<story><title>Reverse-engineering Google’s &quot;Skip Button Guarantee&quot;</title><url>https://checkmyads.org/branded/googles-epic-multi-billion-dollar-ad-scam-makes-sense-to-us/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>Meh. I read the original report when it was released, and it was a whole lot of nothing.&lt;p&gt;Their claim was basically – &amp;quot;we found some Google video ad fraud!&amp;quot;. Well guess what, Google knows and agrees that there is fraud. So do all the advertisers who pay them. The question is really about &lt;i&gt;how much&lt;/i&gt; fraud there is. Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that number.&lt;p&gt;Now the report makes the usual claims – ads run on shady sites, ads viewed by bots, ads muted or obscured, ads unskippable and against policy etc. When you read through and try to find actual numbers for the severity of these issues, they just skip over it with weasel words. Just read their opening statement:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; However, this research report finds that for years, significant quantities of TrueView skippable in-stream ads, purchased by many different brands and media agencies, appear to have been served on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps in which the consumer experience did not meet Google’s stated quality standards. For example, many TrueView in-stream ads were served muted and auto-playing as out-stream video or as obscured video players on independent sites. Often, there was little to no organic video media content between ads, the video units simply played ads only.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;significant quantities&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many different brands&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;appear to have been served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many ads were served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Often&amp;quot;...you can keep reading as long as you like, and will not find a single objective number or percentage. Unless someone can conclusively find that, no one is going to take them seriously.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eddythompson80</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;significant quantities&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many different brands&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;appear to have been served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many ads were served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Often&amp;quot;...you can keep reading as long as you like, and will not find a single objective number or percentage&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I’m a bit confused. The Adalytics report definitely defines numbers and percentages of the samples they looked at. Obviously only Google will have the authoritative final numbers, but they are also the ones most incentivized to keep them as opaque as possible. I admit I’m not very familiar with the ad business, and know that a fraud is rampant, but there is a difference between a rampant 5-10% fraud to 50–60%. The first few  paragraph list a lot of percentages from that report&lt;p&gt;Original report: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;adalytics.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;invalid-google-video-partner-trueview-ads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;adalytics.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;invalid-google-video-partner-truev...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Reverse-engineering Google’s &quot;Skip Button Guarantee&quot;</title><url>https://checkmyads.org/branded/googles-epic-multi-billion-dollar-ad-scam-makes-sense-to-us/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>Meh. I read the original report when it was released, and it was a whole lot of nothing.&lt;p&gt;Their claim was basically – &amp;quot;we found some Google video ad fraud!&amp;quot;. Well guess what, Google knows and agrees that there is fraud. So do all the advertisers who pay them. The question is really about &lt;i&gt;how much&lt;/i&gt; fraud there is. Google says that it actively keeps it under a certain %, and advertisers are generally okay with that number.&lt;p&gt;Now the report makes the usual claims – ads run on shady sites, ads viewed by bots, ads muted or obscured, ads unskippable and against policy etc. When you read through and try to find actual numbers for the severity of these issues, they just skip over it with weasel words. Just read their opening statement:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; However, this research report finds that for years, significant quantities of TrueView skippable in-stream ads, purchased by many different brands and media agencies, appear to have been served on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps in which the consumer experience did not meet Google’s stated quality standards. For example, many TrueView in-stream ads were served muted and auto-playing as out-stream video or as obscured video players on independent sites. Often, there was little to no organic video media content between ads, the video units simply played ads only.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;significant quantities&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many different brands&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;appear to have been served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;many ads were served&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Often&amp;quot;...you can keep reading as long as you like, and will not find a single objective number or percentage. Unless someone can conclusively find that, no one is going to take them seriously.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>makeitdouble</author><text>At the same time, Google is the only entity that could provide the numbers you want to see.&lt;p&gt;Who else could get actual numbers of scams they run vs legit ads ? There&amp;#x27;s no other entity that sees every single of the ads they serve, so we&amp;#x27;d need a trustworthy insider leak to meet your standard.</text></comment>