Whilst Facebook and Twitter purge their platforms of bots, YouTube continues to struggle with the business of fake views – so advertisers may still be paying for ads that aren’t seen by humans.
Although both buying and selling automated views is in violation of YouTube’s terms and conditions, a Google search turns out hundreds of results inexpensively offering between 500 and 5 million views, which increases earnings from advertisers and manipulates the platform’s algorithms.
According to a report by The New York Times, some news media brands have also been found paying to inflate their view counts, including Russian media organisation RT, Al Jazeera English and the New York Post.
With inflated view counts leading to wasted ad impressions, and the potential for wannabe influencers to buy fake views to secure brand deals, advertisers on the platform may be missing out.
In response, YouTube has said that it aims to keep fake views to less than 1% of total views. Whilst a huge improvement on 2013, when there were as many bots on the site as real people, this still amounts to tens of millions of fake views daily.
The report is yet another blow to YouTube; earlier this month, FMCG company Mars pulled its ads from the platform as they had been featured against videos of drill rap music, sparking concerns of another impending “ad-pocalypse”.
Following this report, RT told Newsline: “RT has never purchased any views for its content on YouTube, nor inflated its views in any other manner. The actions described by The New York Times were not authorised by RT, and an internal inquiry is underway.”
