3. Percent of Web Traffic From Bots
Source: Solve Media via Marketing Charts April 26, 2013
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4. Hidden Layers and Impressions
Ads are hidden in up to 72
layers
Entire web pages are loaded
into ad iframes to boost
impressions
Multiple redirects and auto
page refreshes
Source: Spider.io May 2, 2013
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5. Bot Traffic - Web vs Mobile
Source: Solve Media via Marketing Charts April 26, 2013
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6. “Suspect” Publishers
Called out by Mike
Shields, “Meet the
Most Suspect
Publishers on the WebThe rise of ghost sites,
where traffic is huge
but humans are few.”
AdWeek, March 19,
2013
75% audience overlap
with other sites from
the same publisher
American Express Ad
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7. Bad Guys Rob Display Advertisers
1
2
3
4
6
5
7
• Pages are auto generated by script to
optimize for high value search
keywords and content
• 10 – 15 display ads per page plus text
ads and videos ads, in rotation
• Advertisers should minimize ad dollars
spent on impression (CPM) basis and
focus on paying only when they get the
click (CPC)
• They also auto-refresh pages to load
another 10 – 15 ads
8
9
10
• Many other examples of display ads
shown next to unsavory content
Source: http://www.satelliteguys.us/archive/t-232266.html
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9. Click Fraud % of PPC Impressions
Source: ClickForensics 2006 - 2010
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10. Botnets cause most Click Fraud
42% of click fraud caused by botnets
Source: ClickForensics 2009
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11. Bad Guys Do Way Better SEO
For expensive items like
the Vizio 60 inch HDTV,
bad guys appeared in 8 of
the 10 search results on
page 1 of Google.
They optimized for the
exact model number:
Vizio E601i-A3
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12. Bad Guys Kick Pharma in SEO
6 of the 10 page 1 results
are bad guys websites,
siphoning traffic from the
brand website and
legitimate, approved
sources.
Only drugs.com,
wikipedia, medicinenet,
and the brand website
showed up as alteratives
on page 1.
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14. Fake Profiles on Facebook
plagiarized or stock image
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15. Bot generated pages
on Facebook
using many of the same images and randomized content
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16. Fake Likes on Facebook
How much do you like courgettes, the
green vegetable Americans call zucchini?
According to one Facebook page devoted
to them, hundreds of people find them
delightful enough to click the "like" button
– even with dozens of other pages about
courgettes to choose from.
There's just one problem: the liking was
fake, done by a team of low-paid workers
in Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose boss
demanded just $15 per thousand "likes" at
his "click farm". Workers punching the
keys might be on a three-shift system, and
be paid as little as $120 a year.
Source: Business Insider, August 2, 2013
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17. UPDATE: Feb 10, 2014
Here's how Muller says he knows the Likes are
fake: Rather than being distributed across the
engagement chart, all the countries with click
farms fall to the bottom of the scale, indicating
that those are followers who aren't receptive to
the page's messaging. Those countries inside
that red circle include (from the bottom): Egypt,
India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka, all countries
where click farms are common.
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This blogger paid
Facebook to promote
his page. He got 80,000
bogus Likes instead.
Source: Washington
Post, Feb 10, 2014
Augustine Fou
19. Fake Page w/ Affiliate Links
Characteristics
• Auto-generated by
bots, stuffed with
search keywords
• Attract organic search
traffic
• Not human readable
• Stuffed with affiliate
links and ads
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20. Man Defrauds eBay of $5.6M
Using “cookie stuffing”
techniques, the company
planted affiliate cookies
which led to revenue share
payouts from eBay,
amounting to $5.6M in
2006-07. This means their
scheme cleared over $100M
in transactions (assuming an
average of around 5%
revenue share payout).
Source: LA Times April 19, 2013
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33. Fbishing is the new Phishing
Beware of fake Facebook profiles asking
to be friends with you. This is the new
“phishing” that I am dubbing “fbishing”
(pronounced “fuh-bishing”)
Clues to look out for are
- they have no friends, except you
- they have no posts, photos or other
activity
- the photo is of a hot girl (or guy) in a
bikini
Once they are your friend, even your tight
Facebook privacy settings like “friends
only” wont stop them from seeing your
entire list of friends (who become the next
round of fbishing attempts).
Source: go-Digital Blog - Fbishing
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34. Electronic Frontier Foundation
“If we ask whether a fact about a person identifies that
person, it turns out that the answer isn't simply yes or
no. If all I know about a person is their ZIP code, I
don't know who they are. If all I know is their date of
birth, I don't know who they are. If all I know is their
gender, I don't know who they are. But it turns out
that if I know these three things about a person, I
could probably deduce their identity! Each of the
facts is partially identifying.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-theory-and-privacy
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40. Page of Ads Inserted in History
For example, when users
click on a web page from the
Google search results, but
don't find what they were
looking for on that page,
normally they would click
the back button and return to
Google's search results.
However, some users are
instead being taken to a
spoof search results page that
is actually entirely
advertisements, such as this:
Source: Search Engine Watch, July 17, 2013
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41. Related Articles
Bad Guys Happily Rob Display Advertisers
By: Augustine Fou, July 23, 2012
More on “cookie stuffing”
http://bit.ly/12gnuPu
Hackers Using Webcams to Spy
By: Augustine Fou, July 22, 2013
Search Kicks Display in Effectiveness
By: Augustine Fou, April 23, 2013
Many Forms of Online Fraud
By: Augustine Fou, April 20, 2013
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Augustine Fou
42. Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Consigliere
“Users can customize their smartphone
precisely, by downloading only the apps
they want and need; no longer are they
forced to by monolithic desktop PC
software, 95% of the features of which
they never use.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/augustinefou
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@acfou
Augustine Fou