ACCC calls on Google and Facebook to act on fake ads and celebrity endorsements
The ACCC has called on Facebook and Google to put a stop to the celebrity endorsement scams currently plaguing websites and social media.
Ads featuring fictitious quotes and doctored images of celebrities promoting products such as skin care creams, weight loss pills, or investment schemes have been appearing on the internet over the past year with Kyle Sandilands, Lisa Wilkinson, Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter and Studio Ten’s Jessica Rowe being among those used.
A scam ad featuring Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter
The ACCC says its Scamwatch website has received almost 200 reports about the scam adverts in 2018 with losses totalling more than $142,000. People aged 45 and older accounted for 63% of losses to these scams. Women are more likely than men to be a victim.
“Most of the reports to Scamwatch involve these scam advertisements running on Google ad banners or as ads in Facebooks news feeds. These tech giants must do more to quickly suspend ads, as every time consumers click on a scam ad, they are at risk of losing money,” said ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard.
The celebrities affected have also been vocal in their irritation with the ads, expressing their concerns on social media.
OK, there is a link sitting on the https://t.co/Xc5ZbnWwyo site saying the real reason I left Ch9 is to start my own beauty company with a link to purchase product. This is complete BS! It is a scam. DO NOT hit link & DO NOT give them credit card details. And pls RT. @newscomauHQ pic.twitter.com/eNR4AFBXMU
— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) March 17, 2018
Sometimes I do like to share some of my favourite things with you. But this one is NOT FOR REAL. Someone is using my name and image to sell this product. Please be careful about on-line scams like this. pic.twitter.com/RHL33ul1U0
— Jessica Rowe (@JessRowe) May 16, 2018
Antonia Sanda, Facebook ANZ’s head of communications, told Mumbrella: “We do not allow adverts that are misleading or false on Facebook, and we remove adverts that violate our Advertising Policies.
“From January to March 2018 we took down 837m pieces of spam, nearly 100% of which we found and flagged before anyone reported it. We also disabled about 583m fake accounts — most of which were disabled within minutes of registration. This is in addition to the millions of fake account attempts we prevent daily from ever registering with Facebook.
“New technology like machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence helps us find more bad content, more quickly. We are also investing heavily in more people to review content that is flagged. From time to time people may see an ad that they believe is false and we encourage people to report these so that we can take steps to prevent these from appearing.”
A Google spokesperson added: “We have clear policies against ads that mislead or trick users into interacting with them. When we find ads that violate our policies, we remove them.”
Mumbrella understands Google suspended more than 7,000 AdWords accounts for policy violations last year, up from 1,400 in 2016.
The ACCC’s Rickard warned consumers to be vigilant about fake celebrity endorsements: “It is vital to research and read independent reviews of the company. Consumers should verify celebrity endorsement of products from the celebrity’s official website or social media account.
“If you are caught up in one of these scams, call your bank immediately to try and arrange a chargeback and to stop any further debits to your credit card.”
A Google spokesperson added: “We have clear policies against ads that mislead or trick users into interacting with them. When we find ads that violate our policies, we remove them.”
Unless of course a user is using their search engine to search for a particular brand where they will try and serve as many competitor ads as possible…
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For years I have tried to stop these fake ads appearing on reputable sites (publishers), Google and Facebook aren’t exactly helpful and to their fairness it is difficult to monitor, especially in real time bidding environment.
There’s one common pattern with these fake ads, they bid the lowest CPM!!!
One effective method (although not foolproof) to reduce these fake ads to minimal, is to make it really expensive for these fake ads to access the inventory. Reputable publishers can choose to raise the minimal floor price and put a block to “unknown advertiser” in SSP.
I strongly encourage reputable publishers to run a report and find out the CPM range these fake ads are bidding on before applying the floor rate. Please forgive me for not revealing the floor CPM I have used, this is to avoid the culprits reading this comment and make pre-emptive move.
For those publishers that are using Google Ad Manager (DFP+ADX), I believe majority of reputable publishers do in this country, you have the luxury of dynamic allocation. Simply use house ads to compete with ads from the exchange by utilising value CPM. Doing so Google Ad Manager can make a decision to serve house ads over these fake ads as the CPM is higher, essentially commanding the system the house ads are more valuable. My personal opinion, house ads definitely worth more.
Just to be one step ahead, most would ask if the CPM raised will impact the fill rate and revenue. The short answer is, yes, this will affect fill rate. As for revenue, no, not exactly; i.e. any revenue gained from serving these fakes ads are very minimal, is very deceptive just to based the metric on fill rate and revenue. Let me explain why:
1. User experience – once you pissed off the users, they will be reluctant to access your site. (Not to mention the industry is facing banner blindness, continue to allow fake ads will “add kerosene to the fire”).
2. Diminishing point of return – you can achieve same revenue with [100% fill rate on $0.50 CPM] or [50% fill rate on $1.00], the latter gives you an opportunity to, first, reduce fake and low quality ads, secondly let DSPs (buyers) learn your inventory isn’t cheap so they need to re-adjust their strategy to access your audience and inventory. Lastly, you don’t run into situation where you serving premium ads (from direct sales) and fake ads on the same page, this in return may encourage premium ads to access the inventory via private deals.
3. Value of House Ads – although house ads itself doesn’t bring in revenue as reported in the system, but is an opportunity for site owner to promote the site for users retention. Alternatively, why not run charity ads to help the needy? Definitely worthwhile than running fake ads.
Imagine in a scenario all reputable publishers (premium media sellers) applied this setup, indirectly is a collaborative move to ensure sustainability of ad supported contents, the benefits are:
1. Reducing fake ads will boost the reputation of the premium publishers (check The Guardian) as a whole, users may slowly build confident to visit the site more often.
2. Since floor CPM raised across all premium publishers, this give a true value of premium contents and audiences the sites gathered. Leave the cheap CPM inventory to fake or low quality sites.
3. Doing so will have the systems from tech giants run fake ads on fake sites while premium ads on premium sites. There’s a possibility these fakes ads may run on Google and Facebook properties.
Please remember true yield is achieved by balancing users experience, meeting reputable advertisers requirements and revenue. Make sure ads.txt is implemented accurately, page load speed is optimised to minimal delay and serve high viewable ad placement (I strongly encourage all premium publishers to use lazy loading). The latter will yield higher CPM.
In the situation you are running ad networks or/and SSPs that could not give you this level of control, DITCH IT!
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How do I remove fake use of my name to endorse products on Google please?
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