It isn't the ad itself that is causing those streams of requests, but rather the ad technology vendors buying or selling the data from the ad server from which the ad was delivered.
Don't blame the publisher or advertiser for not noticing that their 'anti-fraud' vendor is sending itself events every millisecond.
It is surprising to me that this feels so negative to you. Every large social tech company - Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Groupon, LivingSocial (RIP), Tinder - have all used tactics similar to what you label 'dark patterns' to bootstrap their businesses.
If I am building a network driven product like a dating app or social network, you better be damn sure that it is going to be using 'growth hacking' (read:scraping) methods to increase the viral coefficient per user.
Would it also be news to you if I told you that 719 singles in your zip code did not, actually, want to see you tonight?
>It is surprising to me that this feels so negative to you. Every large social tech company - Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Groupon, LivingSocial (RIP), Tinder - have all used tactics similar to what you label 'dark patterns' to bootstrap their businesses.
That doesn't make it acceptable.
The people who fund, manage and work for these types of companies should be blacklisted in the industry.
> Seems like you want to make a black list that is very very long.
Probably. But it's long exactly because people are not willing to blacklist as much as they should.
The market is under no obligation to respect you. In fact, competitive pressures push everyone towards exploiting you as much as it is possible. So the limit of crap we're being served is the same as what we're willing to endure.
And no matter how big LinkedIn gets, I will not forgive them for spamming me five years ago when they were just starting. It was unacceptable then, it is unacceptable now, and it informed me right away that they are not the sort of company that I want to interact with.
> It is surprising to me that this feels so negative to you. Every large social tech company - Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Groupon, LivingSocial (RIP), Tinder - have all used tactics similar to what you label 'dark patterns' to bootstrap their businesses.
Yes, LinkedIn is well known for essentially spreading itself like a virus with a bunch of interactions unknown to the user and that's exactly why no one should be using it. If I see that someone has a LinkedIn profile it's pretty much a minus nowadays.
This was why I stopped using LinkedIn an Groupon though. The others are slightly deceptive, but not to the point of blatantly invading privacy like that.
The more civilized countries still let a lot of shit like this fly. Most of the advertising industry we have today would not exist in an actually civilized world.
Then we should start here and make sure that it at least doesn't become more companies doing these things.
I have all @facebook.com email on blacklist on my email server because I get daily spam from Facebook trying to get me to spend more time on the page, even with everything turned off.
Something as benign as your user agent, previous browsing activity, or individual site cookie can predict income more accurately than a regressional analysis of salary data as compared to twitter themes.
While there are objective indicators in terms of product:market fit, your startup has only failed when you let it fail. Most successful entrepreneurs I know that have had an exit generally were on the 2^nth permutation of the initial set of product features. You keep bashing your head against the wall until you can no longer take it. It is not a glamorous road, and founder depression is very real. Just take solace in the fact that everyone - even the really successful teams - have been where you are. Find a way to take care of yourself and if you are meant to be an entrepreneur, the idea or set of ideas to get you there will eventually find its way into the back of your brain.
Finally - ideas are nothing. Ideas are next to worthless. There are tens of thousands of proven business models you could go build right now if you wanted to. What matters most - whether at your corporate job or your startup - is execution. Make that first dollar, and claw tooth and nail for the second, and the 100th, and the 1000th. One step at a time. No one is 'killing it' and every startup is a hot mess of ego, spaghetti code, and future employment lawsuits.
Just take a breath and don't lose your spark of insanity that impassioned you to build something to solve a problem in the first place.
We have a great deal in common. I followed a similar path to yours, and somewhere along the way moved into the Advertiser side of the equation, where the potential upside is much higher. Being a solo affiliate these days has been usurped by large companies posing as 'ad networks,' reselling traffic on the open exchange. With your background, you could make a lot more (in the form of salary and bonus) by marketing at a company that has a large marketing budget. I personally know affiliate vets like myself that pull 500k+ salary and bonus, whilst also having side projects. This is definitely one of those cases in which your skills are more valuable promoting an existing business than starting your own.
$60/slot from someone that is likely making 5-10X that an hour in their day job via base salary (not including stock grants) is a bit ludicrous. I like the idea, but you really have to charge what the time of these people is worth. On one side, this pricing will likely only serve to further the interest in the product from a customer. On the other side, you may actually get real significant talent onto the platform, not people who are trying to run a consulting business.
How about this - pay the expert a portion of the salary. The $/hour would make a bit more sense, and the 'experts' aren't going to laugh at how overrated the recruiter is in the process.
Just some pricing pedantry: unless you're selling a like-for-like substitutable commodity, you should ignore your costs and price according to the value you generate for customers. (If the value you generate is less than your costs, you should find a new business).
So it really doesn't much matter what their panel of experts makes; the big pricing issue they have is that a single percentage point of value in a recruiting context is worth several thousand dollars.
Please. Who, in tech, is making $300 to $600 an hour "base salary"? Pretty much nobody other than a handful of VPs and CEOs. None of which are likely able to to do a real technical interview anyway.
$300 constitutes, before taxes, around $550k. This is not unheard of for senior / director level product management or engineering hires at some large tech firms. Do not believe what you read on glassdoor. There are plenty of Googlers that are making around $1M in salary in these types of roles.
To emphasize pmcgrathm's point, the $60/hr "level" is for "Management/C-level" candidate interviews. If you're paying a consultant to ask "the right questions," then at that level you're paying another management/C-level person, or a very experienced "C-level" headhunter/recruiter, and they're unlikely to do it for $60/hr.
That said, the same is true across all these pricing tiers. I wouldn't consult on a Junior level interview for $60/hr, much less $30. I can earn twice that as a W-2 contractor doing boring, unchallenging enterprise architecture and software.
I've been at NFLX for 7 months now. I agree with much of what Brendan has discussed here in terms of culture. If you are confident in your abilities it really is a great place to be and you really do get to work with some of the brightest minds in the valley.
The whole firing average performers thing is, in my opinion, really a means of making sure that only those applicants who feel strongly that they have something to bring to the table should apply. This is not where you go for job security, it is where you go to work on something that excites you. That being said, it is extremely rare to see someone let go who did not have some sort of fair warning or multiple indications that their work was somehow below par. I believe the multiple claims on glass door are remnant of the culture when this company was under serious duress in 2012/2013.
Of course, as with any organization, mileage may vary. One of the negative aspects of this culture is that as you get some very smart, very confident, very opinionated minds into a room - you are of course going to get into some head butting. Sometimes the overarching business strategy may change before a team can adapt to that change, and then persons may become defensible about their territory. While Netflix as an organism does a great job of eliminating this threat, it does take some time to formally fix the mojo within a deprecated organization / way of doing things.
Don't blame the publisher or advertiser for not noticing that their 'anti-fraud' vendor is sending itself events every millisecond.