How we fought bad ads in 2015
googleblog.blogspot.com
How we fought bad ads in 2015
1–10 of 136 posts
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#2Do you know if Adsense tried to make any agreement with ad blockers?
Their ads are not so bad.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#3When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want.
They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying.
It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days (see [1] for a taste). On mobile many websites are completely unusable because of ads.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#4When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…
I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#5When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…
I must disagree. Some ads do introduce me to new things that I am truly interested in.
The percentage has unfortunately decreased precipitously with the prevalence of retargeting.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#6"In 2015, we stepped up our efforts to fight phishing sites, blocking nearly 7,000 sites as a result." One of the 7000 "phishing sites" they blocked was a page on my personal site (http://xpda.com/f18ebay/) that has been there more than 10 years and has nothing to do with phishing. It's not an important or high-traffic page, but it was irritating nonetheless to be falsely accused by Google and, as a result, a several other web institutions.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#7When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…
There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's in Google's interest to have good and safe ads (or the perception that they do).
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#8When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…
>If I want something, I will get it
And what are all the ways you can discover things you want? I'd say the top two for most people are word-of-mouth and advertising.
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#9Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf.
Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisation" "US visa" et al), and sometimes they don't even file on your behalf (just take your money and run).
These things have been going on YEARS, and I can find numerous examples in seconds with no research. When is Google going to put a stop to this?
PS - It is disturbing how many less computer literate people have no concept of what is an advert and what is a result in a search engine. They'll just click the top thing, which is scary for the above examples.
PPS - Bing is much MUCH worse. More scams, and ads are harder to spot (by design?).
Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015
#10Go to Google right now and search for "passport renew" I see twelve sites which offer the service with no affiliation. All they do is ask for sensitive personal information, charge you an additional fee (on top of the passport fee) and file on your behalf. Unfortunately I've had friends & family fall for this and similar scams (see also "birth certificate copy" "criminal record" "arrest record" "US travel authorisati…
What do you think are additional things that Google could do? I can imagine how hard this is to police.
For example:
- Let people mark different links as spam
- Hire a larger team to police this