A digital cheating

experiment on social

media

Contact heaven Arthur KANNAS

arthur@heaven.fr @moohai

CONTAINS

KEBAB.

Introduction

a question of numbers,

without revenues.

the good news

And

the bad news

Justin Timberlake is not your friend.

Justin Timberlake is a robot.

CLIENTS CONSEIL ET

ACCOMPAGNEMENT

MEDIA

STRATÉGIE ET PILOTAGE MEDIA /

AUTO-PROMO / MONETISATION

MOBILE

ÉTUDES

AUDITS / BENCHMARKS /

ANALYSES / FORMATION

REAL TIME MKG

SOCIAL MEDIA OPTIMIZATION / COMMUNITIES /

MARKETING D’NFLUENCE

PROJETS COORDINATION /

SÉLECTION / PRODUCTION WEB /

VIDEO / MOBILE

CONTENUS

WEB / VIDEO / SOCIAL / EVENT / MOBILE

IMAGE CHARTE /

BRANDBOOKS / MOODBOARDS /

SCENO

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

ALMOST 10 MILLIONS OF FANS ON PAGES LAUNCHED OR MANAGED BY HEAVEN.

MOST OF THE TIME WITH THE SUPPORT OF SOME MEDIA CAMPAIGN

ACQUISITION : LEAD MODEL

CHEATING : CREATION OF FAKE METRIX

2006

Triggers for choosing to watch a video (Yahoo France 11/2011)

Above the

figures

Weapon of

mass reputation

Then come the temptation

of the cheater

1. Few case study

before to jump in

at the deep end pour se mettre

dans le bain (avant de se jeter à l’eau).

To cheat: act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage

Oxford Dictionary

Fast and easy promotion for artists ?

2008

View counts record ?

2008

Someone special waiting for you ?

2010

50 000 fake accounts in Egypt

08/2011

117 kfollowers in 24h

21/07/2012

So…

Why not us ? le bain (avant de se

jeter à l’eau).

2. Mars Kebab.

Doing the job for

fame and fortune

http://planete-mars-kebab.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JI5WnXpiVI

30/7/2012

12/9/2012

1. Identify the industry players

2. Benchmark their offers

3. Assess their liability

Finding the good partners

1. A mass of players

2. True media agencies ?

3. Affiliation ? / Resellers ?

Targeting

(zone géographique,

contenu…)

Prestigious support

Secured deal

Limited discount

Everything to yield to the temptation

Fans’

order

Promotion /

Submission

toward a wide

network of

fans

Members

follow

CRITICAL INVESTMENT

http://www.youtube.com/user/PlaneteMarsKebab

Russian

Man

13 / 17 years old

PROFILING FAKE PROFILES

Profiles aren't perfectly identical but we

can notice some similarities:

- Incoherent picture, descriptions, username

- Very few tweets, always published at the

opening of the account (mean : 4 tweets)

- Disproportion of the Followers / Following

ratio (between 1 per 50 to 1 per 1500)

PROFILING FAKE PROFILES

« likes » 212 page likes in

23 minutes

Strange Justin

Timberlake likeness

In 2 days he may have

disappeared

No specific nationality

Thus, how are they « recruited »?

targeting: - Tags

- Profile

- Place

- …

Spoting

interesting

accounts

FOLLOW FOLLOW

BACK UNFOLLOW

Proxies Subscribtion Filling

formula with

DB

Access to

profile Social action

scripts

Automatic or human

(outsourced ?) task

Name

Login / Pw

Update….

the social bots

How to be careful ?

Depending on supplier, fake profiles will have different behaviour and characteristic, we need to look for anomalies.

Toward Automatic solutions

1. Fast and unexplained growth fans/followers/views

2. Incoherent profile information: name, username,

descriptions…

3. Incoherence between the brand ID and content, and its

followers (eg: foreign fans on a French page)

4. Incoherence in the social behavior (eg: every likes generated

at the same moment, percentage of video viewing stopped

after 5 sec …)

Fakers.statuspeople.com To idenfy fake accounts

I. Digital cheating on social media

HOW BIG THE PROBLEM IS ON FACEBOOK ?

FACEBOOK DECLARES 83 MILLIONS OF FAKE ACCOUNTS (2012/8).

IF EVERY OF THEM MAKE 200 LIKES…

3. To conclude

CPM tends to zero CPV tends to zero

Heaven asks for new indicators pay per view… but what’s next… Pay per share. Pay per viewer. Pay per subscriber. PAY per pinner. Etc.

Prestation Relevé de prix CPM Unit cost

Pinterest followers 1 000 for $199 $199 $0,199

Google +1 2 500 for $299 $119 $0,1196

Instagram subscribers 2 000 for $199 $99,5 $0,0995

Youtube subscribers 500 for $25 $50 $0,05

Facebook Photo

likes 1 000 for $39 $39 $0,039

Fans/Likes facebook 10 000 for $179 $17,9 $0,0179

SoundCloud plays 1 000 for $17 $17 $0,017

Youtube views 1M for $5 495 $5,49 $0,00549

Twitter Followers 50 000 for $149 $2,98 $0,00298

Black market prices

MARS KEBAB EXPERIMENT

999 € (or 149 kebabs)

Who benefits from cheating ?

An advertiser that wants to quickly rise its reputation, for cheap. A creative agency that wants to prove the efficiency of its viral concept. A media agency that wants to increase its profit or reach its objectives. An ad-network that wants to secure its presence in further communication plan when it does not delivery everything it sold. A platform?

Conclusions 1. A black market in advance 2. Segmented social media 3. Stay humble and watchful, everyone can be the victim /recipient of a cheating.

4. SO SORRY,

JUSTIN.

YOU ARE NOT

THAT FAKE.

NO, every one can’t be justin timberlake.

Don’t buy

your fans

to anyone.

MERCI DE VOTRE ATTENTION

Contact heaven Arthur KANNAS

arthur@heaven.fr @moohai