An update to our post yesterday talking about a weeks-long issue with click fraud on Facebook: A spokesperson for the company admits there’s a problem and says a fix is coming today. Advertisers will also be credited for any fraudulent clicks.
In a comment to the post, Brandon McCormick says:
This is Brandon on the Facebook communications team. I wanted to chime in to make sure that our voice was part of this discussion and to clarify how we are addressing this issue.
We take click quality very seriously and have a series of measures in place to detect it. We have large volumes of data to analyze click patterns and can identify suspicious activity quickly.
Over the past few days, we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement and expect will be completely rolled out by the end of today. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately.
Advertisers on WickedFire, where the original comments about click fraud are posted, are sure to be pleased. Although they may be wondering why it took attention from a blog to get Facebook to deal with the issue, which has been ongoing since at least May.
As an aside, Izea, the controversial (at best) pay per post advertising company, used this story as an opportunity to reach out to advertisers. CEO Ted Murphy left a comment on WickedFire saying “This is my first time here, I found out about this forum through the TechCrunch post. I wanted to offer up an opportunity for anyone of you to try SocialSpark CPC and put our click validation to the test. We will provide a $100 credit to any new advertiser. Drop a line to ashley@izea.com if you would like to take a spin on us.”
That didn’t go over so well with members. One person suggested Murphy review the forum’s rules (linking to a pornographic image) and another said “you are unwelcome here.” Sounds like a normal day at the office for Izea.
wow
wow is right! this is a big and costly problem…its been around for a while and its not going no where for now
Amazing how quickly they have identified a solution, after advertisers have spent WEEKS complaining about the issue.
As for Izea being kicked out of the forum, that should come as no surprise. It may be harsh, but everyone is treated equally. Those who follow the rules benefit immensely.
fcuck the rules
when it comes to money, no jokes.
lol.
Izea got dickrolled for good.
i bet if this issue wasnt on techcrunch nothing would have happen.
My thoughts exactly
Luckily it is.
Then they should do the same with google.
Exactly
Good thing FB is aware of this issue and taking care of it.
Done in true WF form! lol
The last paragraph is by far the best.
sucks for those engineers working on sunday
Wow, I wonder if they would have come out with that without the TC post. Reminds me of the early days when Google introduced adwords.
Their response is good though, admitting it ‘early’, promising a quick fix and credit back damages – well done. As for the Izea guys, it’s never a good marketing idea to piggy back on someone else’s troubles.
While I am sure being featured on this blog helped FB roll the fix out quicker, I don’t think this blog is the reason in the first place they are rolling out a fix as you try to emply in your post… It takes longer than 24 hours to fix a click fruad issue… I am sure they have been testing different ways to combat the problem for over a month….
They probably just flipped their internal “cheat advertisers out of half their clicks” switch to off.
As far as I read, this FB fraud issue is different. FB is the only one gets benefit from this fraud issue. Not like Adsense, publishers get profit from it and that’s why they are motivated to using click bots.
The FB fraud is created on the fly. If that’s the case, my only guess is that there is some program inside FB, which generates these fake clicks. That takes minutes for them to close it, instead of months to work out a “solution”. And the report on TechCrunch is very likely the reason to make them take action now to change this.
Without transparency (which no one offers) it’s trivial to add say 20% to the number of clicks coming in or have a script randomly add fake ones.
You’re talking 3-4 lines of code that could make the company millions of dollars. It’s hard to imagine they’re not doing it.
How much $ has gone into FB’s bank account while this click fraud issue has been rampant? Will FB be identifying instances of all thefts and refund the $ to advertisers – or is this simply the ‘cost’ of doing business with the likes of FB for now?
I highly doubt it. All profits up until now from click fraud go in the pockets of Facebook.
Now when advertisers have been complaining for about 2 weeks already – a little too late ;-(
Huge props to Michael for writing the original article. If it hadn’t been posted, I 100% guarantee that nothing would have happened.
hmm couldn’t really quite understand what this post was getting at.
“That didn’t go over so well with members. One person suggested Murphy review the forum’s rules (linking to a pornographic image) and another said “you are unwelcome here.”
Sounds like a normal day at the office for Izea.”
Sounds like a normal day at the office for Wickedfire tbh
I spent nearly a decade in PR before I got into development – if anyone ever says ‘voice’ in a statement you know you’re being lied to.
They’re suggesting the problem is suspicious clicks – so ninja clicks are clicking on ads that never land on the advertiser’s site?
If these claims are legitimate, it means that 1) Facebook’s advertising system is broken or 2) they’re knowingly engaging in fraud. This has absolutely nothing to do with click bots.
Again, we really felt like Facebook was just counting off clicks arbitrarily while we and no one we know actually saw our ad displayed.
This is possibly outright fraud on their part. They’re charging people for something they don’t actually give.
We ended up spending just a few bucks before we dropped the ads, so I’m not losing any sleep (and I won’t advertise on FB anymore), but if this is really going on, people shouldn’t just roll over because some Facebook flack says ’solution’, ‘voice’, etc.
Thanks TechCrunch.
I think FB should implement pay-per-purchase ads rather than PPC.
Once again, totally inappropriate image used entirely out of context. It’s called “taste,” Mr. Arrington – the lack of it that you display, particularly in choosing images for your posts, has a lot to do with why so many people have such a big issue with you and your site.
Do you work for Facebook? I think it is quite appropriate for a company that has admitted to ripping money from advertisers, do you really think they are going to refund all the stolen/fraudulent click money? is it really ok if they refund some of it? and only bother to clean up the mess once TechCrunch made some noise.
Too little too late. Facebook should fail for allowing this to continue for so long and only responding with a promise of quick resolution AFTER the Mike A TechCrunch post.
Google & Yahoo should also do more to protect advertisers from click fraud, but it seems Facebook really let the click fraud get way out of control, in a manner the benefits only themselves.
Project Wonderful gets around the click fraud problem by charging advertisers only for the total time their ad is displayed. Those times are determined by auction, with the highest bidder having their ad displayed (and this can change from minute to minute).
The publisher with the Project Wonderful ads on their site gets paid the same whether the ads get clicked or not.
Why haven’t other ad networks adopted something similar? Am I missing something?
It’s called CPM. Welcome to 1996.
wow …
now that TC talked about it and FB might get a backlash from click-fraud that’s been ongoing for some time, of course it is soon to be fixed. at least they got their revenue up for that $10b valuation round in the meantime.
i smell something here…FB might have known this or allowed it intentionally to ramp up revenues…i know few ppl who stopped advertising on FB as soon as they realized sudden jump in clicks
this fast response from FB clearly shows that they know the problem, and want to continue till it becomes public outcry,…TC really made it happen, now FB might even revise forecasts!!
I can’t wait to be refunded the thousands those fraudulent bastards at Facebook have stolen. They’ve known about this issue for at least a month now yet it takes a techcrunch blog post for them to admit it? Fucking scumbags don’t deserve a penny of any advertisers money if they can’t deliver REAL visitors.
Yup, it sounds like Facebook has been caught red-handed ripping off their advertisers and is now trying to explain it all away.
Well, call it bullshit and you smart advertisers, stay far away from Facebook.
Blatant rip-off and obv FB caught red-handed. What a b.s. excuse!
Advertisers, be smart, don’t waste your money on Facebook!
We’re also one of these – still small – advertisers on Facebook who smell fire and see smoke allover. Over the last month we spent about $ 200 for Holaba China on Facebook China. 8 different ads, targeting different segments.
We totalised 4,177 clicks according to FB but only 3,708 according to Google analytics. 409 less clicks. Roughly 10% lost. We wonder where.
Another phenomenon was the CPC ballooning. In the beginning we had 1 ad on CPC and it scored very well. The max amount/day was almost always spent. Then on monday June 8th we changed the winning ad from CPC to CPM and the 2nd best to CPC. Guess what? This 1st one dropped from 0.28 CTR to 0.13. Now the 2nd best became the new winner (CTR raised from 0.09 to 0.14) and the daily budget was again spent almost entirely in that CPC-period. Now all of the ads are on CPM. We’ll see what will happen next.
Its good to see Facebook reacting quickly to this problem. They wouldn’t want their customers to be messed around with.
We’ve been telling Facebook for weeks about their problem. How does it take them this long to respond? Now that so many people read about it they finally decide to do something about it?
Facebook’s platform has been horrible for a long time. Grant it, it’s been profitable but it takes a lot more work than it should.
Hey TechCrunch – can you write about their employees inability to approve ads next? Or the fact that it takes you spending tens of thousands of dollars a month to actually be able to get in contact with anyone?
Their reps are worthless and their add approval team is even worse. Assuming they fix this issue – you should write about that next.
looking at my raw logs, i am now getting all of the clicks facebook is charging me for
however
1) 20-30% does not have a referrer
2) 20-30% does not show up at the second level tracking after the first tracking redirect
3) I’m still seeing tremendous “netscape” traffic and duplicate clicks
So effectively i have to lower my bids 20-30% to still be profitable
The above is true on all broad US campaigns. Tightly targeted US campaigns do not have this problem, indicating it definitely is bots attempting to force out competition.
I stopped advertising on FB months ago for similar reasons. Recently I’ve seen my old facebook campaigns (all focused on US) start to come alive again (even though they are not active) & all the traffic is coming from Bangalore & Chennai, I told FB, they just responded with a canned message.
RULE: When someone spends thousands of dollars on your site a canned message is never appropriate, never.
I can’t believe the ballls on that rep. Everybody needs to read that post!