[conspire] Boggling sleazy ad tactics, or how Uber lost $100M

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

$100M isn’t exactly small change. Story starts here, but I’ll summarize below:

https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1345774768746852353

Kevin Frisch, the former head of performance marketing and CRM at Uber, told the tale of how ad fraud (specifically attribution fraud) ate at least $100 million of Uber’s $150 million ad budget. They turned off 2/3 of their spend…and saw zero change.

The interview with him is in this ~45min podcast episode: 
https://www.alistdaily.com/lifestyle/kevin-frisch-uber-ad-fraud/

So basically this started in 2017 when Sleeping Giants pressured Uber to cut their Breitbart ads, but that was immediatley followed by #DeleteUber (which was basically unrelated, iirc).

"Kevin said in an interview last year that we were a pain in their ass and he wished we’d get hit by a bus lol"
https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1345779977015472132

So they DID block their Breitbart ads, but…funny thing, ads kept appearing on Breitbart. Turns out it was some of their vendors, and it was about 10% of their ad spend (so $15m). They paused those vendors.

They thought they would take a hit, but nothing happened.

Quoting whole tweets for the next 3 [my comments in square brackets]:

"So where was this $15M going? For the first time, Kevin starts pulling log files & auditing vendors. 

He begins seeing weird things like users clicking on ads and then being logged into Uber 2 seconds later...physically impossible.

Turns out their vendors were making shit up.”

"For ex, one ad network launched “battery saver” style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone. 

When you type the word “Uber” into your Google Play, it auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves.🤯” [which means they, not Uber, would get any commission]

"This shit is BRAZEN, right? So at this point, Kevin turns off 2/3 of their ad spend...and once again, no change in performance!!!

Over $100M worth of ads was doing jack shit. Uber’s customers were coming in organically, on the strength of their brand, WOM [word of mouth], referrals, etc.”

Deirdre