How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider's Confession - The Diigo Meta page

• 15 Nov 09
  

  Alex Ko

  facebook spam ads marketing social-media security attention-economy

  • When any new platform opens up, the spammers are there first: Traffic is cheap and their untargeted offers are profitable. But as legitimate advertisers come on, they bid the price of traffic up and squeeze out the spammers.
  • The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we’ve discussed so far is that trickery is profitable.
• 14 Nov 09
  

  Rahul Tiruthani

  Facebook advertising scam tech

• 13 Nov 09
  

  Farmers Wife
• 09 Nov 09
  

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• 07 Nov 09
  

  Cindy Kendall

  spam advertising facebook

• 06 Nov 09
  

  holsmum

  facebook and money advertising

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• 05 Nov 09
  

  Tracie Schroeder

  What is on the Web?

  Facebook spam advertising

• 04 Nov 09
  

  Jim Crawford

  facebook

• 03 Nov 09
  

  Sharon Elin

  facebook

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  Zapp Royce

  Interesting ad article.

  Facebook spam advertising médias sociaux réseaux sociaux

• 

  fulvius longhi
  • Believe me, I tried to do honest optimization—running legitimate flower ads on Valentines Day, Walmart ads on Cyber Monday, auto insurance offers on car racing games, and so forth. For months, I went through over 150 offers across a dozen networks, systematically testing offers, ad copy, targeting, creative templates, and so forth. I couldn’t get a single one to work. And in a previous life I worked on Yahoo!’s internal analytics team—our job was to optimize traffic.

  • I finally came to this realization: People on Facebook won’t pay for anything. They don’t have credit cards, they don’t want credit cards, and they are not interested in shopping. But you can trick them into doing one of three things:

    
    
    • Download a toolbar: It could be spyware (such as Zango) or something more legitimate, such as Webfetti or Zwinkys.
      
    • Give up their email address: You’ve won a “free” camera or perhaps you’ve been selected as a tester for a new Macbook Pro (which you get to keep at the end of the test). Just tell us where you want us to ship it.
      
    • Give up their phone number: You took the IQ Quiz, so give us your phone number and we’ll tell you your score. Never mind that you’ll get billed $20 a month or perhaps be tricked into inviting 10 other friends to beat your score.
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  • • Method #3, getting their phone number, has been the most lucrative thing on Facebook, even more than the fake weight loss offers, for the last 2 years. As an ad network, we were at the mercy of what the game developers want—more money. Here’s what ad networks struggle with—to either run what ads make the most money or else be forced out by other ad networks willing to be shadier than them.
    • That’s why, if you’re a UK resident, you’re not seeing those sexy Russian dating ads from a couple months ago—but man, were those profitable. But you may continue to see these girls
    • Are you a Denver liposuction doctor and want to target middle-aged females in upperclass neighborhoods who watch “Desperate Housewives” and like to eat chocolate?
    • What if Farmville could be sponsored by Albertsons and offer real fruits and vegetables on sale? Wouldn’t that be more powerful than clipping coupons from the daily newspaper?
    • We said that when these platforms first launched, earnings were in the 10 to 15 cent range. Then spammers raised the bar and could afford to pay $6 per thousand impressions (or about 20 cents a click) for the same inventory. But when the legitimate guys come with the hyper-targeted local ads, they can afford to pay $10 or even $50 per thousand impressions for that inventory. The spammers will be forced out of this particular game and onto whatever is next.
• 02 Nov 09
  

  Dan M

  Facebook advertising how spam

• 

  y campbell

  getting their phone number, has been the most lucrative thing on Facebook, even more than the fake weight loss offers, for the last 2 years.

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  Eric Delcroix

  facebook médias sociaux réseaux sociaux

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  Rick Powell

  "The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we’ve discussed so far is that trickery is profitable. Fool them into thinking the new friend request is from Facebook, lie to them that the miracle skin crème is actually free, tell them they’ll earn points if they just click this button – which then puts their email address on a list that’s resold to the top spammers in the world. Incidentally, if you hate someone, sign them up for one of those free offers – it will burn their email to a crisp. Just kidding – don’t do that."

  Facebook advertising scams

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  luke chi
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  Catherine Bertheau

  Interesting way to make additional revenue... We should look into this.

• 

  Terry Jones

  facebook spam advertising @johnborthwick

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  Miriam Schwab

  advertising spam useful

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  Pete Austin

  You thought email was full of spammers? You ain't seen nothing yet.

  spam sleaze

• 

  Regis Barondeau

  facebook spam ads security

  • Users in one click gave the game permission to access their profile data and they didn’t think twice about it.
  • Facebook hadn’t consider what was possible when the game developer passed on user name, profile picture, and personal details on to an advertiser
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  • • he submits tame ads for approval, and once approved, redirects the url to the spammy page.
    • The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we’ve discussed so far is that trickery is profitable
• 

  Marion Walton

  spam facebook

• 

  Vincent Chan
  • BlitzLocal is no longer in the business of spam, but they do specialize in Facebook advertising and are now using the platform they’ve developed to run campaigns for big brands and small businesses.
  • Did you know how Mark Zuckerberg supported Facebook in the early days, before he got venture funding? Casino ads.
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  • • You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative.
    • By having access to user data, game developers could instantly make engaging, viral games. Rate who is hottest among your friends, share quizzes, race cars, grow vegetables, and so forth – all with a click of a button. Users in one click gave the game permission to access their profile data and they didn’t think twice about it.
    • These ads looked like they were from Facebook- the blue button, white background, same font. And, of course, they had your profile picture, your name – plus that of your friends, in the ad.
    • But the perfect storm being able to dynamically insert user data into an ad, disguising the ad to seem like part of the application, lack of enforcement by the social networks, and billing the parents’ cell phone – well, it’s no secret what happens next.
    • The numbers today are much higher. Given the choice of making money versus being ethical, these kids chose money in nearly every instance.
    • AdSense was getting a 0.1% CTR and earning 15 cents a click. Our ads were getting up to a 4% CTR and also earning 15 cents a click. You do the math.
    • People on Facebook won’t pay for anything. They don’t have credit cards, they don’t want credit cards, and they are not interested in shopping. But you can trick them into doing one of three things
    • Download a toolbar:
    • Give up their email address:
    • Give up their phone number:
    • Here’s what ad networks struggle with—to either run what ads make the most money else be forced out by other ad networks willing to be shadier than you.
    • Publishers (game developers) choose whoever makes them the most money.
    • Showing personal data on landing pages:
    • Cloaking
    • showing different ads to Facebook employees than to other users around the world
    • Our supposition is that it makes too much money for Facebook to stop him.
    • Here’s what this fellow does—he submits tame ads for approval, and once approved, redirects the url to the spammy page.
    • Sharks who smelled blood
    • One CEO (not saying his name, but they’re on Comscore’s list of the top 25 ad networks) threatened physical violence if we didn’t cooperate with him.
    • Weak enforcement: Paul Jeffries, who enforced (or didn’t enforce, depending on your view) the platform rules, wanted to allow a laissez-faire economy, stepping in only when the violations were so egregious that his call center was getting flooded with complaints.
    • my ads were costing him more in customer service than any revenue I was possibly generating
    • most of that was profit, since we paid out only a fraction of what we earned. Remember that we had to beat only what Google AdSense generated.
    • no way that Facebook – and definitely not the Federal Trade Commission—could keep up with the “innovation” happening.
    • Either way, the advertiser is usually blind—they can’t see the referral data (which is understandably masked) and they probably can’t figure out what’s going on anyway.
    • There is a lot of money to be made if you’re a game developer on the MySpace or Facebook platforms, so choose your ad networks wisely.
    • Ad Networks are not going away soon, as the big brands aren’t there yet and someone must fill that vacuum.
    • When any new platform opens up, the spammers are there first: Traffic is cheap and their untargeted offers are profitable.
    • But as legitimate advertisers come on, they bid the price of traffic up and squeeze out the spammers. The most powerful bit of social advertising, unlike traditional PPC, is the ability to target by interest and by location.
    • The underlying premise of all the advertising techniques we’ve discussed so far is that trickery is profitable. Fool them into thinking the new friend request is from Facebook, lie to them that the miracle skin crème is actually free, tell them they’ll earn points if they just click this button – which then puts their email address on a list that’s resold to the top spammers in the world. Incidentally, if you hate someone, sign them up for one of those free offers – it will burn their email to a crisp. Just kidding – don’t do that.
    • Imagine getting an ad on your birthday, saying “Happy Birthday, Nick! Mention FBCAKE and get a free slice of cake today at Jim’s Coffee Shop” (yes, you can target people on their birthdays).
    • What if you’re a B2B company and want to hit small businesses? You can target by job title and company. That’s not possible in traditional PPC, where a search for “massage” can be a consumer with stiff muscles, a student looking for a massage school, or a practitioner looking to buy massage supplies.
    • What if Farmville could be sponsored by Albertsons and offer real fruits and vegetables on sale? Wouldn’t that be more powerful than clipping coupons from the daily newspaper?
    • It’s going to take a few years, but these legitimate advertisers will push out the scammers and Facebook will put more rules in place. Enforcement will tighten, but spammers are clever with shifting their entities, enough to make us all “dizzy”.
• 

  playboy paul
• 

  Nate Otto

  This is a guest post by Dennis Yu, the CEO of BlitzLocal, a privately held 50 person advertising agency in Denver, Colorado, specializing in local search engine marketing for franchises and professional service firms via Google and Facebook. BlitzLocal is no longer in the business of spam, but they do specialize in Facebook advertising and are now using the platform they’ve developed to run campaigns for big brands and small businesses. Dennis writes a blog at dennis-yu.com

  advertising spam facebook

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  Francois B

  Facebook social networks spam scam

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  Brandon Wu
  • When the Facebook platform first launched, developers used Google AdSense, which was paying 10-15 cent eCPMs, meaning that developers were earning 10 to 15 cents for every 1,000 ads they shown. But soon, ad networks, such as the one I operated, stepped in to show that by using social data and some clever ad copy, we could raise this to well over $6—that’s 60 times better than AdSense. AdSense was getting a 0.1% CTR and earning 15 cents a click. Our ads were getting up to a 4% CTR and also earning 15 cents a click. You do the math.

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