09.05.12

YouTube Ads: Pig in a Poke

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 10:55 am by George Smith

“Google, and YouTube, and their competitors have made the place — a web where winner-takes-all. And there isn’t anyone else. It’s the top or nothing. Root hog or die.”

Once you establish a regular pattern of uploading videos to YouTube, the Google property attracts you with blandishments to “monetize” and “make an ad campaign for your video.” This is all said to be good for growing your audience.

I’ve dealt with monetization on Google properties previously. For the majority it’s a waste of time. You might get enough clicks to justify Google sending a check in five to ten years of activity, if you haven’t changed your address by then.

Barring old traditional media exposure, like on TV — or in a big magazine or newspaper — Google AdSense/AdWords campaigns are for Internet bottom feeders with more significant amounts of money to spend but not quite enough to get advertising into big old traditional media.

YouTube recommended I advertise “Rich Man’s Burden.”

So I set up an ad campaign of “impressions,” for it to be served as a “featured” piece advertised as a satirical funny song about the wealthy in related works, for seven days.

After two days Google/YouTube had served the impression approximately 2500 times. Over the course of the seven day campaign it was on a schedule for about 8750 impressions.

The click through to actual view of “Rich Man’s Burden” was about 2.5 percent, of which only 16 percent of hits (or about 0.3 percent of the total ad impressions served) watched it three quarters of the way through. About fifty percent of the viewers, out of a total of a little over sixty Google/YouTube alleged clicks on it, did not watch at all. That is they did not even register in the breakdown Google presents to you on the percentages which watched 25, 50, 75 or 100 percent of
the video.

This is a stat I took to mean that many people who click on impressions immediately leave before any content can be streamed, before a second or even a fraction of one elapses. (Remember, these are not even the in-line streamed ads YouTube compels you to watch before other content.)

Which tells me that the observation that, for many, clicking on Internet ads is done as a meaningless and random behavior is probably fairly accurate.

For “Rich Man’s Burden,” here, the Google/YouTube ad campaign cost 11 cents a view and was not cost effective in any way.

For very modestly boosting video views to an audience that might never be exposed to it, a presumably legitimate purpose, it was relatively expensive per hit even though such campaigns and ads are very cheap to implement. And it was a complete statistical wash for getting people to click through to the YouTube channel.

I tried to find an ad impression for “Rich Man’s Burden” while it was running using a variety of keyword searches similar to what the video ad contained and could not.

YouTube does not furnish obvious tools for this so honing an ad campaign is a matter of trial, error and effort requiring what probably amounts to a substantial waste of money and time for the average person with an account.

At two days I canceled the campaign scheduled for seven. After an initial 24 hours “views” dropped off noticeably telling me that YouTube had hit the audience it was serving — whatever it was, one could define that it be in the United States or other locales, or restricted to certain ages. Subsequently, it was just repeating with the same pool. And that at all times it was impossible to know what the demographic was, only that the ad wasn’t particularly effective. I get better numbers just putting it in a blog post here every other day of the week.

YouTube took four days to examine the ad, approve it and get things running.

As a come-on, Google/YouTube furnishes a calculator which purports to estimate how many views you will get for a certain ad buy. Mine was 750, unambitious, and certainly a very small potential target number in the YouTube/Google scheme of things. And it would have comprised a 10 to 11 percent return on the buy. It was a total fabrication.

One understands how and why Google properties can give away $75 or $100 certificates for promoting ad campaigns. These “free” sums would not be expected to return any interesting results. They are bait.

You’ll use that “free” money, get nothing or next to nothing for it, and think you did it wrong. Or that it just needs to run a second time — with a few tweaks. Or that two or three times the spend will do it. And that’s when they have you.

On Facebook ad impressions look almost the same as those on YouTube and other Google properties. I would expect them to be similar wastes of time and money for the great mean of people who buy them.

Alway remember the solid web phenomenon of people who click on ad impressions but don’t actually look at them for even a fraction of a second. While you are charged for them, it is just money blowing away in the air.

It would come as no surprise that some, or an increasing number in corporate America, view such advertising as virtually worthless. That being the case, and since they are always under peer pressure to be seen as being active and liked on the web, there is substantial incentive to cheat the system. (Which I’ll get to.)


“Doody.” Appropriate.

Related: Gaming/buying views on YouTube — at the LA Times.

The above, on how to buy significant views for a worthless and purposely unwatchable video, combined with this post, leads one to a conclusion about web ranking and value as based on number of views.

If you don’t read it, the subject is that two reporters bought 60,000 views on YouTube for a video of paint drying, paying about 100 dollars to black hat services that deliver numbers. YouTube’s algorithms, allegedly tuned to freeze out cheating, did not detect it.

That comes to a tenth of a penny per view for 60,000 as opposed to what I paid through a legitimate YouTube campaign before canceling it as futile, 11 cents per view, according to Google, for an insignificant number (22 cents per, if you get technical, factoring in that about 50 percent of the clicks, by the search giant’s own measurements, didn’t watch at all) — 60 or so — and virtually zero clicks on my channel.

View counts are all important on YouTube, as with “likes” and “shares” on Facebook, and — in a less direct manner through linking, in Google search. High numbers dictate opportunity with YouTube algorithms favorably positioning your video in recommended lists to others and in search returns. Low numbers mean you are regarded as disease. The few people who do see your video on search will never click on it because American web users believe only high view counts, likes, shares, Twitter followers and reviews on Amazon are indicators of quality.

The conclusion one arrives at is that you are a chump if you choose to play within the system rather than cheat and just buy clicks, back links, likes or numbers from black hat sites experienced at rigging. If you worry about people seeing where your views are coming from — all from Mongolia because that’s where a taken over network is operating — you just hide your statistics on geo-location from the public leaving only the raw view number. As many do.

Consider, Google advises webmasters and random users not to do such things, not to just sell links without ‘no follow’ attributes to other websites, because their programmers and algorithms may discover you trying to manipulate their search and swat ranking.

But you already have the equivalent of zero ranking. You cannot be punished by having your content downgraded any further than it already is. It is out of sight of the top and, therefore, out of mind.

Google, and YouTube, and their competitors have made the place — a web where winner-takes-all. And there isn’t anyone else. It’s the top or nothing. Root hog or die.

There are always those, every week, who get lucky. They may be discovered by a high traffic site that decides to send them viewers or clicks. And an audience is established, value built, in such a manner.

However, for the great majority, this is not something that can be planned for or worked toward because it is reliant on whimsy, fortune, things which cannot be programmed.

If you are not in the first page of results, or the couple of handfuls of those with the highest likes, or whatever social metric of the day is being discussed as very special, you will not exist. Search is of no economic value to you. It is of value only to the very topmost.

For example, big official corporate cheating is fairly obvious on Google. If you use Google to search for news items, Arriana Huffington’s Huffington Post is always in the top few returns. For everything.

And when you go to some Huffington Post link you find, almost without relief, that it is not the generator of the original information but the equivalent of some vapid placeholder posted by a nobody, which contains a link to and some copy from the original source, the latter always ranked below it. Even though it may be more respected. And this is well known but nothing can be done about it.

Huffington Post (like Wikipedia) is the perfect example of orderly Internet rigging.

The former has paid for that advantage through the work of programmers and web designers rather than heavy intrusive advertising or any intrinsic but hard to measure qualities obvious to human beings.

Nobody with sense could possibly believe that the Huffington Post is an oracle on all things. But it bested Google.

There are other examples. Pick them from your experience.

And so Google and its properties, and the social networks, have made a world where there is only incentive to cheat and to do so big. In fact, there is little apparent downside as the environment mostly selects against those who do not.

Now don’t you sell links to worthless places, or buy views, or employ a service with phony accounts on Facebook or Twitter to like and follow you! You’ll anger the powers that be and they’ll turn you into a toad.

Oh wait, you’re already a toad at the bottom of the virtual pit they made for you.

Nevermind, go right ahead. Do the bad stuff.

“[Buying views from black hats] comes to a tenth of a penny per view for 60,000 as opposed to what I paid through a legitimate YouTube campaign before canceling it as futile, 11 cents per view, according to Google, for an insignificant number (22 cents per, if you get technical, factoring in that about 50 percent of the clicks, by the search giant’s own measurements, didn’t watch at all) — 60 or so … “

09.04.12

EMP Crazy shill: Flack for giant arms manufacturer

Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle at 3:12 pm by George Smith

Too rich to pass up, the press release passed off as a story, from Google News, written by “a former corporate director of public affairs for General Dynamics Corp.”

Anyway, the headline reads:

‘Revolution,’ new TV show, focuses on absence of electricity; could it be from electromagnetic pulse attack … Scenario not unimaginable if terrorists can get hands on nuclear weapons

Then the script:

We haven’t heard much lately about the potential effects of an electromagnetic pulse attack on our country but we’re going to hear about it soon. “Revolution,” a TV show premiering next month, will explore the question: What would happen to our society if we lost all of our electricity?

Imagine an environment in which nothing electrical works … That’s the premise of “Revolution.” Think that’s far-fetched? Think again. It is possible and we’re not prepared to deal with such an environment.

Yes, imagine the environment. A couple hundred vanity book author/self-publishers have. And there’s a television drama or movie on cable once or twice, sometimes more, every week.

Revolution is said to be the work of Eric Kripke. He’s famous for Supernatural. But now it would be good to beat him over the head with a plank.

Electromagnetic pulse destruction, right there with vampires and zombies in scarcity. Both of which were present, off and on, in Supernatural. EMP, it’s such an ambitious stretch.

Now, don’t you really want to hit him with something? I know you do. Admit it. That would be the right thing. And just.

“The National [sic] Heritage Foundation says an EMP attack constitutes one of the greatest threats to national security,” continues the spiel. “Unfortunately few Americans have ever heard of it.”

I guess they’ll let anyone in. So what’s with all the regular crap about big corporate America not being able to find employees with the right “skills” and “intelligence”?

Johnny Rebel

Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 1:37 pm by George Smith

So desperate is Hank Williams Jr. to sell his new record, he’s resorted to appealing to the worst, incorporating into his set a nightly ritual of offense:

” ‘We’ve got a Muslim for a President who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him,’ Williams Jr. bellowed [at the Ft. Worth Stockyards in Texas.] The Dallas Sun reported — the crowd responded with a loud cheer.”

“The 63-year-old singer began his anti-gay commentary a few songs earlier, mocking ‘queer guitar pickers’ in the middle of ‘All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down’ before moving on to his next target: Liberal politicians, who he told to ‘move to Mexico’ …” writes the free-lance correspondent for the Texas newspaper.

As with Ted Nugent, it’s code. Hank, Jr., uses slurs that won’t quite get him thrown out of his big gigs like railing about the n—– in DC and faggots would.

Now that he’s gone down this road any friends he had at record companies in Nashville will deem him radioactive. He’ll be financing everything by himself.

It’s worth contrasting the bigots like Hank Jr., with the Dixie Chicks.

Natalie Manes delivered a mild putdown of GWB in Milton Keynes, England. The wrath of the country music establishment came down on the band and cost it a chart-topping career.

Hank Williams, Jr., hasn’t been a chart-topper for a long time. But country music won’t flay the hide off him like it did the women.

That there’s your hypocrisy, folks, a tacit admission through lack of action that those who package and deliver modern country know well the nature of the audience. The same as the Republican party — white, angry, loutish and frequently worse, masquerading as the upholders and preservers of American traditions and pieties.

Warmth, the pure milk of human kindness, hospitality, civility, empathy and tolerance.

Functionally, Hank Williams, Jr. has turned into a supersized, mainstreamed Johnny Rebel, a very minor 60’s country artist notable for his racist sentiments.

Rebel, aka Pee Wee Trahan, however, had the stones to put all the words he really meant in the titles and lyrics of his records, all of which you can hear on YouTube.

Which makes Hank, Jr., also something of a spineless wretch.

A home-made YouTube video of his “Don’t Tread On Me,’ made by a random Tea Party bigot is what he wanted. And that was his reward.

09.03.12

Do-gooders

Posted in Extremism at 2:31 pm by George Smith

Nugent, inexplicably, as usual:

So long as the American justice system is held hostage by mindless do-gooders who wish to enforce their toxic, brain-dead legalized barbarism on the rest of us, our only recourse is to be vigilant and ready to protect ourselves and our loved ones from these psychotic monsters [like Jared Loughner]. Shoot them.

Over the weekend, Nugent also wrote the same column for Labor Day twice. Here, on the 29th, and here, on the 31st.

“The president and his masterful smoke-and-mirrors team scramble maniacally to spin the Saul Alinsky, Cloward-Piven narrative of how the economy is improving, unemployment is coming down and big-government policies actually work,” Nugent writes, in both. Two of the people in the sentence are dead. The third is an old woman on the faculty of the City University of New York who writes occasionally for a magazine virtually no one reads, The Nation.

There are slight differences in the two, perhaps to fool readers, but they consist of one column, published two times within the space of 48 hours. Somewhat oddly, Ted Nugent did not spend his usual Labor Day attacking labor and unions while acting as cheerleader for predatory coal barons this year. Maybe it has become apparent, even to him, that the Republican Party doesn’t need his talent for alienating any more people than it already has on a meaningless national holiday just prior to an election.

I can’t think of one instance where I’ve seen any pundit in newspaper-land, no matter how lousy or venal, double-dip like Nugent. In other words, he’s a cheater, as in his big love — hunting.

09.01.12

The Parody

Posted in Extremism, Ted Nugent at 12:01 am by George Smith

Mass unemployment and economic collapse said to be due to the death tax.

Ted Nugent:

The criminally anti-American death tax and counterproductive capital gains tax need to be eliminated. Instead of having the highest corporate tax rate in the world, we need to have the lowest. That would eliminate unemployment.

“The president and his masterful smoke-and-mirrors team scramble maniacally to spin the Saul Alinsky, Cloward-Piven narrative …” writes Ted.

Yes, it’s all the result of conspiracies launched by old and mostly dead people you have never heard of. Unless you are a fan of Glenn Beck. Then the horror is very clear.

Ted Nugent is going to take two knee replacements. Next year, his summer tour will be hard. Sooner rather than later he won’t be able to do it at all, unless sitting in a chair.

It’s a shame music journalists haven’t taken Ted apart as thoroughly as DD blog. Their overwhelming sin of commission, at the daily newspaper level, is the passing off of a old decaying paranoid ninny as someone of intelligence, a practitioner of free speech, someone who bravely pushes the boundaries. Nugent is a perfect example of how not to grow old, how to render sour the meaning of a life in the thin ribbon of existence that is your time.

At the Morning Call years ago I tore holes in people much less famous but as equally reprehensible and stunted as Ted Nugent. And then they made phone calls to the editor, complaining bitterly, and everyone on the copy desk had a good laugh at how George had deservedly left them as burned grease stains.

When all is said and done the record will be here.

Out of character, Ted didn’t have the spine for his usual annual attack on unions for Labor Day this year.

Maybe the Coalstock thing preys on him. Maybe, deep down, he knows he’s a villain, not the hero of his 750-word odd and very poor man’s Ayn Rand virtue-of-selfishness plays.

Ted Nugent is a living scream of pain, a gaping hole — in print and on television, anyway — devoid of any obvious kindness, warmth or empathy.

And he is worthy of some pity because there is no medicine, human balm, or gentle reason in the world that can ease the agony or furnish what is missing.

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