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Honestly I don't care if it's "old fashioned" websites need to start taking responsibility for the ads that they run on their sites.

Yeah auctioning your ad space in milliseconds is cool and maximum profit. I don't care.

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If the threat you're seeking to mitigate is malicious ads ("malvertisements,") then you could easily pass that burden to the ad networks themselves. I think it's extraordinarily rare for a website to sell "banner space" instead of just throwing in an AdSense snippet or similar.

Yes, if only we could trust advertising networks to work in the best interests of their viewers.

why would they? the viewers are not their customers.

"They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to notice it unless he was concentrating."

-- Douglas Adams

It turns out that sarcasm is sometimes not obvious to everyone. My apologies.

You are correct. They cannot be trusted. The entire history of advertising and advertisers is evidence that they cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted to self-regulate, to follow voluntary codes, or even to form an industry regulating body (sorry, UK, you know it's true).

And yes, Google is an advertising agency... which spends up to $20MM a year on federal lobbying.

Never need to apologize for quoting Douglas Adams to me my friend!

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