These numbers are legitimately shocking.

  • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    A bot account is wasting impressions (the thing appears on your feed regardless if you interact with it - that’s an impression). Those are part of advertising budgets and impact your ROI on ad dollars, not just clicking through. Which means people are getting fewer click through per impression, which means they are wasting money putting their ads/sponsored content in front of non-people who are never going to click through. Edit: This also potentially messes with any data they are getting about their audiences such as demo and location given the sheer scale.

    Imagine you pay for a billboard that is priced because of how many cars drive past it only to find out that 75% of the cars are self driving deliveries with no passengers.

    • atzanteol
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      Ah - shit I completely missed that it was “impressions” being fraudulent not “clicks”. Thanks!

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Happy to help! Yeah they’re basically saying “we had 100 people come see your store!” and it was really only 25, meaning it severely diluted the value of impressions for advertisers.