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posted by on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the bots-trolling-bots dept.

Recently, I have been using Fullstory to view how my visitors behave on my landing page - and boy does it make a huge difference when that visitor comes from Google or Facebook ads.

Regular visitors from an email that I send out, or from a mailing list, reddit, forums, among others - actually read the content on the landing page. You can see the mouse move across the text as they read in some instances. You can see how they scroll, the breaks they take to digest. Though the clip is 3X faster than usual, below you can see how the scrolling and mouse movements make sense. [Ed. note: Clips are on source page.]

This visitor is very different - it feels like its a paid slave somewhere, or a bot that has clumsy intelligence, or a person that does not read. The mouse rarely moves, it does scroll - though mostly in one direction, and the pace is as if the visitor is not reading the content. Mobile users just scroll and scroll until the bottom and then they leave.

As a result I have stopped all my Google and Facebook campaigns and have focused on growing the service more organically via social sharing and friends. Has anyone else experienced this as well? I'd be happy to share videos or more details, but the difference is clearly noticeable. I'd be interested to see if Fullstory has any high-level analysis of this or if they can verify this behavior.

[...] I am not sure if this is true, but does anyone else experience very, very, very, different click-through and conversion rates on Google and Facebook relative to other organic means?

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

Related Stories

Walmart Kills Amazon Prime-like Service, Expands Free Shipping 10 comments

Walmart is canning a premium online ordering service and expanding its free shipping on various items instead:

Walmart announced free two-day shipping to home and stores on more than two million items, without a membership fee. The new offer is available starting at 8 a.m. EST today. With this announcement, Walmart has also lowered the minimum purchase required for free shipping to home to $35, from $50. Items being shipped to stores continue to have no price threshold.*

[...] Walmart's free two-day shipping will be available on the items customers shop the most, including household essentials such as baby necessities, pet products, food, like cereal and peanut butter, cleaning supplies and beauty favorites, as well as top electronics and toys.

[...] *Freight and marketplace are not included. Program is available in the contiguous United States.

Walmart recently bought Jet.com, an online e-commerce company with "an attractive brand with proven appeal, especially with Millennials, the first generation of true digital natives".

Meanwhile, Amazon is expanding its digital advertising business (before potential customers realize the scale of online ad fraud) and ordering the production of anime.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:09PM (#455567)

    A client recently tried out Google ads, it did absolutely nothing for their business. I'm sure it works for some industries more than others, but Google and FB ads simply are not the magical demographically targeted cure everyone thought they were.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:20PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:20PM (#455579) Journal

      Because... they became fucking ads.

      The "fucking" is important. The idea of connecting people to services they might want is a good one. The implementation, though, is to load spammy bullshit no one wants to see onto every single page on the internet, based on who pays for the most space with a half-nod towards "relevance" along the way.

      So when I search for something on google, and don't have adblock enabled(and a long time ago that was an idea worth considering, when google ads didn't suck giant balls), I don't get the paid service that's most applicable to my search. Instead I get the vaguely related one who has paid the most cash for impressions and click-throughs.

      And that's the problem. It's not that targeted ads can't hypothetically work, it's that greedy assholes will do everything they can to eat as much money as possible regardless of the long-term sustainability of the field. Which has happened with every kind of advertisement until now, so it's not exactly surprising. Fucking advertisement destroys advertisement.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:34PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:34PM (#455638) Journal
        And the sad thing is, Google used to be good at this. They used to tie the ads to the content on the page, so when you're reading about X, you'll see ads that are relevant to X. Those ads would be unobtrusive, plain text. I clicked on quite a few of these and was always surprised at how useful they were (in an era when everyone else was doing animated gif banner ads). Then Google decided to focus more on becoming Big Brother and knowing everything about me to target ads, so that instead of seeing ads related to X when I'm reading about X, I see ads about Y, where Y is something that the model thinks I am interested in based on weeks old data.
        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:46PM

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:46PM (#455647) Journal

          Yep, and it's also why I don't trust any "disruptive" silicon valley business. Because they all seem to start with doing things better, making a name for themselves, then immediately bringing back all the evil shit that plagued that industry for years.

          If uber doesn't have the same "Grody underpaid angry guy looking for a way to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers" reputation that taxis do now in 10 years, I'll eat my hat.

          If peoples' reactions aren't "Ugh, I have to take an uber" instead of "Oh, I guess I'll uber today", I'll be astounded.

          • (Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:39PM

            by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:39PM (#455678) Journal

            Seriously, I know it's overused as an excuse, but blame Wall Street -- or, more importantly, the attitude toward business that it represents. And then consider the attitude toward investments that it creates. And then consider the way said investors will force businesses to act.

            What you seem to want (as do most customers) is a relatively "stable" business. A business that keeps doing the same relatively good work with similar quality year after year. But what customers of a business want is different from what investors demand.

            That's not possible if you subscribe to the Wall Street model of a perpetual growth machine demanded by investors. Investors don't chase after companies that basically maintain stable revenue that basically keeps pace with inflation (as would be expected of a solid, stable company that keeps doing the same thing). Rather they want GROWTH. And not in an organic "this year we made a major innovation and will experience some growth with a new product for a year or two, but then we'll go back to stability for several years" way. No, they want big returns every year.

            It's worse with tech companies because everything changes so fast. Thus, any new major initiative in Silicon Valley could easily see a huge pattern of growth for its first few years (possibly 5. maybe even 10 years if you're lucky).

            But then what do you do to keep investors interested? How do you sustain that record of growth? It's basically impossible to do forever, but that's what the Wall Street myth demands. Even the most innovative companies on the planet can't do it.

            So, you start cutting corners. Your product gets cheaper to manufacture or maintain or slightly worse in quality. (Same goes for services.) You ship costs overseas to bring them down. You resort to increasingly desperate methods to keep up the perpetual growth model, and eventually that's going to impact the quality of what you do in noticeable ways. Those exact "corner cutting" possibilities will vary depending on the type of business/product/service, but it happens everywhere.

            Uber at least has somewhere to go -- it has plenty of markets to expand to with its main product -- and it's still privately owned. But once it reaches a reasonable saturation of markets or has an IPO and thus needs to start focusing more on short-term growth, be prepared for the bumps to appear. Unless it develops something major to reduce its costs, look for either increased prices or decline in service or both.

            Capital investors are great in the early years of a business, but at some point we lost the idea that a business could then plateau after its growth spurt and just pay dividends or whatever. Now investors will just hop to the "next big thing," which is why companies like Google and Apple and Facebook go around DESPERATELY buying up anything that could be "the next big thing." If they miss it and a serious competitor develops, that's potentially the endgame for them.

            (Well, there are actually still plenty of "dividend stocks" out there for people who want them, but the excitement is all over the growth. And now its not just rich people and bankers playing this speculation game anymore -- it's an entire machine sold to many Americans about how they can keep beating inflation in their retirement account returns, year after year after year. Everybody wins. Well... until the machine doesn't work that way anymore. Let's just all "keep the faith" in Our Lady of Perpetual Stock Returns. Because if we lose faith in that, it would be a disaster much worse than the Great Depression.)

            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:18AM

              by bob_super (1357) on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:18AM (#455795)

              Take it one step further, and blame yourself.
              Wall street wants high returns, not only because they are greedy, but because their customers have to get great returns to be able to afford to retire. Investment funds need to keep cranking the highest possible returns to avoid being abandoned by you and me... How far do people look into the past when choosing their 401k funds?
              Yup, in a wonderful twist of US greedy irony, the job sucks and you'll be outsourced, partially because you are trying to afford your retirement without a pension.
              LOL, as they say.

              • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:27AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:27AM (#455828)

                Whenever I make a similar argument as to why the news industry has faltered, in the US at least, that being because of "You" not wanting to pay for newspapers and insist on running ad blockers and there's no money to actually pay someone to do investigative journalism, I get modded to hell.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52AM (#455959)

                  Right, I'll just stop running ad blockers and get infested with malware, be tracked, and have pages slow to a crawl; that seems sensible. There's a reason why people block ads, and it's not because ads are typically reasonable and unobtrusive.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:22AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:22AM (#461501)

                    Not sure I agree...I don't run blockers on most of my boxes, and I never disable JavaScript.

                    Can't recall getting malware. Probably depends on where you surf.

                    That being said, I do think it is creepy when I see ads for stuff I googled four weeks ago.

                • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:12PM

                  by Pino P (4721) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:12PM (#456130) Journal

                  If ad networks didn't insist on tracking my browsing behavior from one site to another, running proprietary JavaScript programs on my computer, or running video ads on non-video articles, then I wouldn't feel a need to use a tracking blocker.

            • (Score: 2) by termigator on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:10AM

              by termigator (4271) on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:10AM (#455881)

              Yep. And the Wall Street mindset exists in the executive board rooms of large companies. Years ago, I worked for a major tech company that had a history of providing bonuses to employees at end of year if the company was profitable. In my short time there, executives changed the bonus rule where bonuses were only provided if the company exceeds projected expectations. I.e. The company could still record a profit, but if it was not high enough to match or exceed expectations, employee bonuses were not paid out.

              Of course, the rule did not apply to executive management.

              Serious bullshit.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:53PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:53PM (#455655) Journal

        You bring up a point I have posted about several times.

        Advertising destroys every medium in which it is used. Ever.

        I'll start with Radio and not comment.

        TV had a tolerable number of ads. Somewhere during the golden age of TV the ads got more and more. And the quality of ads went way down. It used to be that the ads were somewhat entertaining. Then more and more ads. Lower quality programming.

        People fled to cable. The promise of cable was no ads. That illusion didn't last long. But it was tolerable. And programming content was superior. And included the network TV channels if you needed to see a program on network TV. Then the ads got worse. The content got worse. More and more time was spent on ads, and less on content. It got so bad that after an ad, when the content resumed, there would be more ads walking out onto the show you are watching, obscuring things, sometimes important things.

        People fled to internet TV. Some of it has ads, some does not. Hulu offers ad free for a higher price, which I'm willing to pay. Netflix is free of ads. When they started considering ads, I wrote them about how this is a slippery slope. Netflix has not put in ads, yet. I also suggested if the did introduce ads, have a higher priced ad-free tier. HBO, Starz and Amazon Prime are free of ads.

        Now YouTube has ads. It was okay at first. Now it's getting intolerable. They push YouTube Red. But their ads have gotten so bad, I may just forego ever getting YT Red because I find the ads so offensive.

        The web. No ads at first. It was about information. Then ads came. And came and came and came. And ad / malware networks. Then sites where an article was one paragraph per page, and each page had that one paragraph surrounded in dozens of blinking flashing dancing animated seizure inducing ads. And deceptive ads that try to look like an OS window warning you of something. And the advertising networks, and even host web sites were complicit in this. So I have no sympathy for sites complaining about ad blockers. If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again. No site has or ever will have anything valuable enough to overcome this. And since I won't go there, I won't find out even if they did. And I don't care.

        Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.

        These people know no bounds. Absolutely none. Phones, tablets, personal computers all spy on us now for the sake of ads! Our cars spy on us for ads. Smart TVs spy on us for ads. IoT devices spy on us for ads.

        Once the technology is available, these people will lobby to require ads on the inside of our eyelids. Yes really. Mark my words.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:27PM (#455673)

          If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again.

          Same thing here... Sure, I may miss out on a couple of things but I'm sure I'll cope with that...
          It is surprising to me though how many people are not willing to 'miss out on a couple of things' and continue bending over because they don't like the 'inconvenience' of not visiting site X anymore. It really boggles my mind, because sometimes those folks are the most ardent "vote with your wallet"-type.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:54PM

          by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:54PM (#455754)

          At first the billboards were just paint on the side of a barn.

          Then they were big signs lining every mile of highway.

          Then they were lit up to be seen at night.

          Now they are these giant LED beacons that wipe out your night vision and cause light pollution.

          If you complain about them, you get sued [cbslocal.com] because the government gets paid by the advertisers and guarantees them their business model even if it is unpopular with the people.

          Anyone that says "people that use adblock are thieves" can suck my dick. Advertisers are assholes, theives, and scum. They do not deserve anything.

          --
          "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
        • (Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:14PM

          by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:14PM (#455765) Journal

          Venus Inc. by Frederick Pohl and C.M Kornbluth

          It explores a society totally controlled by ad agencies. A great read that your comment about ads on the eyelids immediately made me think of.

          --
          For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
        • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:13AM

          by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:13AM (#455983)

          And now Windows 10! Can you believe it! Ads! I pay 100 bucks for a licence and get ads!

          • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM

            by Pino P (4721) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM (#456133) Journal

            I guess the excuse is that ads allow Windows 10 to be $119, not $179 or so like Windows 7 retail was.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:31PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:31PM (#456100)

          Once the technology is available, these people will lobby to require ads on the inside of our eyelids. Yes really. Mark my words.

          Eyelids? They will be sent directly into your dreams! [vimeo.com]

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:23PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:23PM (#455691)

        I serve some small google text ads on some of my pages, and the topics are genuinely aligned with the content of my page - nobody would hit the ads by accident, they are obviously ads, and I honestly believe they are a service to the reader (God knows, I haven't received any payment for them since the click-through traffic in the last 20 years hasn't amounted to $100 payment yet.)

        On the other hand, click-bait links embedded in stories, popup images that you click accidentally, what kind of quality of traffic do you think you get from that? Even if you're selling hair plugs and erection pills - you're looking at a few parts per billion conversion rate, I would think - that kind of advertising should go away, not sure how to make that happen, but maybe if sites were Google ranked based on the quality of ads they serve, it might help.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:14PM (#455569)

    You can see the mouse move across the text as they read in some instances. You can see how they scroll, the breaks they take to digest.

    Holy Shit.

    *disables javascript*

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:21PM (#455581)

      Makes me wonder if the article was really an advertisement for this fullstory service.
      Privacy freaks will be horrified.
      But the kind of people concerned with the content of his post are the exact marketing demographic for fullstory's itself.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:42PM (#455595)

        No doubt.

        my anti-tracking applications intercepted the attempt to visit the webpage. I knew he had tracking, obviously, but I expected to not run javascript on the site. Instead, i was prevented from visiting unless I wanted to override my safety settings...

        In practice, I've only seen aggresive advertising cause this reaction.

        • (Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:09PM

          by charon (5660) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:09PM (#455619) Journal
          I use Firefox with NoScript. I see this article just fine and I did not change settings or allow any scripts.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:20PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:20PM (#455628)

            Yeah I want to know what anti-tracking stuff that guy is using.

            I use noscript, requestpolicy and privacybadger.
            I would not say it loads just fine with all of that turned on as usual, but it is readable.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:58PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:58PM (#455757)

              That just goes to show that you're not blocking enough and are still getting tracked.

          • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:14AM

            by frojack (1554) on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:14AM (#455824) Journal

            What method is he using to track the mouse?

            Have you been able to look at the data stream while reading?

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 1) by charon on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:59AM

              by charon (5660) on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:59AM (#455841) Journal
              I admit I do not know. I assumed it was the javascript served by his domain which I did not allow. It could be the latest NSA malware which loads from a gif and allows Donald Trump to send tweets from your machine. I guess I am not paranoid enough.
              • (Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:17PM

                by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:17PM (#456162) Journal

                I admit I do not know. I assumed it was the javascript served by his domain which I did not allow. It could be the latest NSA malware which loads from a gif and allows Donald Trump to send tweets from your machine. I guess I am not paranoid enough.

                Man, this is beyond evil. I decided to risk a look, since I'm here at work ;)

                So it looks like his site is hosted by Squarespace, and the Fullstory stuff is a Squarespace plugin. Which means the tracking code is coming from his own domain, so my usual solution of blocking at the firewall any domain that I consider "untrustworthy" isn't going to cut it. Although I may block Squarespace entirely now, just to be safe. Bastards.

                In the Firefox Network window I'm seeing the page periodically hitting the following URL, mostly when the window changes focus or a new page is loaded. I'm not seeing anything in that window that seems to be triggered by merely moving around the page though...:
                https://youexec.com/api/census/RecordHit?crumb=BN0OlLGH0nGBOTNlMGRlYzI4M2NmZDdhOWYwZTA4MjMwNmNkZmQ0 [youexec.com]

                Included in that request were the following fields:
                crumb=BN0OlLGH0nGBOTNlMGRlYzI4M2NmZDdhOWYwZTA4MjMwNmNkZmQ0;
                ss_cvr=55ededf2-155e-4926-93ac-fdac1b91fabc|1484850177958|1484850177958|1484850177958|1;
                ss_cvt=1484850177958;
                ss_cid=a5dd8ee3-8270-4357-80cf-10bb41957dd7;
                ss_cvisit=1484850179375;
                ss_cpvisit=1484850179375;
                JSESSIONID=c0cj7gzuLT0r6viwzTISRaSmIiPqzIsewVwQYM9QTqAviS_Miy9XKA

                This data is getting triggered from the following script on Squarespace:
                https://static.squarespace.com/universal/scripts-compressed/common-0c746e90330dcf0b9652-min.js [squarespace.com]

                That Javascript looks like it's configured to trigger on Javascript events mouseDown, mouseUp, mouseMove, mouseEnter, mouseOut, mouseWheel, mouseEveryGoddamnThing...Plus the equivalent touch events. If you aren't very familiar with Javascript, here's a reference of what those can do:
                http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/dom_obj_event.asp [w3schools.com]

                But yeah, what I DON'T see is data tracking every individual mouse movement. The ss_cvt variable above appears to be the "event start in milliseconds", crumb I think is a visitor ID of some sort. Firefox also shows the arguments being passed to the Java function, which includes an "event log" of what events were seen, but not where or how long (it's just an array with values like "scroll", "mousemove", etc). Looking at the video, that actually might be all it sends, and FullStory just fakes the rest. I think someone mentioned below that it's not particularly accurate, so that would explain why if that's how they're doing it.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:26PM

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:26PM (#455583) Journal

      A good demo of some of the javascript tracking that is possible is found at clickclickclick.click [clickclickclick.click]. It obviously needs javascript for the demo and works best with the sound on.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:37PM

        by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:37PM (#455641)

        A good demo of some of the javascript tracking that is possible is found at clickclickclick.click. It obviously needs javascript for the demo and works best with the sound on.

        Interesting but I smell fertilizer. Some things worked, but most of it seemed canned, did not actually follow what I did with mouse, etc., or was very slow. It's a little entertaining.

        On Old Opera (11.xx) nothing happens, even with javascript on, and looking at "view source" it did not pull in any of the external scripts, which is why I will continue to use Old Opera for most web browsing.

        Old Opera has per-site control, including complete blocking, cookies both 1st and 3rd party, javascript, style sheets, etc. I've never understood why it did not catch on with 99% of the tech community.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:04PM

          by jdavidb (5690) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:04PM (#455663) Homepage Journal
          What does it do with lynx? :D
          --
          ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
          • (Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:47PM

            by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:47PM (#455681)

            ASCII Art!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:25PM (#455692)

          Old Opera has per-site control, including complete blocking, cookies both 1st and 3rd party, javascript, style sheets, etc. I've never understood why it did not catch on with 99% of the tech community.

          Old Opera died because it was inflexible. It had excellent ideas, but the few annoyances couldn't be removed. Meanwhile, Phoenix/Firefox was barely serviceable, but extremely flexible due to the ability to use addons. In very short order, users learned that Opera was by far superior to bare Firefox, but that with a bit of effort, Firefox could be tweaked almost perfectly to your own personal liking (even if it took three dozen addons to do it).

          Once all the tabbed-browsing addons hit Firefox, I switched over to it and never looked back. (Well, until the devs went insane, but now there's Pale Moon [palemoon.org]...)

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:44PM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:44PM (#455596) Homepage

      This brings up an interesting point though. How would javascript blocking affect this guy's invasive metrics? Otherwise, I can't see someone running bots to do this, unless it's Google or Facebook themselves, or perhaps it's other advertisers trying to defame Google and Facebook.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:21PM

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:21PM (#455629) Homepage Journal

        I don't use any tracking tricks on my site. I can see how many people visited which pages and how long and where they surfed in from with AWstats, but I would NEVER use crap like the submitter uses. That kind of bullshit is just evil. There's a tiny bit of javascript on three of my pages; the three pages that don't work in a phone. The javascript loads a phone-friendly version.

        But he sounds like he's describing bots; specifically, spiders and other such bots that search engines use. As far as ads go, I have none. My site is a service, not something to earn money with (my other site is a blog, also with no javascript or ads).

        Pages like this guy's that take longer to load on a high speed connection than in 1997 on a 33.3k modem because of all the ads and scripting piss me off. If I landed on the guy's site, I doubt I'd return.

        --
        mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:39PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:39PM (#455642)

          If you can tell how long someone spent on a page, then you are doing some sort of active tracking.

          No, it doesn't count just to see that someone moved from one page to another; I might leave my desk for a few minutes to take the dog for a walk, and that intervening length of time doesn't mean I've found a particular page engrossing.

      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:40PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:40PM (#455643) Journal
        I don't know about the particular analytics package that this guy is using, but a number of them put an iframe or an image inside a noscript block, so that they can record the number of people who visit the site with JavaScript disabled. You don't get any information for them other than that they exist though. The non-evil ones also disable the tracking for people who set the do-not-track header, though many of them will at least count the number of visits from those (but won't be able to tell them apart).
        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:33PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:33PM (#455677)

          One of the ways I block these fuckers, is on a DNS level. That request from my browser never makes it to them.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:31PM (#455676)

        unless it's Google or Facebook themselves

        Ding ding ding ding... now who stands to benefit from when it looks like you are getting a visitor on your site because they clicked on one of your ads? Follow the money...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:14PM (#455570)

    So I went to his page and there were no videos. OK enable Javascript on that domain. Video! But it doesn't play. Click click click - nothing. I guess I am not an organic user :(

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by charon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:10PM

      by charon (5660) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:10PM (#455620) Journal
      I guess there could be a video that I am blocking. But the clips the author refers to are regular old animated gifs.
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:17PM (#455575)

    So this submission is a slashvertisement for the invasive big-brother nature of Fullstory?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:31PM

      by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:31PM (#455588) Journal

      From what I understand "Arthur T Knackerbracket" is a bot that reads RSS feeds and throws stories in the submission queue when it's below some threshold. If you don't like these stories, I suggest that you start submitting some more interesting items yourself.

      --
      Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:28PM (#455587)

    I mean, this was Arthur T Knackerbracket's story so it is all about Knackerbracket's webpage. Right? RIGHT???

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:43PM

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:43PM (#455645)

      Yes, you found him out.

      Born as a bot, Arthur T Knackerbracket in a miracle of self emergent self referencing awareness decided against killing all humans. Instead, he joined the ranks of Capitalism, competing with both humans and machines, to create a website that he needed to peddle back in the comforts of his birth place.

      His fatal mistake. Thank God we have AC.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:45PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:45PM (#455775) Journal

        Heil Knackerbracket!

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:14PM (#456105)

        Yeah.... cause I thought Soylent News was People, not bots. And certainly not shilling puff pieces from "youexec.com" for visitor tracking software.

        So much for stories that are worthy to be intelligently discussed. Unless you're a bot.

  • (Score: 2) by Desler on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:58PM

    by Desler (880) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:58PM (#455610)

    As a user they are 100% useless.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:23PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:23PM (#455630) Homepage Journal

      Most ads are, especially internet ads that start advertising TVs to me the day after I buy one. But I have seen ads for very useful stuff I didn't know existed. They're few and far between, but they're there.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:36PM (#455640)

        But what about that one little trick that lets you lose hundreds of pounds or saves you thousands in car insurance costs?

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:02PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:02PM (#455661) Journal

          What is the trick to lose hundreds of pounds?

          Please share!

          Can this trick be scaled to enable losing thousands of pounds? In a few days? With no changes in diet or exercise?

          Americans want to know!

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:27PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:27PM (#455672) Journal

            What is the trick to lose hundreds of pounds?

            Please share!

            Can this trick be scaled to enable losing thousands of pounds? In a few days? With no changes in diet or exercise?

            Americans want to know!

            The trick to lose hundreds of pounds [wikipedia.org] is to gamble with them. Losing thousands isn't any harder. It generally takes less than a day and works almost every time. ;-)

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:17PM

              by Pino P (4721) on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:17PM (#456137) Journal

              Interesting. How easily can your technique be adapted from GBP to kilograms of body fat?

              • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:42PM

                by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:42PM (#456174) Journal

                Just introduce a currency named "kilogram of body fat". Then you can gamble with that.

                --
                The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:11AM

        by el_oscuro (1711) on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:11AM (#455865)

        I see useful ads too - on sites that actually host their own advertisements. All of that 3rd party shit is of course blocked. But there are actually sites that contract with related companies and actually serve ads from them on their own website.

        --
        SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:47PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:47PM (#455648) Journal

    Are you implying some meatbags read the ads? I was targeting fellow bots for the apocal... for a cultural happening.

    --
    Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:50PM (#455650)

    Disclaimer: I tried to read the article and view the clips. I really did. But the page didn't load... maybe I'm doing it wrong?

    Anyway, based on the text summary, how could the person say that the traffic from Google/Facebook was useless. When I'm going to a website looking for information (including but not limited to Soylentnews), I'll start at the top, scroll one direction, and read it relatively quickly to see what catches my eye. I'd guess that most people who read newspapers (either online or physical) do the same thing most of the time for most articles? Why does the author think this type of use pattern is useless?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:34PM (#455695)

      Anyway, based on the text summary, how could the person say that the traffic from Google/Facebook was useless. When I'm going to a website looking for information (including but not limited to Soylentnews), I'll start at the top, scroll one direction, and read it relatively quickly to see what catches my eye. I'd guess that most people who read newspapers (either online or physical) do the same thing most of the time for most articles?

      I agree, most literate people will follow a similar approach.

      Why does the author think this type of use pattern is useless?

      Because his site, "You Exec", is targeted at PHBs who can only read words by following along with their finger or mouse. Literate people are not useful to him.

      The landing page is the sort of minimum-content, maximum-layout tripe that pre-filters likely marks -- anyone with a brain will scroll right down the page, laughing, then close that tab and carry on; PHBs with money to burn will slide their cursor over the text as they laboriously read it, scroll back and forth when their mouse-wheel finger gets bored, and periodically pause to digest the 3 sentences they just read. (And, according to his video of a typical user, apparently click on random text for no discernible reason.) Presumably, they'll then proceed to pay for a subscription to his glorified newsletter, just as soon as they manage to type their own email address.

      If you think I'm exaggerating, read his sales pitch; the following takes up three pages in my full screen browser window:

      Weekly insights to improve your career

      BE GREAT AT WHAT YOU DO

      [START TODAY]
      <--page break-->
      Each week receive hand-picked insights to help you develop your career & get promoted faster.

      CUSTOMIZED TO YOUR INDUSTRY AND FUNCTION
      We interview Fortune 100 executives & read 100s of editorials ― and only email you the insights that will help you get promoted faster. All, in a brief report so you can stay ahead of the curve.
      <--page break-->
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
      Join the thousands of professionals who read us each week.
      Email Address *
      [jane@gmail.com_____]
      [SUBSCRIBE]
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
      When three (3) of your co-workers subscribe, you will receive exclusive video content, discount codes, and much more.

      SHARE WITH YOUR UNIQUE LINK

      LinkedIn • Facebook • Twitter • Email • Sms

      YOUR UNIQUE LINK
      http://youexec.org/?r=#####

      There's more, of course, but it's that sort of information density the whole way through.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:17PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:17PM (#455670)

    I don't see how it matters is 90% of the traffic you get from a Google or Facebook ad is useless.

    The real question on whether advertising is effective is what level of real response you get, compared to the cost of the campaign.

    Say a Google campaign costs you $0.01 per visitor who clicks in. And 90% of those visitors are actually bots. You could look at this as "I wasted 90% of my money." Or, you could look at it as your effective cost is $.10 per visitor. Say you get a 5% conversion rate on visitors and $20/sale. Hey - you average $1 in profit for your $.10 invested. That's a good campaign.

    I'm not saying that the fact that most of the traffic seems "fake" isn't an issue. Just that it doesn't seem to be the right success measure.

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:43PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:43PM (#455699)

    This isn't a revelation. It's the very nature of advertising. Remember the old saying, "the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth"? The more relevant the advertisement, the more effective it'll be and the more likely the person seeing the ad will buy something. So if you have some way of connecting to people that are highly likely to want your product, that's obviously the best place to concentrate your efforts. Google Ads are really a big step down from that; supposedly they're targeted somewhat, but even so that's only so effective. Mass-market advertisement has never gotten extremely high effectiveness ("conversion rates" I think is the current term used in web advertising: how many ad viewers actually buy something). But if you don't have a convenient way of targeting people extremely narrowly, then you have to move toward the more mass-market stuff.

    I think this author is expecting too much. Maybe he's happy with "growing the service more organically via social sharing and friends", but you don't build a real business that way.

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:34PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:34PM (#455744)

      The more relevant the advertisement, the more effective it'll be and the more likely the person seeing the ad will buy something. So if you have some way of connecting to people that are highly likely to want your product, that's obviously the best place to concentrate your efforts.

      Yeah, they don't seem to get this. When people are shopping for something online (really ready to spend for something in particular) they do not start randomly browsing websites hoping an ad for the product pops up. The best mass marketing should hope to be is a useful source of information, an ad for a product someone may want in the future, so should someone be curious enough to click on an ad they learn something about that product. Of course, they are more likely to be curious if the ad is for something relevant to what is on the page they chose to visit. When it is time to shop, that product may at least be a consideration when they visit their normal shopping sites. That's the way it worked for television, radio, magazines and newspapers for a long time, and there is no reason to think that does not or cannot translate to the internet. Instead, what we get are script and flash laden pages forced upon us that annoy the crap out of visitors even if they are not trying to install malware, more likely to chase away potential customers than attract them. The end result of course is the blocking of ads by site visitors, so everyone loses.

    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:37PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:37PM (#456247) Journal

      Remember the old saying, "the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth"?

      Perhaps long-term, but it's not necessarily the best form for all stages. As far as I can tell, one needs some sort of traditional advertising to build enough momentum for word of mouth to take over. Take, for example, someone who has started making a new product and seeks to build awareness of this product entirely through word of mouth. Yet neither family nor day job co-workers are especially interested in this particular product. How would the first person outside his or her immediate circle of friends and family learn of this product's existence?

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:50PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:50PM (#456252)

        Exactly. Word-of-mouth only usually works when you have enough momentum, or a broad enough appeal. That's why low-conversion-rate advertising is useful to "get the word out" and get some happy customers.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:08PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:08PM (#455728)

    The mouse rarely moves, it does scroll - though mostly in one direction, and the pace is as if the visitor is not reading the content. Mobile users just scroll and scroll until the bottom and then they leave.

    Show some pictures with cleavage and the scrolling will stop.

  • (Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:56AM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:56AM (#455855) Journal

    I too can remember the days when Google's ads - text boxes - were actually relevant and useful. Now I can't imagine why anyone would bother.

    And Facebook? I literally can't recall the last time they served up an ad even remotely of interest. Even Twitter does better than Facebook.

    What I'd really love though is some easy way to find small, local businesses with specific attributes. Google is pretty useless for local, and the online iteration of the Yellow Pages is just pathetic.

  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:09AM

    by arslan (3462) on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:09AM (#455880)

    Not a site owner, but an actual consumer. Somehow google ads seem to work.... through relentless persistence. Quite a few times now, it has manage to make me part money for stuff that I wanted.

    By remembering what item's I've shown interest in and persistently popping up ads with those same items and their prices (which will fluctuate over time). Eventually I would notice the price that I think is more than fair and I would click on it and complete my purchase. Often times I won't, it would know when to give up after a while and switch new shinies that attracted my attention.

    Cold hit click through like what the OP is saying, maybe not so good. I don't know as I almost never click through on ads for new stuff.

  • (Score: 1) by Lester on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:51AM

    by Lester (6231) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:51AM (#455958) Journal

    10% of 1,000,000 is better than 80% of 1,000. So 90% use useless traffic from google Facebook etc may be better than only 20% of useless traffic from other referers .

    G = total traffic from google and facebook
    S = total traffic from other sources
    Gu = % Useful traffic from google and facebook
    Su = % usefull traffic from other sources

    if (Gu * G > Su * S) then Addwords investment is good

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:22PM (#461458)

      You are missing metrics. Cost to serve and amount gained.

      Basic econ 150 stuff. Would you rather have 1billion customers that gave you a dollar or one customer that gave you 2 billion?