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Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#141

Post by ungreased0675 »

jjallen wrote: post #127
jjallen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.

I do wonder if the more they goose their ad business the faster it eventually falls. I know I am more and more reluctant to view many normal Web page ads at all and usually immediately click away the second a site gets annoying

I block ads because I don’t want my family exposed to scams, clickbait, and offensive content. If ads weren’t so annoying, I wouldn’t put too much effort into blocking them.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#142

Post by celestialcheese »

We had to hire a full time person to monitor and block click-trick "Continue" / "Download" scam ads on Google Ad Manager. With the amount of human training we did blocking these ads, google could absolutely solve this problem instantly. The ad creatives are nearly identical. We were seeing new ad accounts targeting our specific domain daily (ad account names like {sitename}339, {sitename}340, etc)

When we asked our reps, they dance around the question by saying they would "escalate to engineering" or some bs like that.

Google just makes far too much money to stop. My guess is that its >40% of AdX display revenue, based on the % of scam ads that come through ad manager.

Context: our site did ~$5m AdX revenue annually, mostly US audience. High CPM niche. This was ~7 years ago till 2 years ago when we sold the business, I would guess it's still happening based on ads I see browsing the internet.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#143

Post by dspillett »

jjallen wrote: post #110
conception wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.

> but not so well with AI revenue

Nobody is doing well enough with AI revenue ATM (https://isaiprofitable.com/). At the moment it is probably more about market share of users, that is where the investment capital will need to be clawed back from when it starts to be called back (or replacement money will need to come from if the investment cycle simply stops giving generously).

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#144

Post by Citizen_Lame »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #109
conception wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

very HN take. Reality is 3.8 flash is good at what it does (being fast + cheap)... but that market is becoming very saturated and google is not competing at all at the frontier where major spend lies.

So just ignore the reality, that Gemini (and yes even 3.8 Flash) is worst of all major LLMs across most metrics? But that's fine, because reasons?

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#145

Post by blargey »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #67
CqtGLRGcukpy wrote: post #2

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…

It's not like they'll run out of ads to show anyway. If they take this ad down, they'll just show a different one?

Ad slots are auctioned. Scams getting shown means scammers are bidding more for those same slots than legitimate advertisers.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#146

Post by dspillett »

unethical_ban wrote: post #125
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #107

Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.

I use adblock and on my TV, Youtube Premium. I loaded a stock web browser on VPN and checked Youtube looking for ads. Holy shit, it's all scams. Sample size of three, but not a single ad was a known company or a decent product.

> Youtube Premium.

I use other means when I must have access to content that is only on youtube. I'm not paying money into a company so happy to allow as much scammy crap as the adverts on there are full off.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#147

Post by tough »

torginus wrote: post #11

Do platform holders have a say in this? I'm sure if I submitted an app that on the iOS app store that mimicked a system warning that tried to scare people into giving me access, it would not pass the review process. If instead I decided to embed a WebView and later changed the html to do the same I would likely get booted from the app store (afair Apple's very particular about serving remote content in PWAs, and chan…

the app store is filled with scammy apps, its just a different flavour

I once got a crypto-wallet PK leaked by a fake wallet app impersonating another very known brand. Found out on reddit it was a fake... After a few months the real app came out but yeah...

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#149

Post by fl0id »

walrus01 wrote: post #68
tanepiper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is becoming very hostile to ad blockers. I use a VPN and I've noticed more and more sites just being obnoxious with their popups and even just crashing the site completely in a loop (looking at you EuroNews)

It doesn't solve everything but the 'full' desktop version of the ublock origin plugin runs just fine in Android on Firefox. I can't even imagine using any other mobile browser now. I don't know what the situation is for iphone platform stuff these days.

and f.e. brave on ios

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#150

Post by stefan_ »

stillpointlab wrote: post #45

I don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad. I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low qu…

X has been the most shameless, after all brand name advertisers left. Here is one state-level actor campaign that has been going on for months:

https://imgur.com/a/HZwfyNH

It's not advertising anything, it's just a straight up scam exploit site. It uses exclusively stolen or fake accounts. The links are shown as "amazon.de" or similar but of course do not go there, no doubt just a bug X haven't gotten around to fixing just yet.

This is on the kind of level where if we had actual law enforcement for tech companies, the next time some X executive lands in Europe they would be in cuffs.

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