Who 'likes' my Virtual Bagels?

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18819338

by luu • 14 years ago

149 83 14 years ago

debacle2• 14 years ago

A very compelling anecdote, but as we start gathering more and more of this evidence it's painting a clear picture - Facebook ads are nigh useless.

I wonder: why Cairo?

samstave• 14 years ago

I have yet to see any good evidence that shows FB will be able to create an honestly sustainable revenue model.

I am sure the "pay for a less spammy ad riddled FB experience! Only $1.99 per month!" is in the near future. And I'd bet a fair number of users would pay for that.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

Being able to filter out all those irritating meme/joke/"inspiring thought" things would be brilliant, too.

codegeek3• 14 years ago

"Facebook ads are nigh useless."

Is it really just the fb ads or the entire system of how ads work in 2012? Is it time that someone changes how ads work as per pg's list of ideas ?

debacle2• 14 years ago

We're moving towards a post marketing economy. Any marketer will tell you that. The old ways of marketing don't work anymore, and they certainly don't work on the Internet. People of the television generation are capable of filtering out marketing at an unprecedented level - the only marketing that works any more is strategically targetted marketing (a la Google) or consumer education campaigns.

Sponsorship has seen a resurgence in recent years. I know that P&G really likes the sponsorship model, but there are only so many things out there to sponsor.

bentlegen2• 14 years ago

> Facebook ads are nigh useless.

I guess you didn't read this: http://irvinebroque.tumblr.com/post/28415393877/how-i-made-1...

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

Revenue != profit

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

That's a thinly veiled piece of advertising for a Facebook analytics startup.

franzus2• 14 years ago

So he gave away records for a ridiculously low price. Do you think this is a viable business model?

codegeek3• 14 years ago

Even legitimate businesses are actually paying to be liked on facebook. I see a lot of ads on craigslist asking people to like their facebook page especially if they have lot of friends. I thought the whole point of like was that someone genuinely likes you/your business. Apparently, ppl are gaming fb.

nhebb• 14 years ago

You need 25 likes before you can get a branded page, plus no business wants their facebook page to look like a ghost town. People on fiverr have been capitalizing on this for a while at dirt cheap cost/like:

http://fiverr.com/gigs/search?query=facebook&x=0&y=0

yangez2• 14 years ago

This problem isn't confined to Facebook alone. A while back we were getting ridiculous CPAs on Google Adwords of under 50c, but quickly realized that literally none of these were converting into paying customers. Notably, we were targeting English-speaking countries only, so I don't know why we were getting hits from India and Egypt and stuff.

After targeting US and Canada only, CPAs skyrocketed but each signup actually became worth something.

I'm confused. Who benefits from these click / like bots that seem to plague every advertising platform, besides the platform itself?

citizens2• 14 years ago

Possibly competitors of the advertiser [who can't afford PPC]?

Another thought: An advertiser could use a bot to click on ads for keywords they are targeting. If they could exhaust their competitors daily budget they could potentially get higher placement for less CPC [later in the day]. I'm thinking of Adwords here.

unreal372• 14 years ago

This. I think it's an attempt to keep the PPC prices for certain keywords down. Exhaust the budgets of competitors.

franzus2• 14 years ago

> Who benefits from these click

The guys you pay, most obviously.

vtry• 14 years ago

Follow the money, you'll get to the source.

eli• 14 years ago

Did you have AdWords ads running on the "Content Network" (i.e. other random sites)? I was getting a bunch of click fraud on some Google ads a while back. Based on the referrers, it was pretty clearly someone who set up a bunch of sites and then was generating a ton of automated traffic to click on their ads and generate money. The bots even went so far as to fill out the contact form on our landing page once getting there (I guess to trick Google's conversion tracking script?).

The worst part is I submitted some of this data to Google and they basically said, don't worry we've already detected all the click fraud and filtered it out so you never were charged for it. Uh, ok. No way to prove or disprove that. But if you identified these bozos as fraudsters, why do they still have AdWords accounts weeks later?

rickmb2• 14 years ago

"we were targeting English-speaking countries only, so I don't know why we were getting hits from India and Egypt and stuff"

Seriously? Seriously?

I mean... no, never mind. "Confused" doesn't even begin to describe it. Given that the US doesn't have an official language, India is more of an English speaking country than the US is.

yangez2• 14 years ago

> "Confused" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Relax, no need for that. Obviously India is an English-speaking country, but when we targeted "English" speakers we expected a higher percentage of our traffic to come from Western sources like the US and Canada, instead of 95%+ from click farms in India. We found that wasn't the case, so we switched to country-specific targeting. Thanks for educating me, though.

Too• 14 years ago

Maybe they are voting bots that keep liking random junk to not look suspicious when they all together like something the botnet owner decides that they all shall like.

It would look a bit weird if thousands of users always liked exactly the same thing and nothing else.

nilliams• 14 years ago

That makes sense, it would be nice if someone tested this theory to see if there were commonalities in which ads this apparent botnet liked.

... but then you'd assume that'd be something Facebook ran automated checks for.

biznickman• 14 years ago

Potential benefactors:

1. Facebook - obviously they benefit from higher CPMs in any country. I seriously doubt they would create fake profiles on their own system though (that would be fraud).

2. Like resellers/advertisers - A client comes to you and says they want tons of likes. While there are a lot of ways to work around this system, one obvious way is to generate fake profiles in countries where the CPMs are low, then target ads at your own bot army. You can sell the likes, generate the likes yourself, and profit. Otherwise you're waiting for quality people to like your page which as this article illustrates, is extremely costly. The bottom line: pay for cheap likes, receive cheap likes.

I should add that these malevolent actors in the system are beneficial in the short-term for Facebook (CPMs rise) but bad in the long-term. As genuine advertisers see their effective CPMs rise, the ROI decreases. This forces benevolent actors out...

tschellenbach• 14 years ago

I completely disagree, my company (Fashiolista) advertises almost exclusively on Facebook. The results are great. My reasoning why Facebook works so well can be found here: http://www.mellowmorning.com/2011/09/21/5-ways-in-which-face...

white_devil2• 14 years ago

> I completely disagree

There's nothing to disagree about. The guy just pointed out what happened.

Besides, "I completely disagree" is just code for "You're wrong".

smacktoward• 14 years ago

"I completely disagree" is just code for "You're wrong"

I completely disagree with that statement :-D

"I disagree" is a statement of opinion -- I believe something different than you do. "You're wrong" is an assertion of fact -- your belief is incorrect. The former is much less of a direct challenge to the other person than the latter is.

smsm422• 14 years ago

I wonder who created that Ahmed Ronaldo profile and why? I.e., paid social networking is nothing new, but liking random pages doesn't bring in any money by itself, so somebody has to pay for that for some reason. The only party that profits from fake likers is Facebook, but assuming Facebook pays these guys is kind of far fetched - if they did, that'd be outright fraud and possibly criminal. So I prefer not to assume that without evidence for it. Then who pays for it and why? What is the incentive to fake-like advertisers on facebook?

citizens2• 14 years ago

> "Then who pays for it and why?"

Many people believe social signals help increase their search engine rankings and/or conversion rates. Some of those people buy likes, shares, etc. for that reason.

> "What is the incentive to fake-like advertisers on facebook?"

Perhaps people who offer those social-seo services control thousands of robot-facebook accounts and they want their robots to seem like real, active users? It seems possible that they would automate some random activity (in this case liking virtual bagel's ad) while they're waiting around for orders.

Just guesses.

smsm422• 14 years ago

As I say, paying for likes is nothing new, but in that case he didn't pay anybody but Facebook, that's what makes it confusing. Though your hypothesis is plausible - even though liking random non-related stuff would make one less like real person for me, it very well might make it more "active" for whatever algorithms are used by facebook or SEO types, and thus more valuable, at least in the eyes of SEO types.

benologist• 14 years ago

They're building old, legit-looking profiles for when those accounts and actions are worth something.

Same thing happens here on HN - there's lots of young accounts that dutifully push a couple generic links from the usual tech sites every day.

jonathanjaeger• 14 years ago

You get what you pay for -- the 'likes' you got from countries other than U.S. and UK were very cheap, so don't expect such crazy value in terms of brand awareness that turns into dollars. The reason 'likes' in U.S./UK are way more expensive is because it's competitive, that is, brands are willing to pay that much for 'likes' because over time they see they're getting something from it. The fact that your company is non-existent seems irrelevant. You created a funnel and some percentage of people who see the ad will convert, plain and simple.

ameyamk• 14 years ago

We had the same experience. We were able to get a "like" for our page under 10 cents (In Indian market). Number of likes grew from 500 to 5000 in matter of days. But drilling bit more, it seemed like most of these people were having hundreds of likes. As a business owner at the end of the day it was hard to quantify value of these likes. We waited more, and started measuring engagement of these users for our subsequent wall updates on our pages. Results were disappointing. Engagement of people generated from "organic" likes was 10 times higher than the one generated from paid advertising. We also found that very few of those 5000 people ever engaged with our page in subsequent weeks.

Bottom line: We were happy to generate 5000+ likes with little money, and that helped us look like more legit and popular business. However, real value of generating business from these ads was minimal.

mariusz331• 14 years ago

I agree it makes you look like a more popular business but does it make you feel more popular? I feel that growing a fan base organically helps you learn lessons and garner quality feedback for your product. Maybe some people who like your page wouldn't feel compelled to give you advice for your business because it appears that you have a winning strategy already with all your likes.

captainchaos• 14 years ago

I have to echo the sentiment of some others here. Facebook ads are not useless -- far from it. However it does seem that a lot of people are trying to game the system in overseas markets. My theory? The bots are coming from blackhat ad services like these: http://www.buyilikes.com/

Perhaps they have bot farms that try to drive up the likes of ANY ad targeted to those countries? I'm not sure, but the summary of the posts over the last few days seems to be that ads perform legitimately in the US and EU, and with some questions elsewhere.

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

"But in running this non-existent firm I have learned quite a bit about the value of those "likes" prized by so many big brands, and the usefulness of Facebook's advertising."

Shouldn't he have said useLESSness not usefulness? It's pitifully useless, let's not be politically correct and say it's not that useful.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

No uselessness, much usefulness. Much uselessness, no usefulness.

In the context of that sentence, they are interchangeable.

kposehn• 14 years ago

This is a very weak experiment and conclusion.

1) The author made a Facebook page for a fictional product that was rather obviously silly - downloading bagels - and talks about it as if it were a real product.

2) The FB ads campaign ran with an absolutely horrid targeting set:

> I chose the United States, the UK, Russia, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. I narrowed it down slightly by targeting under 45-year-olds interested in cookery and consumer electronics, but was told that would still give me a potential audience of 112 million customers.

This is completely silly. Trying to target 112 million people means you won't be able to draw any sort of conclusion or get valid data - nor expect a meaningful response - without spending tens of thousands. If he wanted a response in the US or UK, he should have started there and focused on it to the exclusion of all else.

3) His statement "it seems that Facebook adverts can be very effective in generating interest in your business from certain countries but not in the US or the UK" is borne through no real testing or time. He spent less than $100 - you cannot draw any sort of conclusion from that information.

connor• 14 years ago

I agree, this entire article is a waste of time. How can you draw any kind of blanket conclusions from such a contrived experiment? At the very least talk to some actual businesses and see what their opinions are.

kordless• 14 years ago

Depends on whether his data points were cherry picked. We don't know if they are or not, so we assume he jumped to conclusions. Maybe.

If his sample set, consisting solely of Ahmed Ronaldo, is representative of the rest of the people 'liking' his page, I'd say he has a point - and there's something fishy going on that warrants further investigation.

OTOH, if Ahmed is one of Facebook's 1.5% 'undesirable' users, then I'd say I agree with you, and that India and SA is just full of people who love virtual bagels.

ereckers• 14 years ago

He got just enough data to write his article and jump on the fast moving "Facebook ads suck" train. If he did this for a living he'd be fired, if he was a small business man he'd learn his lesson quickly. The same as it's ever been with any ad medium, internet, periodical, etc..

austenallred• 14 years ago

Exactly. It's a news organization. You have to milk that trend while it's there and rack in those pageviews. This wasn't a scientific academic study, it was a marketing ploy with a pre-conceived result in mind. Honestly I might "like" it as a result sheer quirkiness, or as a result of curiosity it would inspire.

ja27• 14 years ago

But he jumped on the train back on July 12 - well before Limited Run and every tech news outlet jumped on.

greenyoda• 14 years ago

Your #1 is a good point. Since the only value of this "product" is that it's a joke, the number of "likes" he got in different countries could just be a reflection on how funny people from different cultures think "virtual bagels" are, and not an indication of any commercially significant behavior.

Or, users in the U.S. might just be so jaded from having seen too many joke products advertised on Facebook that they don't bother liking them anymore, while they may still be a novelty in Egypt.

slurgfest4• 14 years ago

Or rather than making tortured assumptions that Egyptians are especially tickled by VirtualBagel, you could use Occam's Razor. It is more likely that "Ahmed Ronaldo" is an indiscriminate clicker than that some obscure aspect of Arab history makes Virtual Bagels especially more funny to Egyptians than to Brits.

acqq4• 14 years ago

Let me get this straight: the article author paid $10 for his page to "be liked" in Egypt (population estimate: 90 mil) and India (population estimate 1.2 billion) as he himself claims "a potential audience of 112 million customers" and then was surprised that he got total of 1600 "likes" from the given area in 24 hours?

Then he acts surprised!? What exactly did he expect?

As others also point: his page is a joke, somebody will always "like" the joke, maybe even recommend it to other friends!

From his target population, one of 70000 potential "eyes" "liked" the joke in 24 hours. So what?

Dylan168074• 14 years ago

I honestly can't tell what your point is. Why are you bringing up populations? You seem to be implying some kind of expectation but I can't tell what.

I'll try to explain the author's point. He was confused by and suspicious of the vastly higher liking rates in certain countries than in US/UK.

acqq4• 14 years ago

He paid $10 for area that included India and Egypt, for only one day, receiving 1600 likes in one day. He paid additional $50 for smaller area that didn't have these countries for 3 days, receiving 1400 likes, average 350 per day.

So: 1600 likes from India and Egypt in one day: $10 == 0.6 cent per like. 350 likes without that area: $16 per day == 4.6 cent per like.

Where's the surprise? If he pays for cheaper likes, he gets the cheaper likes.

Did he expect to pay for cheap likes and get the expensive ones? Does such an expectation have any economic sense?

schulz3• 14 years ago

The article kind of glossed over this, but the Click through rate of .55% is off the charts. It's _clearly_ fraud, based on having seen thousands of ad campaigns data. Anything over .1 is great, and over .2 you start looking for what you broke.

.55 is an Adops executive daydream.

(The .059% from UK visitors is about what you'd expect)

codegeek3• 14 years ago

Imagine if fb built a feature that shows the "Average number of likes of the liker who liked your business page". Then things will get interesting.

slurgfest4• 14 years ago

That isn't so desirable for Facebook because Facebook has a strong interest in having its real users 'liking' many things. Something which real users have no real incentive to do. Anyway, a real bubblehead sitting there 'liking' thousands of things is a valuable thing for Facebook.

Zenst2• 14 years ago

I'm curious as nobody seemed interested when I submitted about this exact story 21 days ago. Maybe an experiment there in itself.

slurgfest4• 14 years ago

Could be the time of day, day of week. It could also be the more recent movements of stock prices setting a context where this is more interesting to people (a number of articles on Facebook prices in just the last few days). Who knows?

Zenst2• 14 years ago

More than likely. Still does highlight that its not just the news but also when you and as you say many prevailing aspects come into play. Like comedy timming is everything and that does seem to carry for many other aspects of life with regards to interaction. Fascinating though non the less.

cletus• 14 years ago

I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's book Anathem [1], which some people didn't like (compared to say Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon) but I really enjoyed. Apart from the mystical elements it raised some interesting points.

At one point it was talking about the Reticulum (Internet), botnet ecologies and how some of these would sublty modify information such that you couldn't really trust anything you read. I find this an intriguing and somewhat alarming idea.

Facebook was good early on because bots weren't sophisticated enough to create real-looking Facebook profiles so if you had a Facebook profile you had a person. Now they're better but still a human can pick a bot pretty easily.

But bots will only get better.

One idea that's been raised is the notion of trust. Usage patterns are analyzed to identify bot or bot-like behaviour. You see this in identifying sock or meat puppets on reddit, HN and other social news sites.

People have talked about the hordes of Twitter accounts used to make content appear more relevant than it is. This sort of thing is already happening.

But how do you pick out the bots when they're the majority and thus there is little to no statistical norm to compare them to real people?

At what point will bots start modifying Wikipedia articles and have other bots or, more likely, some stooges, approve those changes? What about establishing fake sites with wrong information and having them appear valid to search engines?

This will I believe be a big problem.

One particularly problematic aspect to this is that the site owners themselves, within reason, have little incentive to expose bots (or inactive accounts for that matter) because so much importance is placed on metrics like "# of active accounts".

This only becomes problematic if the user experience suffers beyond a certain threshold.

It's going to be interesting to see just how much of a problem this becomes and what we do to solve or at least mitigate it.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0061474096

r00fus• 14 years ago

Hellbanning [1] is a solution - let the bot think it's connecting to other users, but in reality it's completely invisible - even better when you address a small net of these - they're banned to the same hell so they can see each other and interact, but are all invisible to the greater populace.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning

BCM43• 14 years ago

That works until you unintentionally hellban a legitimate user.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

Ultimately it is just the same problem as with digesting information created by humans. Humans also misinform, out of malice or because they don't know better. The solution is rationality, I suppose. You have to verify the claims that are being made. The bots of the future will just have to get better at that.

seiji• 14 years ago

so much importance is placed on metrics like "# of active accounts".

Also known as asshole metrics (which are, are at most, 40% true). They only exist to manipulate you into thinking the company is more important than reality. Most companies will tell you "total registered users" but few will give "active users." If they do give you active users, then they'll count "active" as something silly like "we saw their cookie during the month" meaning they were just delivered some external asset passively.

Stop lying and make something valuable (except lies can keep companies in business much longer than most people realize).

recursive• 14 years ago

I did. Virtual bagels are hilarious.

aarlo• 14 years ago

It's ramadan. People in Cairo are fasting and hungry. So they see an ad for a bagel and click "like". That's all there is to it.

penetrator• 14 years ago

if it's all about bots, why the US&UK CTR is 1/10th?

aren't US & UK markets more lucrative too to bots makers?

I suspect someone somewhere has CTR statistics for certain keywords on certain regions and kind of map it out. Bot makers may have ILLEGAL access and probably do it to avoid suspicion.

zacharydenton• 14 years ago

If the point of the experiment was to determine whether Facebook ads are primarily clicked by real people (as opposed to "indiscriminate clickers"), the author should have used something so bland no one except bots would click on. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of users click on ads for "Moist Lint", for instance.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

The author might not be aware that good bagels are not available everywhere in the world. If bagel delivery was available where I live, I might "like" the idea, too. I can not just walk around the corner and buy a good bagel.

Who 'likes' my Virtual Bagels?

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