Google and YouTube Views: Relevance or Money?
September 24, 2015
I read “Google Charges Advertisers for Fake YouTube Video Views, Say Researchers.” My goodness, will criticism of Alphabet Google continue to escalate?
The trigger for the newspaper article’s story with the somewhat negative headline was an academic paper called “Understanding the Detection of Fake View Fraud in Video Content Portals.” The data presented in the journal by seven European wizards suggests that an Alphabet Google type company knows when a video is viewed by a software robot, not a credit card toting human.
“Fake view fraud” is a snappy phrase.
According to the Guardian newspaper write up about the technical paper:
The researchers’ paper says that while substantial effort has been devoted to understanding fraudulent activity in traditional online advertising such as search and banner ads, more recent forms such as video ads have received little attention. It adds that while YouTube’s system for detecting fake views significantly outperforms others, it may still be susceptible to simple attacks.
Is this a Volkswagen-type spoof? Instead of fiddling with fuel efficiency, certain online video portals are playing fast and loose with charging for video ads not displayed to a human with a PayPal account?
Years ago an outfit approached me with a proposition for a seminar about online advertising fraud. I declined. I am confident that the giant companies and their wizards in the ad biz possess business ethics which put the investment bankers to shame. I recall discussing systems and methods with a couple of with it New Yorkers. The lunch topic was dynamically relaxing the threshold for displaying content in response to certain queries.
My comment pointed to ways to determine if an ad “relevant” was relevant to a higher percentage of user queries. I called this “query and ad matching relaxation.”
I did not include a discussion of “relaxation” in my 2003-2004 study Google Version 2.0, which is now out of print. The systems and methods disclosed in technical papers by researchers who ended up working for large online advertising methods were just more plumbing for smart software.
When an ad does not match a query, that’s the challenge of figuring out what’s relevant and what’s irrelevant.
My thought in 2003 when I started writing the book was that most content was essentially spoofed and sponsored. I wanted to focus on more interesting innovations like the use of game theory in online advertising interfaces and the clever notion of “janitors” which were software routines able to clean up “bad” or “incomplete” data.
As I recall, that New York City guy was definitely interested in the notion of tuning ad results to generate money for the ad distribution and not so much for the advertiser. For me, no interest in lecturing a group of ad execs about their business. These folks can figure out the ins and outs of their business without inputs from an old person in Kentucky.
Mobile and video access to digital content do pose some interesting challenges in the online advertising world. My hunch is that the Alphabet Google type outfits and the intrepid researchers will find common ground. If the meeting progresses smoothly, perhaps a T shirt or mouse pad will be offered to some of the participants?
I remain confident that allegations about slippery behavior in online advertising are baseless. Online advertising is making life better and better for users everyday.
The experience of online advertising is thrilling. I am not sure the experience of receiving unwanted advertisements can be improved? Why read a Web page when one can view an overlay which obscures the desired content? Why work in a quite office? Answer: It is simply easier to hear the auto play videos on many Web pages. Why puzzle over a search results page which blurs sponsored hits from relevant content? By definition, displayed information is relevant information, gentle reader. Do you have a problem with that?
Google, according to the article, will chat up the seven experts who reported on the alleged fraud. I am confident that the confusion in the perceptions of the researchers will be replaced with crystal clear thinking.
Online ad fraud? What a silly notion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2015
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