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Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

atomic14.com

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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#82

Someone who has spent $100M+ on Google Ads explained to me that Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before. Seems like two things 1) Google is losing at AI and Sundar wants to mask this 2) AI is going to destroy their ad business and they want to get while the getting is good.

I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good.

Now their product strategy however…

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#83

Because serving dodgy ads pays them a lot of money. The pivot is complete. 90% of the ads I see on YouTube are obvious scams. Many from untraceable shady overseas organizations. You can see the data if you report them. It's always some unheard of outfit out of Hong Kong or Brazil. I want to know who is funding this. You don't need to be Kreskin to figure this one out.

> I want to know who is funding this

It's a network made by snake-oil salesman. People on Brazil yearns for passive-income, and they get told by a lot of influencers that dropshipping is what will give them their freedom.

Then you have thousands of people dumping fake ads about borderline fake products on Meta and Google. It's actually a hive-mind.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#84
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed The "more than can be reviewed" might have been a logical conclusion in a purely human based workflow, even if you have the lowest cost per head click workers in like, an external contractor call centre type environment in Bangladesh. As the author points out, the ordinary consumer class version of publicly available Gemini very accurately classifies the ad as ma…

How about I rephrase it. More than can be reviewed for the time and money they’re willing to spend . Even before AI, they absolutely could’ve done it.

this argument still adds nothing to discussion because companies clearly want to spend zero but earn everything, the only amount they are willing to spend is on lawyers working on shielding companies from any responsibility including obvious cases of negligence

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#85
post #8

I have two guesses why Google does this: 1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru. 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that ma…

Someone should ask them: if Gemini can’t evaluate this at scale then why should I use it for my enterprise?

because that makes them even more money for equally nonexistent amount of liability, this is actual answer, unfortunately

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#88

These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town. To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads…

Kagi is better. You might want to try it.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#89
> However, if you were being uncharitable, you do have to question whether it’s in Google’s interest to remove adverts that get lots of clicks.

That is it. They don't do it because it goes against their interests. Google is a scummy company doing scummy things. There is very little else to it.

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