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Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

nytimes.com

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Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#61

Post by pjc50 »

gregmac wrote: post #19

These ads specifically were the ads that drove me to ad blockers. I resisted for years, as I took the stance I simply didn't visit sites that had overly obnoxious ads. I've had flash turned off for years so that likely cut down on a lot of that garbage anyway. Then these fake "Other things you might like" ads started appearing around many sites. Occasionally somewhat relevant, but always click-bait headlines. I was e…

Yup. And I blocked Taboola and Outbrain in my hosts file years ago after some particularly unpleasant ads of rotting teeth. To me they're a symbol of low-quality misleading advertising.

I think there might be a place for good cross-advertising of articles, but that seems to not be what the public clicks on.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#62

Post by kristianc »

omegaworks wrote: post #17
detaro wrote: post #2

Surprised it took this long. These things are incredibly jarring and low-quality, and actively try to redirect users away from the publishers sites into a rabbithole of even more links. If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density?

The ad content is designed to look as though it is part of the source website, so claims made appear to be those of the originating site. Outbrain seems to be the web's answer to native content marketing. Unfortunately NYT, Huffpo, Wapo don't realize by putting these on their legitimate articles they're allowing these third parties to siphon away some of their credibility.

This - they're bought programmatically. The buyer submits metadata (headline, URL, image, etc) to a bidding exchange and they're formatted to look like they're part of the relevant site on the fly.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#63

Post by throwaway1892 »

flashman wrote: post #25

One of my least-favourite parts of video game news outlet Rock Paper Shotgun is the box of Taboola links at the end of the article. They never have anything to do with video games. The sad part it, I'm sure RPS gets a lot of money from that box of links, meaning if they ditched it, I'd get less content from them. I would greenlight their site in my adblocker but it's just not worth the crap fiesta of ads.

I removed RPS from my whitelist when they added that box.

I agree it's crap, even compared to the other ads.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#64

Post by brainfire »

flashman wrote: post #25

One of my least-favourite parts of video game news outlet Rock Paper Shotgun is the box of Taboola links at the end of the article. They never have anything to do with video games. The sad part it, I'm sure RPS gets a lot of money from that box of links, meaning if they ditched it, I'd get less content from them. I would greenlight their site in my adblocker but it's just not worth the crap fiesta of ads.

Weirdly, "subscribing"/"supporting" RPS doesn't seem to remove the ads, or if it does then that's not indicated on the page about it.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#66

Post by MarkMc »

It's interesting to compare Outbrain to Google.

Google has all my search history, a list of all the AdSense websites I visit, my YouTube history, my location history, ten years of my email history, my Android app history, my Play Store purchase history. They have a large number of PhD engineers working to develop the best internet advertising algorithms.

And yet when Time or Forbes want to display an ad that will generate the most money, Google is beaten by a company that is simply focused on catchy ads.

I realise that Google's higher standards (and perhaps higher commission) put their ads at a disadvantage in terms of publisher revenue, but I thought that their huge advantage in targeting ads would more than compensate.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#67

Post by cm2012 »

MarkMc wrote: post #66

It's interesting to compare Outbrain to Google. Google has all my search history, a list of all the AdSense websites I visit, my YouTube history, my location history, ten years of my email history, my Android app history, my Play Store purchase history. They have a large number of PhD engineers working to develop the best internet advertising algorithms. And yet when Time or Forbes want to display an ad that will gen…

I spend a lot of money on advertising. Google's non search stuff is not nearly as good as FB for targeting.

Re: Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads

#69

Post by FussyZeus »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #10
detaro wrote: post #2

Surprised it took this long. These things are incredibly jarring and low-quality, and actively try to redirect users away from the publishers sites into a rabbithole of even more links. If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density?

>If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from. Just high ad-density? Probably because ad-networks pay per click, and if you have something SO clickbaity like these ads there's a lot of ad clicks. For example if google ads and Outbrain both pay $7 per thousand clicks (I have never used either so this is just a random number) and google ads bring in 1000 clicks while outbrain brings in 3…

That's because they aren't immediately recognizable as ads. More deception, in this case leading to a site with a lot more deception.

Ad networks need to die, and about 70% of news organizations also need to die. Then I think we'll be in a good market balance to where journalism can actually be profitable again.

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