads. Not only did they over-charge my daily budget, but I was supposed to be targeting ONLY a 15-mile radius around my business, and I was getting clicks from various states and countries out of nowhere. Now it is starting to make sense haha
I definitely would take this story with a pinch of salt and I wouldn't overlook FB.

There are a huge amount of issues with FB Ads - no-one is denying that - but I've still banked HARD on their ad platform. And really, as an affiliate marketer, that's all that matters.

I've never heard of an 80% click loss and it really doesn't make sense to me as I've seen 20% conversion rates consistently. If only 20% of traffic is real, then does that mean I'm converting at 100%!??! That seems unlikely.

07-31-2012 11:27 AM #6 hd2010 (Member)

I would keep my mouth shut if I'm the startup

07-31-2012 12:35 PM #7 jarad12 (Member)

lol, i was wondering about the bots yesterday, never even considered the spy tools!

07-31-2012 12:44 PM #8 johnnygood (Member)

It doesn't have to be bots. We have made little startup lately for country which doesn't have bots and like 30% of people were fake at least this is what we believe Or they are clicking just for fun and going back to fb.

Johnny

07-31-2012 01:24 PM #9 dconstrukt (Member)

ya... read this yesterday.... pretty crazy eh?

I mean they even have the proof.... not good publicity for FB...

07-31-2012 05:02 PM #10 tijn (Moderator)

I would like to see the proof cause I think they are full of shit!

Facebook sends tons of adbots to review your landers - if they are counting those figures will be skewed.

I think its some cheap PR....

07-31-2012 11:46 PM #11 kokofai ()

A monster like FB wouldn't have gone public if they have as high as 80% bot traffic. There must be a reason people go after it as a traffic source.

08-01-2012 02:01 AM #12 jabab1 (Member)

"Build you up just to break you down" sounds like whats happening w/ facebook. Hopefully this just reduces click cost cause those have definitely spiked leading up to them going public. I'm slowly coming to think Facebook might be the next yahoo.

08-01-2012 08:04 AM #13 river (Member)

Startup Claims 80% Of Its Facebook Clicks Come From Bots

The answer is in the title - People make wild accusations all the time which are usually bullshit.

I'd prefer to go off my own testing + evidence and from what I've seen probably 20-30% are bots if that but as long as Facebook works & makes good ROI who cares?

08-01-2012 10:22 AM #14 tijn (Moderator)

Yeah although this might have been an attempt for some cheap PR by said "startup", there is an increasing groundswell of dissatisfaction and criticism with Facebooks attempt to monitize its 900m users.

The latest seems to be the facebook sponsored posts to increase reach of pages saga.

Ie - local business sets up a facebook page. Puts a lot of effort and money into acquiring fans - some through paid facebook ads.

Then it suddenly turns out that the users you already PAID FOR dont see your updates!

And low and behold facebook comes out with a way for you to PAY MORE MONEY to reach your fans.

And the reach of your page updates seems to be throttled as well.

This smells like desperation!

More info here:
http://www.eddale.co/facebook/there-...te-of-facebook

08-01-2012 04:14 PM #15 keepitsimple (Member)

will Facebook go the same route as MySpace? lol.. this is nuts

08-01-2012 05:05 PM #16 philme (Member)

I'd say Facebook still holds a lot of value. It has tons of information on people that no other company has been able to gather before. It has an extremely large user base and is a brand recognized internationally. People aren't going to stop using Facebook anytime soon. If anything there may be a gradual decrease in users, but it isn't going to just drop out of nowhere. All the pressure from investors and the media must be getting to them. I think they should focus on developing more services or tools.

08-01-2012 06:15 PM #17 ukrainiac (Member)

Competitors' bots?

08-02-2012 08:40 AM #18 navuud (Member)

anyone else feel delighted by all this negative news surrounding FB? leaving all this ad space for me

08-02-2012 12:13 PM #19 sjhunter86 (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by richardj View Post
I definitely would take this story with a pinch of salt and I wouldn't overlook FB.

There are a huge amount of issues with FB Ads - no-one is denying that - but I've still banked HARD on their ad platform. And really, as an affiliate marketer, that's all that matters.

I've never heard of an 80% click loss and it really doesn't make sense to me as I've seen 20% conversion rates consistently. If only 20% of traffic is real, then does that mean I'm converting at 100%!??! That seems unlikely.
That makes sense. Thanks for putting a more expert perspective on it (like I said, I'm new haha)

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