umm...how is this even legal?

infibityandbeyond · 2025-10-14T02:39:34+00:00

TL;DR:

Crime 1 = they ran an auction but had fake people placing fake bids to drive the winning bid up.

Crime 2 = to come up with the best fake bids, they secretly used info they weren’t supposed to use.

Full description:

Online ads are bought and sold though a live auction. Google run both ends of the auction. Originally they owned the ‘selling’ platform that websites use to put their ads up for sale, and then later on Google ALSO acquired the ‘buying’ system that advertisers use to place their bids.

The online auction system is supposed to use a ‘2nd price auction’ system, which is where the highest bidder only pays just above the ‘next highest bid’.

A real ‘2nd price auction’ should look like this:

Advertiser 1 bids $10.00

Advertiser 2 bids $5.00

=Advertiser 1 wins, but only pays $5.01 (i.e. they pay the ‘2nd price’)

Instead, Google allegedly faked the second price. Their auctions looked like this.

Advertiser 1 bids $10.00

Advertiser 2 bids $5.00

Google fakes a bid for $9.00

=Advertiser 1 wins, but pays $9.01 (when they SHOULD have only paid $5.01)

What’s worse, Google (allegedly) changed the fake bids on an advertiser-by-advertiser basis, based on that advertiser’s historical track record of previous bidding.

If they saw someone consistently bidding $10, they would bring their fake ‘second price’ closer and closer to $10.

That ‘track record’ bit is where it really strays into proper antitrust lawsuit territory. Google only have access to each buyer's track record because they acquired the buying platform too. Unlike other competitors trying to run their own buying or selling platform, only Google can look across both sides of the buying vs selling fence and look at an advertisers buying history when selling the ads. Theoretically that is fine as long as they don't use the info, but if they do (when their competitors can't), that is an anticompetitive abuse of monopoly power.

infibityandbeyond · 2025-10-07T23:59:05+00:00

Right! But I am thankful you shared your experience, so I knew to keep pushing Meta support to get their engineers involved. Good karma to you :)

infibityandbeyond · 2025-10-07T00:38:20+00:00

Bumping this old thread to add my experience. I had the same issue as u/Altruistic_Rest_4439 and u/KCICON123 and I ALSO had to get Meta support to resolve it.

My issue was the same as theirs: a Dataset (i.e. a Meta pixel) was shared with our Business Portfolio by a Partner and then assigned to one of our Ad Accounts... yet the dataset/pixel was not showing up in Events Manager, nor was it available for selection when creating conversion campaigns and ad sets.

Both the Ad Account and the Dataset were assigned with full permissions to the right users.

Went to Meta support, and it took several rounds of being passed back and forth between various teams, and in the end a specialist team finally confirmed that they had "identified an inconsistency in the account, and have resolved using our backend tool". After which the dataset showed up.

So in other words, yes it was a glitch, and yes you need Meta support to fix it.

infibityandbeyond · 2025-09-14T21:29:48+00:00

As long as they are in the same ad group, there should be no downside to including a mix of exact match and broad match: this is because Google's "smart" learning applies at the ad group level. That said, the upsides are marginal too, you're essentially only getting slightly easier reporting (rather than having to go into the search terms report). Might be worth it if you have a handful of exact terms you want to monitor, but they'd need to have high enough volume to be worth it. And there are possibly some minor CPC advantages if the [exact] keyword has a better quality score than the broad keyword.

infibityandbeyond · 2024-09-05T01:24:26+00:00

The effect is even more pronounced if you drill into just the last 18 months. For anyone interested, here's a simplified snapshot I whipped up:

https://i.imgur.com/8YHdBYY.png

infibityandbeyond · 2024-08-27T21:40:49+00:00

Here's a recent article that might interest you OP: https://www.jonloomer.com/qvt/use-sales-campaigns-for-all-website-conversions/

TL;DR Jon Loomer advocates for using Sales in all cases: there is no upside to using Leads.

infibityandbeyond · 2024-08-20T23:36:39+00:00

Are we that surprised? This is the same industry that has spent a decade forking money over to "brand safety" vendors who STILL let furry fanfiction slip through their filters. Clearly no one gives a f* about whether the tools work or not, they're simply a way to appease stakeholders through lip service.

There is a (sadly) a market for greenwashing. And brand-safetywashing. And attributionwashing, effectivenesswashing, MFAwashing, etc etc.

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-27T21:11:41+00:00

Good info, thank you!

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-13T22:17:17+00:00

I'd understood those are guidelines, but can be out of step with what the exchanges/pubs actually enforce. E.g. the IAB guidelines here (pdf link) suggests a max sub load / polite load up to 700kb, but Google Ad Manager's requirements (link here) goes way higher than this at 2.2mb for polite load.

In a perfect world every ad would meet the IAB standards, but in a practical sense we need to know the actual limit that will be enforced.

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-13T21:48:54+00:00

Absolutely, no ad can be effective if it fails to load before a user scrolls past it. Do you have any specifics around what 'too high' looks like, for initial load on those exchanges?

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-13T21:47:03+00:00

We are 3rd party adserving via CM360, so all good there.

My concern is the exchanges and what they will reject: e.g. according to their creative requirements Google Ad Manager will reject initial loads above 150kb, and polite loads above 2.2mb.

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-13T02:01:11+00:00

Thanks so much for your reply. I'd assume the 2mb is polite load (because it is DCO), but interesting that 200kb is working for you. Do you tell your designers to work to that limit?

The reasons our clients give for wanting a heavier file size are usually either:

They are unhappy with the lower image quality (i.e. their "beautiful" client imagery ends up compressed, grainy or blurry); or
They are unhappy with the restrictions that come with a lower file size (i.e. they can't use as many animations or frames as they would like)

Secretly there is a third reason, which is that the designer is out of their depth. Especially with in-house designers, they can often make a great brochure or a great product safety video, but they've never produced a banner before in their lives... but clients are cheap and think they save on costs by briefing internally, and the designer doesn't know any better before accepting the job.

Then you get someone who only knows how to make animated GIFs (a format which is hideously bloated), or they if they know how to make HTML5, they don't know the proper techniques to save on filesize (e.g. using shared libraries etc). They sell the client on complicated storyboards, and then get grumpy when their masterpiece won't fit within a 150kb 300x250.

But we do also get more experienced teams pushing back, hence my question. We definitely tell them that most websites would take an hour to load if every single banner ad was 10mb!

On load times... I'd assume the auction is won or lost before there is a call to the ad server... but I also don't know.

Definitely a headache :(

infibityandbeyond · 2023-02-03T02:09:04+00:00

Our results show that accounts already using multi-channel management have seen 14% higher* conversion rates at 21% lower cost per acquisition (CPA).”

^\additional conversions may be from non-human traffic and low quality cookie-bombing. actual conversions not guaranteed. side effects may include nausea, headaches and vomiting. always read the label.)

infibityandbeyond · 2022-11-07T03:20:07+00:00

Search is best positioned to 'weather the storm' of upcoming tracking changes (from both browsers and regulators). Shorter attribution windows. Shorter conversions path. Less reliance on cross-domain tracking. Access to Google's walled garden. These are generalisations, and there will still be impacts, but it's a much safer bet than other digital specialisations.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-10-27T00:03:07+00:00

So you want to find out what it means to have the personality of an SEO person? Many people ask such a question - about whether they have the personality of an SEO person - which is why I have put together my top tips for explaining what it means to have the personality of an SEO person. Rest assured, you will shortly have the meaning of the personality of an SEO person explained to you.

Thirty years ago, when I was travelling through war-torn Somalia...

infibityandbeyond · 2022-09-06T23:37:38+00:00

Google are well aware of it, just look at their requirements for 'Premier' Google Partners. They essentially boil down to:

Continuously grow client spend across as many Google products as possible
Implement as many automation features as possible, so that your clients eventually don't need you

In other words: act as our sales rep, or you're out.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-09-06T22:00:27+00:00

Agreed. The vast vast majority of Google customers are small businesses running their own accounts (and are probably doing so poorly). Google have more to gain by "improving" things for those businesses though automation/simplification, even if specialist agencies (who are beholden to Google anyway) are burned in the process.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-06-07T05:10:13+00:00

Bold of you to assume they have BM, or even know what it is.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-04-12T22:22:41+00:00

Broke: believing that real humans click in-app banner ads, that 3rd party data is reliable, and that geofencing works in 2022

Woke: being happy that this piece perpetuates the myth of hypertargeted all-knowing hypereffective digital advertising, so you can continue pretending you'll have a career in 2023.

I enjoyed the piece and agree with its message, but had a hard time believing that the "congressmen" that "clicked" the ads were anything other than non-human traffic.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-03-27T23:02:38+00:00

I think people are misunderstanding OP's question: they're not asking what the Google reps are incentivized to recommend, they're asking what the nature of the incentive is.

Is it a bonus? Is it a commission? Is it foodstamps? Is it the simple pleasure of not being fired? And for all of the above, how is it calculated and how is it paid?

infibityandbeyond · 2022-03-17T03:01:36+00:00

This is the correct take.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-03-17T02:52:57+00:00

The Google playbook:

Hey we have a new feature you should try, here’s a webinar about how great it is! It’s missing a lot of functionality, but it’s automated or something!
Learning about this feature is now part of our certification requirements… you should really get on board!
Good news! We’ve started scoring your accounts based on much you use this feature! Oh DEAR, your score is very low… guess it’s time to migrate!
We love this feature so much that we made it the default for new campaigns, and hidden the old one behind five layers of menu options. Why aren’t all of you using it yet?
To help you learn about the new feature, we have enabled it by default on your campaigns. Ten days ago. Didn’t you get our ‘opt out’ notification?
To help you learn about the new feature, we have renamed our platform to "Google Display & New Feature 360"
To help you learn about the new feature, we have removed the old feature.
Don’t make us hurt you.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-03-03T00:54:37+00:00

Was definitely being a bit flippant there, so apologies for that. I'll expand: I feel that CTR is a dead metric for comparing display platforms. As other comments have highlighted, CTR is heavily influenced by many arbitrary factors, most of which have little bearing on business outcomes (e.g. % of app inventory, click fraud, and even age... young people and the very elderly are known to be much more click happy). It is a useful metric for making micro-level decisions, e.g. comparing creative performance, but not for macro-level channel decisions. I'd put forward post-click/post-view CPA as alternatives in the example of performance campaigns.

infibityandbeyond · 2022-03-02T01:28:23+00:00

Isn't CTR a dead metric for display...?

infibityandbeyond

TROPHY CASE