Lessons in Unsustainability

Click fraud is an interesting thing. Defining click fraud is like trying to define cheating. If you think about someone else, is that cheating? Certainly for most people if you act on such a thought, it is. So, what about click fraud? Going by the more liberal uses of the definitions, I’d say that the majority reading this are cheaters. I can only imagine collectively how much money we make Google thanks to what some might call cheating but what we would call research. And, thanks to Facebook, we have a whole new playground in which to operate. Unlike the Google ad sandbox, Facebook’s ads currently run only on Facebook proper. In both, we only see a sliver of the activity. There are some tools to help those trying to monitor the competition on Google, but doing it the manual way means visiting lots of content sites in the network and seeing what ads appear (as many arbitragers bypass running on Google.com all together). As Facebook doesn’t use context for its ads but profile attributes what we see when researching ads differs quite a bit from that seen on Google. It has opened up new strategies and ways to enter the conversion funnel that even Facebook might not have guessed. After they see it enough, though, like Google, they will clamp down on certain forms.

One such form of Facebook advertising is about to experience a hasty demise after what those using it would call too brief a life. Hardliners would call the tactic misleading; others might call it personalization. Performance marketers simply call it effective. The tactic involves flipping the notion of targeting on its head. Those running a particular offer would try out different segments, such as age or location, to see which worked the best. Now, instead of just segmenting, they personalize the ad with some of the same information. Instead of just marketing online education or auto insurance to those in New York between a certain age, the ad would say something to the effect of, "Are you x years old" or "Living in Y?" Come Friday, we should start seeing much fewer of those ads. Facebook sent out a message to advertisers reading:

All advertisers are encouraged to use Facebook’s targeting options, as this allows users to see ads that are of high interest and relevance. However, as noted in section 7a of the Facebook Ad Guidelines, "any targeting of ads based on a user attribute, such as age, gender, location, or interest, must be directly relevant to the offer". Ads that unnecessarily call out user attributes in the ad creative or landing page are in violation of this guideline and run contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy.

Please edit or delete any ads that which employ this tactic and do not submit any new ads that call out personally identifiable user attributes, including but not limited to age, gender, workplace, school or location. Ads that remain active are subject to removal and their performance history lost. This includes ads with landing pages edited to appear relevant to the target group; if the offer advertised is available to a larger demographic, ads may not use any user’s personally identifiable information to imply that the offer is limited to that group.

The message from Facebook is a really interesting one as it covers not just the ads but the landing pages. From an ad perspective, the operative word is unnecessarily, i.e. ads that "unnecessarily call out user attributes." It says the same for the landing page but reiterates the point by instructing advertisers to change "landing pages edited to appear relevant to the target group." The last line from above says it best, "If the offer advertised is available to a larger demographic, ads may not use any user’s personally identifiable information to imply that the offer is limited to that group." That affiliates / arbitragers figured out how to leverage the targeting attributes to make a run of network feel anything but, is devilishly genius and a lot more interesting. Take a look at the difference between these two ads:

And

Neither ad would make an end lead buyer particularly happy, but the reason why one would perform better than the other is pretty clear. This is the corresponding landing page to the latter:

While Facebook takes aim with the use of attributes in the creative and landing page, a bigger problem ultimately is what the ads convey. Take a look at these:

The first and third ones can’t even spell, with the first reading like a practical joke, "f you." That aside, all of them, in addition to soon being illegal, are already walking on thin ice with their implications about new laws being in effect. The debt one is especially egregious as it seems to imply a guaranteed reduction. The lesson here is, just because you can think it up doesn’t make it ok to try. And, adding an "if" at the end is also no escape from culpability. Then again, we’re not lawyers. We’re just trying to look out for you and the best interest of our space. We’ll see what happens Friday and how/what kind of work around people create. As is always the case, though, the answer will require a little bit more work. It might sound bad initially, but that work creates a barrier for entry that others can’t copy as easily or quickly as they can now.