Uit de uitkomsten van analyse-software van Limited Pressing, een klein bedrijf dat bands helpt om muziek en merchandise via inteet te verkopen, zou blijken dat 80% van de paginabezoeken via Facebook-advertenties afkomstig zijn van zogenaamde 'bots' of geprogrammeerde software. Dat zijn bezoekers waarvoor het bedrijf Facebook betaalt.
Limited Pressing heet inmiddels Limited Run, iets dat zij graag op hun Facebookpagina willen aanpassen. Eén probleem: Facebook wil dat wel aanpassen maar alleen wanneer Limited Run maandelijks $2.000 aan advertenties via Facebook inkoopt. Limited Run was 'not amused' en plaatste op hun Facebookpagina een verklaring waarom zij stoppen met hun pagina op Facebook:
Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn't verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn't have JavaScript, it's very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable.
While we were testing Facebook ads, we were also trying to get Facebook to let us change our name, because we're not Limited Pressing anymore. We contacted them on many occasions about this. Finally, we got a call from someone at Facebook. They said they would allow us to change our name. NICE! But only if we agreed to spend $2000 or more in advertising a month. That's correct. Facebook was holding our name hostage. So we did what any good hardcore kids would do. We cursed that piece of shit out! Damn we were so pissed. We still are. This is why we need to delete this page and move away from Facebook. They're scumbags and we just don't have the patience for scumbags.
Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/limitedrun
Facebook liet op vragen van de New York Times weten de zaak te onderzoeken en heeft in het verleden geregeld laten weten dat het nep-accounts zal verwijderen.
Hoe dan ook komen deze geluiden voor Facebook op ongelegen moment. Het bedrijf maakte vorige week bekend dit kwartaal $157 miljoen verlies te hebben geleden. Facebook zou in de toekomst flink moeten verdienen aan advertentie-inkomsten. Bedrijven die overwegen om bij Facebook advertenties in te kopen zullen na deze geluiden zeer vermoedelijk afwachten. Immers, welk bedrijf gaat Facebook betalen voor de aandacht die zij van 'bots' krijgen?
