Facebook advertising has evolved into one of the most popular ways to advertise and promote new products, with most companies seeing it as an integral part of their marketing strategy.
The Facebook in turn, welcomes these practices by giving users the opportunity to step in like on the pages that interest them and then be informed about the course of the products. The Facebook targeting users according to their attributes, suggests pages that they think fit best, and for this service it is paid by the companies that use it as a means of promotion.
There is, however, another way of promoting through Facebook which has begun to evolve over the last few years and is about pay-like. This is achieved through "Iike Farms", a service that sells various sites to the stakeholders and promises a certain number likes on their page.
As little was known about how these farms operate, Emiliano de Cristofor from the University UCL του Λονδίνου και οι συνεργάτες του αποφάσισαν να κάνουν την πρώτη συστηματική προσπάθεια για να κατανοήσουν τον τρόπο λειτουργίας τους και εάν επρόκειτο για ανθρώπινους χρήστες ή για bots όπως αποκαλούνται τα προγράμματα υπολογιστή που επιτελούν αυτόματες λειτουργίες στο διαnetwork.
The method they followed was to build thirteen pages at Facebook with the generic description "Virtual Electricity" but no content beyond the prompt "This is not a true page, please do not do it to me".
Then followed two practices: for five of the pages they used the ads through Facebook (ads in price των 5 ευρώ την ημέρα) ώστε να προκύψουν επισκέψεις στις σελίδες αυτές. Η κάθε καμπάνια ορίστηκε για ξεχωριστές γεωγραφικές περιοχές: τις USA, τη Γαλλία, την Ινδία, την Αίγυπτο και μία για όλο τον κόσμο. Για τις υπόλοιπες οχτώ σελίδες ενοικιάστηκαν services of the most well-known like farms on the internet. The farms cost researchers between 55 and 150 euros, and guaranteed 1.000 Iikes the next 15 days.
The results are highly indicative, as described in research their scientists: the first method yielded 32 likes from the USA, 44 from France, from 500 for India and Egypt and also 500 for the global advertising campaign, most of them from India. People who like did have an average of more than 300 friends, something that agrees with the global average, but they were prominent "Iikers" having 600 and 1000 likes on corresponding pages when the average for a user is 40.
Findings from similar farms are even more bizarre as they are in the advertising campaign through Facebook the Iikes were equally distributed over time, the farms produced Iikes massively. One of the farms, for example, gave 700 Iikes the first four hours, and then no more, which means it's probably automated bots that blindly like. Supposed users even have a very large number in their account Iikes of the order of 1200-1800.
Researchers argue that these results make it obvious that most of them Iikes is fake and they do not correspond to real people. They also point to the fact that although the Facebook would be able to block these tactics, does not seem to wish to do so. They conclude, however, that this does not mean that an advertising campaign is inefficient in this medium, but these parameters should also be taken into account in its performance evaluation.
Source: naftemporiki.gr
