Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for $3 billion or more, according to people briefed on the matter. The offer, and rebuff, came as Snapchat is being wooed by other investors and potential acquirers. Chinese e-commerce giant Tencent Holdings had offered to lead an investment that would value two-year-old Snapchat at $4 billion.
Online ad fraud is rampant. We've known that for a long time. But it is surprising to find how cheap fraudulent traffic can be, and how some bots interact with video.
Digiday spoke with a former publishing executive who admitted to selling fraudulent traffic to advertisers in a "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" sort of way. In his confession, he revealed that his company would buy $10,000 to $35,000 in non-human traffic per day, at $0.002 per click. They'd make between $0.0025 and $0.004 from ad exchanges for every click they purchased.
A publisher goes to a traffic vendor who can, for example, promote links to the publisher's site in search engine queries or, of course, more dubious methods (Adweek released a report earlier this year labeling six vendors as the sketchiest of the bunch). According to Digiday's whistle-blower, there is no need to ask about where the cheaper traffic comes from, but it is assumed it's bot-driven.
"Publishers know," he told Digiday. "They might say 'we had no idea' and blame it on their traffic acquisition vendor, but that's bull----, and they know it. If you're buying visits for less than a penny, there's no -- For more information read the original article here.