How to Build a Content Farm in 20 Minutes

Every now and then, I'll stumble across a piece of internet content that is so beautiful that the whole world should read it because it actually provides meaningful information to readers AND demonstrates the perfect utilization of the internet as an expressive medium. That happened this week with Bloomberg Business's How Much of Your Audience is Fake?, complete with readable #journalism, infographics, and immersive animation. Unfortunately, it also depressingly reiterated that words on the internet are a waste of time, and mostly robots are bouncing around these endless pages of code that some of us still choose to read. Media companies of all shapes, sizes, and ethical makeups somehow frame this mess into "value."

The piece is a relatively in-depth look into the relationships between content farms, advertisers, and traffic brokers. Basically, content farms are able to purchase cheap traffic and sell "quality" advertisements against that traffic. Audience can be purchased instantly instead of relying on outdated, costly strategies like social media or SEO. Content farms you've never heard of get more traffic than established media brands. Agencies and publishers (via inauthentic content farms) have little incentive to regulate their ad impressions. Advertisers are better off pouring money into television to reach more influencable eyeballs, instead of having bots waste their their poorly programmed internet ad buys playing underneath people's browsers or within one pixel of their screen.

Pop-up ads don't seem as malicious after Bloomberg's fake traffic expose.

One of the underlying themes of the Life on the Content Farm series is attempting to reconcile the fact that content farms are not only fluff, but this fluff read by a massive, faceless audience. As the scale of every content farm continues to grow, it gets harder to buy the idea that a quality audience can even exist on the internet. Is anyone truly acquiring a "quality audience" from organic traffic sources? We are reaching a point where it may be fair to say that no one is reading the internet any more, but it is still more lucrative than ever.

Here are a few choice quotes from Bloomberg's fake traffic expose:

1. "At long last, they'd know where every last dollar went and whether it did its job."

The false promise of the internet was the ability to track everyone and everything, including advertisements. Your browser and device instantly forfeits information about you on every page that you load and this was supposed to offer more power and control to create a more perfect advertising experience. However, everything trackable is all just data fields that can easily be populated to game traffic auditors, or your own computer can be taken over by malware. Your computer could be gifting pageviews and impressions to content while you read this piece or escape on your daily Netflix binge.

Unfortunately, most online ads inherently assume that each advertisement inspires a call-to-action. Not every banner ad or video ad results in the immediate purchase of a product that you may have Googled. An agency would tell you that programmatic advertising that follows you around the web provides an immersive branding experience aimed at an individual. It's hard to see programmatic advertising as anything other than the most complex, and highly profitable remnant inventory scheme.

2. "Fake traffic has become a commodity. There's malware for generating it and brokers who sell it. Some companies pay for it intentionally, some accidentally, and some prefer not to ask where their traffic comes from."

In the current media wars, there is a recurring narrative that all premium websites are attempting to scale at all costs while maintaining their value as "premium content source." Many big box content farms have achieved massive scale in only two years. This type of article puts a spotlight on the most backwards, unethical content farms, but also begs the question that a proportion of all traffic is fake-ish. While most of these big box content farms focus on real users aggregated from social, search, and email, will an ethical responsibility emerge somewhere beyond Comcast data? At times, it does seem like the only way to give a website unquestionable credibility is to have a major cable network attached to it as the ultimate organic old media traffic source.

When a media company is acquired, does the acquirer see fake, cheap traffic as part of the value, or a misleading element of inflated value? Pumping and dumping media companies is easier than ever.

3. "An even more cost-effective technique—and as a rule of thumb, fake is always cheaper—is an ad bot, malware that surreptitiously takes over someone else's computer and creates a virtual browser."

After reading this piece, it seems like doing anything to acquire traffic other than having bots view it seems like a complete waste of time, energy, and resources. Even getting a minimal clickthrough rate on Facebook is too expensive. We all must realize that clickbait is not the problem. It's only a standard tool in the broken economy of traffic jacking.

At the bottom of most pieces of content on the internet are links to other "interesting pieces of related content" on various sites on the internet. Based on the "quality" of the sources, you can get a better idea of how much the site you are browsing is willing to pay for "quality" traffic. You can even decide for yourself if you want to be counted as quality traffic with every strategic click!

4. "Advertisers generally see lower levels of fraudulent traffic by dealing directly with publishers rather than using programmatic exchanges. Of course, that also means missing out on the scale that automation provides."

I'm not sure if there is a lesson to be learned from that quote, but programmatic advertising makes me feel like my brain is infected with malware. My desires as a consumer have been put out into the world and I can't escape from them. Even a question about affordable dri-fit shirts will haunt me until I buy a new computer.

When I'm browsing the internet, I usually realize that I am on a low quality site if programmatic ads are following me around. Somehow, I've navigated the the farthest reaches of the internet that is serving the cheapest ads to the longtailiest users who may be influenced by them. Programmatic ads means that you are in no-man's land, where publishers weren't integrated into native, social, and live programmed events.

5. "How much was each part of the labyrinthine digital-ad process costing? Answers were impossible to come by."

The Bloomberg piece gives a mini-business case about Kellogg's losing money on bot advertising, ending up in a wormhole. No one has answers, partially because no one has the genuine desire to get answers. Agencies, advertisers, and content farms are on the receiving end of a major brand's online advertising budget… so why ruin a good thing?

Certainly not in the name of accuracy, fairness, and legitimate optimization for all parties involved. There is no duty to "readers" to curate a stream of relevant content, or activate and empower a community with information that matters. The broken digital ad process is costing us all something. Internet media was an opportunity to be a medium of change. However, the ability to target, track, and inflate a user base has become a problem that may not be reparable.

There is no way for the reader to stand up for themselves because even if you chose not to read, a robot will take your place. Real people can't turn to social media and they can't rely on Google's algorithm to find them the content that they are looking for. The fluidity of information on the internet has been compromised, monetized, and sold back to those compromising and monetizing it.

Carles.Buzz is the fallen content farmer behind HIPSTER RUNOFF. Read more Life on the Content Farm here.