Sep 09, 2020 21:00:00

Claims that LinkedIn ads cost unnecessarily with fraud bots and false clicks

Similar to Twitter and Facebook, business-specific SNS 'LinkedIn' can also display advertisements on the platform. However, when

RMG , a digital marketing company, advertised on LinkedIn, it reported that it was costly even though it was not effective with only fraudulent clicks and bots.

Study: 'LinkedIn is Basically a Money Pit' Because of Ad Fraud
https://www.samueljscott.com/2020/09/08/linkedin-ad-fraud/

RMG's Ryan Gellis has posted on YouTube his experience of actually advertising on LinkedIn.

Why Your LinkedIn Marketing Campaign Isn't Working-YouTube


RMG posted an online seminar ad on LinkedIn in August 2020. The advertisement was a combination of the following speaker photos and messages.

One of the points that Gellis felt suspicious when advertising was that the expected

CPC (Cost Per Click / cost per click) was $ 25 (about 2600 yen), but the actual CPC Was $45 (about 4800 yen). The actual cost is 1.8 times higher than expected.

But Gellis's biggest concern is what happens when an ad is actually clicked. Gellis's advertisement is supposed to be clicked 11 times on LinkedIn, but 10 clicks in the log on RMG, 8 people were supposed to register for the online seminar in the analysis tool ' Full Story ' used by RMG Nevertheless, the actual number of registered people was zero.

After analyzing the inflow from the ads, Gellis said, 'No one did what they thought was 'this is the behavior of the real user' after clicking on the ad. This was another ad displayed on LinkedIn. That's also true: Nobody signed up from ads tested on LinkedIn during the period, regardless of the message or format of the ad.'

People who clicked on the ad and visited the webinar page were believed to have been 'wrong clicks' or 'bots', 1.3 seconds after leaving the page before rendering was complete. Also, when Gellis analyzed the movement of the mouse in Full Story, it was also reported that the movement was different from the actual human movement.

However, RMG advertisement display is limited to one day, the target audience is set to 16,000 people, the cost is 250 dollars (about 26,000 yen),

impressions which are the number of times the advertisement is displayed are both 680 to 2000 It was said that it was small and small.

On the other hand, Gellis says the results of this analysis are consistent with the larger advertising campaigns we've done in the past. Even in the $ 3000 (about 320,000 yen) scale campaign conducted in March, although the LinkedIn report was “256 clicks” “CPC is $ 11”, actually sign up from this click It seems that there were zero people. “With $3,000 a month of advertising, this behavior wouldn't improve the performance of the extra budget,” Gellis said.

RMG accused LinkedIn of being on a closed network and not following the digital advertising standards of the Internet advertising industry group/ IAB . 'To the best of our knowledge, LinkedIn is basically a money eater, and we can't get the performance we expect from the network,' Gellis said.

In response, a LinkedIn spokesperson said, “LinkedIn is a member-first organization, and our advertising program is designed to show only the high-quality material that is relevant to our members. Other automated fraudulent methods prohibit access to our services, which are considered a violation of our User Agreements.In addition, LinkedIn is a member of the IAB and works closely with our organization. I was involved in the development of standards for the digital advertising industry.”

In addition, when the above news became a hot topic on the social news site Hacker News, there was also a report that 'the same thing happened with using Google's smart display advertisement'.

Ad Fraud on LinkedIn | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24407432