Hacker News Reader

Huh, you are right. Those scummy links at Washington Post are all Outbrain. I was mistaken then (because they use BOTH Google and Outbrain)

View on HN

Google often has scummy ads as well. Haven't checked recently, but the ads on http://getpaint.net are often designed to look like download buttons to download the popular paint application.

Scummy AdSense ads are harder to pin down, of course, because of the live bidding and personalization.

Just check (3/22/19) and yup sure enough https://i.imgur.com/6SMBjDa.png . I find this is pretty common with many software websites that have ads, I'm really surprised paint.net doesn't switch to carbon or something.

EDIT: There's another one at the bottom of the page too. And they're randomized, some make it clear you aren't downloading Paint.net (such as the "Free Mac PDF Reader") but others aren't at all.

Why don't developers put a thick border with 'Advertisement' in bold around the ad space so that ads displayed doesn't look like they are native elements?

Because then they make less money.

It's fairly common for large media sites to use multiple ad vendors. WaPo isn't unique here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com