[divbzero]

The number of bots misses the point for advertising too. If a company spends $X on Twitter ads and measures a boost of $Y in sales from Twitter leads, how many humans vs bots viewed the ads is neither here nor there.

That said, the question is certainly worth asking beyond the realm of advertising. Media has a significant impact on people and society beyond its profitability.

[cloutchaser]

The whole point is that most of Twitter isn't cost per action ads like facebook, but brand advertisers who probably are just looking at impressions.

If those impressions are off by X% due to bots, that's a problem. Especially if as a public company you've declared that issue at 5%, and it's more.

[mgoetzke]

"Half of my advertising budget is wasted. If only I knew which half". Not so easy to know sometimes

[bogantech]

It depends on whether you're paying per impression or per conversion.

If you pay an advertising company a rate per view and the advertising company charges you knowing that a large percentage of those "views" were fake then you're being ripped off.

[ALittleLight]

Well, that depends. If I pay X per 1k views what I care about is how much I sell as a result of that. If I sell a lot and profit would I care that some huge percentage of my views were bots? Conversely, if I sell very little would I care that there were zero bots?

If you are advertising just to get an idea out, or for something you have no capacity to measure, sure. You need to know accurate numbers. But if you can track conversions on your end, and conversions are good, does the exact number of real views really matter?

[nrb]

Of course it matters if you’re being billed by the impression! No matter how good your conversions might be, your margin would be unquestionably higher without the fraudulent impressions.

[s1artibartfast]

not necessarily. It really comes down to how the market sets the price per impression. If the impression cost is ultimately set by conversions, removing the bots will simply raise the price for impressions and you end where you started.

[altdataseller]

Most Twitter ads are brand advertising, not performance based. And it’s harder than you think to even track conversions from Twitter ads (because of cookies/incognito mode/lack of referral data from some browsers).