> Reddit's advertising dashboard showing suspiciously high engagement metrics. Note the reported 161 clicks and nearly 27,000 impressions for a relatively small spend.
That's hardly suspicious if you've seen Reddit ads. High impressions, low clicks is precisely what I'd expect out of them.
> UserPath's analytics dashboard showing the real picture: only 93 new users total across ALL traffic sources during the same period, with significantly lower engagement metrics.
That's post-click engagement. Impressions are a pre-click (non!)engagement and would never show up in the page's analytics without a subsequent clickthrough.
> Discrepancy in Numbers: Reddit claims 160 clicks, but our first-party analytics only detected 43 unique users. That's a 73% discrepancy!
No, it isn't. Those are two very different metrics.
> Despite Reddit reporting 160 clicks, not a single user who came through the Reddit ads downloaded our application.
Failure to convert isn't necessarily indicative of fraud. Especially with only 160 clicks to analyze. Most of my own Reddit ad clicks are accidental, as they now make them look like posts/comments in your feed that are barely difference in appearance.
> Our analytics runs through our own domain, making it immune to ad blockers and privacy browsers.
The implementation at https://userpath.co/docs/setup-pixel looks entirely blockable. uBlock does a pretty good job of uncloaking these first-party analytics calls.
This appears to just be an ad for UserPath.
klysm · 14h ago
I don't know much about the space, but is there any incentive against companies like Reddit or Google hunting for accidental clicks by making the ads look exactly like 'normal' elements? There are so many examples like Reddit, GMail, etc.
ceejayoz · 8h ago
To some extent. Enough of it and ROI on a click drops below what they’re charging to deliver it. I’m sure they adjust to stay just over that threshold.
stewones · 13h ago
Yeah, UserPath is our partner; without it, we would keep burning money through bad ads. Now we know where to invest, when to stop, and all that shit. There's nothing wrong with recommending good tools. Btw, it is free to try, set up an account, and see for yourself.
Regarding the uBlock being able to block our analytics requests, I'll give you $1oo if you prove me wrong.
Of course, any privacy tool will be able to do that as long as the user configures it to do so, but I challenge anyone to show me it doing that by default.
ceejayoz · 7h ago
The footer of userpath.co says "built by @stewones". More than a partner, yes? Your own product?
arcza · 6h ago
Good spot lol
kwillets · 18h ago
I interviewed for an adtech position there last year, and it went pretty badly. I only had about 5 YOE in this area, but it seemed like they had even less, and it was like we were speaking different languages.
arcza · 6h ago
Your post was very unconvincing to read and riddled with errors. Rage bait to prop up the Userpath thingy?
nhinck2 · 16h ago
If you have ever looked and their end of year reddit usage recap you would know that they have absolutely no idea how to calculate usage and engagement correctly.
thrown-0825 · 14h ago
reddit is a joke.
its leadership, staff, and users are all bottom of the barrel trash.
That's hardly suspicious if you've seen Reddit ads. High impressions, low clicks is precisely what I'd expect out of them.
> UserPath's analytics dashboard showing the real picture: only 93 new users total across ALL traffic sources during the same period, with significantly lower engagement metrics.
That's post-click engagement. Impressions are a pre-click (non!)engagement and would never show up in the page's analytics without a subsequent clickthrough.
> Discrepancy in Numbers: Reddit claims 160 clicks, but our first-party analytics only detected 43 unique users. That's a 73% discrepancy!
No, it isn't. Those are two very different metrics.
> Despite Reddit reporting 160 clicks, not a single user who came through the Reddit ads downloaded our application.
Failure to convert isn't necessarily indicative of fraud. Especially with only 160 clicks to analyze. Most of my own Reddit ad clicks are accidental, as they now make them look like posts/comments in your feed that are barely difference in appearance.
> Our analytics runs through our own domain, making it immune to ad blockers and privacy browsers.
The implementation at https://userpath.co/docs/setup-pixel looks entirely blockable. uBlock does a pretty good job of uncloaking these first-party analytics calls.
This appears to just be an ad for UserPath.
Regarding the uBlock being able to block our analytics requests, I'll give you $1oo if you prove me wrong.
Of course, any privacy tool will be able to do that as long as the user configures it to do so, but I challenge anyone to show me it doing that by default.
its leadership, staff, and users are all bottom of the barrel trash.