A New Wave of Bad Ads Is Hijacking Even Top-Tier Websites (2018)

I've been thinking about this a lot, actually. Advertising doesn't have to be terrible. We already have basically everyone on youtube sponsored by SquareSpace or nordvpn or something, right? Because the ads on youtube are shit pay and everyone hates them. People don't like the squarespace or nordvpn ads but they're more integrated into the video so they aren't as simply blockable, and at least they're paying the creator directly so they're seen as a more necessary evil.

Why not build advertising profiles, then, not on users? Why not build them on the channels? A few channels I follow already have models similar to this, like for example PBS Eons is sponsored by CuriosityStream which is 100% right up the alley of anyone who likes PBS Eons. So why not figure out a way to, instead of tracking everyone so aggressively everywhere they go, find some way to build advertising profiles that match with the content of the video? I've gotten so sick of seeing ads that are totally irrelevant to what I'm watching or reading that I use an adblocker everywhere I can - this is the only reason I still root my android phone. But surely we can do better? If I'm looking up, say, information about electronic drum sets as I've been doing the past few days, I should be getting ads on those youtube videos or those reddit pages or those reviews about other options I have. Seeing stuff about something I searched last week is both irrelevant AND creepy.

This is the only acceptable ad:

    <a href="ad.site"><img src="foo.png"></a>

I will keep blocking until the industry changes to this.

The interesting part is I feel like sites that do this cultivate a lot more trust in the products they’re advertising. It’s fewer impressions maybe, but having a publisher who actually stands by their ad buys does a lot to confer legitimacy, especially for brands or companies that aren’t well known.

As someone that has done consulting in a past life for ad-tech, I think you're severely underestimating not only the effort involved to keep this type of ad sales team + ad-operations + ad-tech in-house, but the _significant_ margin gain for potentially a higher quality experience for the user.* As in, it's a very non-linear gain for going with an ad-network rather than try to hire and build that much talent + capital respectively. And that's just for _one_ publisher - imagine if every single publisher had to do this!

*The hypothesis here is that a more targeted ad experience is better for me, as a user, rather than some generic ad that I would see in a newspaper, where everyone sees the same thing (hence your "relevant advertising" note.) If you don't believe this to be true, then some folks on the Executive team at Alphabet would _love_ to talk to you about how Google's whole business model is built on a lie.

I didn't have any trouble with that with javascript off and using reader mode.

Running pi-hole on my network... the page loaded instantaneously and with no ads.

Let's introduce responsibility for hosted content: Every ad has to come with an audit (report linked visibly in a bottom corner of the ad), either by the publishing platform or by a trusted and certified auditor on behalf of the network. (There is no such thing as a free lunch.)

Well said.

If you don't want to be criticized for sending your customers malware... get better control over the the third party scripts on your site. Trusting a negligent third-party actor is negligent in itself.

If NYT is willing to sell out it's readers to sketchy internet ad providers, what assurances do we have that they won't also sell-out readers to intentional paid propaganda? Slippery slope for an organization rooted in journalistic integrity. Does management have controls in place for this?

man, this is really untrue. I As someone who has owned and been part of sites that get hit with bad ads / malware, trust me we do care and we do what we can but the end publishers get all the blame and have the least resources available to prevent it. People should really be upset with the networks that allow those ads to go through and don't try and stop them until we complain, they take that spam money and are the ones who are most likely to be able to detect it.

The problem is that we actually don't have much control from networks and they usually at first will deny it's happening. The only thing we can do is pull the networks until they pull the bad ads. But also know it's how we pay most of the bills so we do what we can.

Thank goodness for new companies like Confiant that are building wrappers that look at each ad call first and reject suspicious demand. It's been a life saver. It costs money but it was worth it, I sleep better at night.

My god, you weren't kidding! 23 requests blocked just by uBlock Origin alone. That's not advertising, that's a shotgun.