I've suspected that google has been turning a blind eye to ad fraud for a few years now. In the early-mid 2010's, ad fraud wasn't nearly as common.

And it's absolutely not the case that google can't detect ad fraud - in fact they are VERY good at detecting it when they want to.

▲

econ 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You had huge click farms back in the days.

Today the fraud is perhaps more obvious. YT has served me the same 20 min ad 200+ times over the last few weeks. I let the entire thing play 10 times and 50 times didn't press skip for the first minute (or the view doesn't count) It's so annoying Ive reduced video watching by 80-90%

The idea they have someone pay for this in the hope I will buy the product?

Or do people really intentionally run campaigns like that?

▲

sethops1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

These bug me so much. Those 20+ minute ads do nothing but piss me off. I have to grab the remote or switch tabs or whatever to get past them. To the point where I'm on the verge of adding YT to the permanent block list along with Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.

	▲	xp84 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Serious question: Do you watch a lot of YouTube? Why not just cough up the $16 for YouTube Premium? Creators actually do get paid more for Premium users' views than they do from adsense. You get to see none of these ads that piss you off. Look, I run UBlock Origin myself. But that's because there's zero other way to look at any Web content without going insane with videos and other garbage popping all over the place, and even when sites have memberships, I use too many distinct ones anyway, and the memberships may not remove the ads and junk. But when it comes to sites like YouTube that let me choose between "ads" and "non-ads" experiences... I guess I'm just saying I see a ton of ROI on the $16.

▲

mitxela an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those work. You'll remember that brand if you ever need that product.

▲

DANmode 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's so annoying Ive reduced video watching by 80-90%

This is the opposite of resourcefulness - unless the videos were a distraction, not a real goal of yours.

PS Genuine question: where is the fraud in a 20 minute ad?

Steve Balmer explaining his take on how local governments of the US work was a hilarious ad offering on my non-adblocked device the other day - I’m struggling to see vectors for fraud.